Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [22]
The first B-29 to touch Asian soil landed at Chakulia, India, on April 2, piloted by Colonel Leonard F. Harman, commander of the 40th Bomb Group. That landing represented a triumph of determination over every possible adversity. Apart from the daunting distance and weather, fewer than half the aircrews had completed the training syllabus. They were deficient in altitude and formation flying, gunnery, radar bombing, and a variety of other tasks. Furthermore, because so few combat veterans were available, most pilots and navigators had never flown outside the continental United States. It was little better with the crucial maintenance personnel, of whom perhaps half had ever worked on B-29s.
By April 19, elements of all four of Saunders’s groups had touched down at their Indian fields. The largest facility, at Kharagpur, lay some sixty miles west of Calcutta; the others were seventy-five to 105 miles from that eighteenth-century city.
Upon landing at the Bengal bases, the aircrews experienced serious environmental shock. After the freezing months of a Kansas winter the fliers found themselves in the sweltering humidity and triple-digit heat of the Asian subcontinent. Three of the Indian fields had been hacked out of flat scrub land—a relatively easy task—but the 444th Group alit at Charra, the northernmost base. With a sloping runway and appalling heat, the group dubbed the place “Hell’s Half Acre,” and arranged a move to Dudhkundi three months later. Meanwhile, the 40th Group went to Chakulia; the 468th to Kharagpur; and the 462nd settled at Piardoba. Their sixteen squadrons were fully assembled by mid-May.
The 462nd Group commander, Colonel Richard L. Randolph, described the situation at Base B-2, Piardoba, saying, “We knew basic problems of the B-29 could not be remedied in a few days.” The legacy of design defects, especially engine cooling, plagued aircrews and maintenance men alike. Mechanics tried to tweak the engines for unusually high operating temperatures but work was compounded by inexperienced technicians and frequently too few spare parts. The situation was aggravated by India’s miserable climate: often no work was performed between noon and 4:00 P.M. because aluminum was searing to the touch in the 120-degree heat.
Accommodations were basic in Kharagpur, let alone at the outlying bases. (Headquarters was established in a former prison compound.) Thatched-roofed bamboo pole buildings contained interlaced hemp ropes for mattresses. Aside from the sweltering heat, the airmen remarked upon the fauna, including nine-inch centipedes and eighteen-inch lizards. Not to mention the local variety of cobra.
Another problem proved as unavoidable as the environment. It was impossible to keep secret so many B-29s arriving in India, and Tokyo quickly learned of Saunders’s presence. Furthermore, Japanese agents in China could report every time the Superfortresses staged from India through Chengtu, providing hours of advance warning for the homeland. The Americans had no option but to accept that they probably would never surprise the Japanese.
Meanwhile, in Washington that April, General Arnold activated the 20th Air Force, overseeing all B-29 operations. It was a unique situation. (There were no 16th through 19th Air Forces; 20 sounded more impressive.) Arnold assumed control of the 20th, running it from the Pentagon, where headquarters would remain until July 1945. His chief of staff was Brigadier General Haywood Hansell, the same Possum who had helped draft the AAF’s air war plans, AWPD-1 and -42.
Arnold had good reason for the unprecedented measure of personally running 20th Air Force. He knew that the B-29, though still untried, would prove irresistible to theater