Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [29]
The stand-down was no loss to operations. Because of perennial logistics problems, the 20th had only flown two missions per month since June. LeMay used the three weeks after Anshan to teach his air force his way of flying, and slowly the results began to show. Fuel management improved, permitting greater ordnance loads, and bombing accuracy began tightening up. With designated primary bombardiers an entire formation could “drop on lead,” taking advantage of the most skilled operators available.
Perhaps LeMay’s greatest success was achieved on the ground. He restructured maintenance by disbanding the dedicated support units, spreading the most knowledgeable mechanics and technicians throughout the bomb groups, and streamlined groups from four squadrons to three. It worked. Before he left China in January 1945, LeMay had nearly doubled the monthly sorties, reduced the aborts, and raised bomb tonnage on primary targets by 300 percent and on all targets by 250 percent.
But problems persisted. There was never enough information: not on weather, maps, or targets. Some charts were demonstrably wrong, leading LeMay to resort to the old airmail pilot’s formula: add 2,000 feet to every mountain for oneself and 3,000 more for the wife and children.
As if those complications weren’t enough, in September, Japanese forces overran several Allied airfields in southern China and threatened areas slated for the construction of other B-29 bases. The wisdom of building the remote Chengtu complex loomed larger: China’s best defense was its enormous size.
While LeMay and company struggled with the CBI’s myriad problems, events pushed forward in the Pacific. In October the advance echelon of Brigadier General Emmett O’Donnell’s 73rd Wing landed on Saipan and logged XXI Bomber Command’s first mission, hitting the Caroline Islands on the 28th. Four weeks later, O’Donnell’s Superfortresses struck Japan from the Marianas for the first time.
The message was clear: the B-29’s future lay in the Central Pacific, not on the Asian mainland.
With a harbor and airfields, the city of Omura remained XX Bomber Command’s destination of choice in Japan. The target most often attacked was the “aircraft plant,” actually part of the 21st Naval Air Arsenal. It was a relatively minor facility that mainly produced small quantities of second-line fighters, floatplanes, and engines. Nevertheless, that was the target on October 25.
The fifth homeland mission began inauspiciously when a 40th Group aircraft crashed on takeoff in China, killing all aboard. Of the other seventy-seven Superfortresses, fifty-nine struck the primary and eleven found targets elsewhere. Nevertheless, for once the bombardiers had a shot at their briefed objective in decent visibility. Hunched in the nose of each B-29, peering through their rubber-lined eyepieces, bombardiers twisted the knobs of their Nordens, compensating for wind drift as well as they could while the sight’s twin pointers ticked toward one another in their tracks and the contact points finally touched. Green lights extinguished on the armament panel as each bomb was released.
In contrast to the initial Omura strike in July, the October mission did the job; the B-29s left the aircraft plant a wreck.
But over the island of Kyushu the 40th Group’s Heavenly Body was shot up by fighters. The flight deck suffered explosive decompression; “Damage to the plane was severe. In general, the whole right side was a mess,” recalled the aircraft commander, Captain Jack C. Ledford. He had been severely wounded when a heavy bullet ripped a six- by two-inch gash in his right side,