Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [27]
On August 20, Blondie Saunders led seventy-five bombers from Chengtu, flying with Colonel Howard Engler of the 468th Group, aiming to restrike the Yawata steel works. As usual, Japanese agents had ample time to send word of the takeoff, and radar provided warning of the sixty-one bombers that reached Kyushu. At 4:30 P.M., Japan’s Western Air Defense Command scrambled four army fighter regiments, which put up eighty-nine aircraft, while the Imperial Navy launched elements of two air groups for a total of more than 100 Japanese interceptors.
Flying in threes and fours, the bombers began their run-in, bracketed by heavy flak between 20,000 and 26,000 feet. The enemy ground gunners hit one of Engler’s planes, knocking Ready Teddy out of the pockmarked air, and damaged eight others.
Each Superfortress released its six 500-pounders. Then, free of the flak zone, the bombers turned for home just as the fighters rolled in.
Leading the attack was the 4th Sentai’s Lieutenant Isamu Kashiide, who had first seen B-29s on the initial Yawata strike in June. Flying a Nick, Kashiide initiated a head-on attack against the 468th, targeting the flight led by Colonel Robert Clinkscales, previously General Douglas MacArthur’s personal pilot. Kashiide’s wingman was Sergeant Shigeo Nobe, who radioed his intention to ram a “B-san.” No one ever knew if his gunner shared his enthusiasm.
Clinkscales’s Gertrude C, named for his mother, was closing its bomb-bay doors when the two Nicks attacked. Nobe made a quick turn, lined up the leading bomber, and rolled into knife-edge flight, wings vertical. His upraised right wing smashed into the B-29’s left wing.
Onlookers—Japanese and American—watched in appalled fascination. Some witnessed the suicide as if in slow motion. The impact ignited a fireball from the bomber’s wing tanks as the Nick’s shattered airframe tumbled onward through the diamond formation.
Burning wreckage flashed past the next bomber, which emerged unharmed. However, the tail-end Boeing could not avoid all the debris. Captain Ornell Stauffer hauled Calamity Sue into an abrupt climb that nearly cleared the worst of Nobe’s wreckage. But enough of the Nick remained intact to sever one of Sue’s horizontal stabilizers. As she dropped into a death spiral, only one crewman bailed out.
Exultant, the Japanese pilots claimed twelve B-29s destroyed, nine by the 4th Sentai alone. One of Kashiide’s squadron mates, Master Sergeant Tatsuo Morimoto, was credited with three kills and four damaged, and received a rare citation.
In the four-mile-high shootout, Saunders’s gunners claimed seventeen Japanese planes plus thirteen probably destroyed. But twelve Superfortresses were lost—a galling 22 percent of the bombers that reached the target. In exchange, ninety-six tons of bombs wrecked two coke ovens.
It was a poor bargain.
Back in China, 20th Air Force analysts consulted their debriefing notes. In addition to Clinkscales of the 468th, the 462nd Group lost Colonel Richard H. Carmichael. Continued loss of senior leaders could not be sustained for long.
From the American perspective the Japanese fighters had been relatively ineffective. It looked as if five B-29s were lost to enemy action, including one to flak. Half a dozen crashed in China and one crew bailed out in Russian airspace.
Meanwhile, some important administrative changes occurred that month. On August 28, Possum Hansell assumed command of the new XXI Bomber Command at Colorado Springs; he was succeeded as 20th Air Force chief of staff by Brigadier General Lauris Norstad.
The next day in India, Major General Curtis E. LeMay took over XX Bomber Command.
The Ice Man Landeth
Curtis LeMay was living proof of the Jungian concept of synchronicity—“meaningful coincidences” that