Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [44]
Meanwhile, early in January LeMay made a quick trip to survey the Marianas operation, as he knew that his XX Bomber Command eventually would transfer there. While on Guam—headquarters had recently moved from Saipan—he consulted with Hansell and Lieutenant General Lauris Norstad, the 20th Air Force chief of staff from Washington. LeMay and Norstad had a professional relationship, largely devoid of warmth. After serving together in Hawaii in the 1930s they had taken separate tracks, Norstad as a staff man, LeMay as an operator. Now Norstad dropped a verbal bomb on LeMay and Hansell: the entire B-29 operation would fall under the umbrella of XXI Bomber Command, and holding that umbrella would be Curtis LeMay.
Obviously, Hansell was on the way out. By all accounts Hap Arnold respected Possum, especially as one of the miracle workers who had produced AWPD-1 in nine days in 1941. But despite Arnold’s pixieish appearance and cheerful demeanor, he could be a ruthless throat cutter, often impatient to a fault. (His expectations for the immature B-29 in the primitive China Theater and Wolfe’s precipitous dismissal were but two examples.) LeMay hastened back to India, bearing orders to return to Guam in about two weeks.
In LeMay’s absence Hansell continued operations, targeting Tokyo’s Musashino aircraft plant by night on the 9th and Nagoya’s Mitsubishi factory by day on the 14th. Neither mission accomplished much, largely due to poor weather over the targets. However, Musashino’s searchlights made an impression on the fliers. A navigator wrote, “About 50 lights—some on us momentarily. Pretty lonely up there all by ourselves.” The two missions cost eleven B-29s, mostly through ditchings.
Meanwhile, the new 313th Bomb Wing arrived at Tinian’s North Field in mid-January. Brigadier General J. H. Davies, a two-tour veteran of the Southwest Pacific, arranged for his groups to fly four warm-up missions before tackling Japan in early February. The Marianas bomber command was stretching its wings toward maturity.
Among Davies’s four groups was the 9th, which included a pilot who granted unusual recognition to his ground crew. While most bombers displayed the names of the airmen assigned to each aircraft, those who “kept ’em flyin’” were seldom acknowledged. An exception was recalled by Sergeant Chester Ziel, who worked on a B-29 named The B.A. Bird.
Upon seeing their first B-29, Ziel’s friend Gerald Vining had remarked, “Boy, that’s a big ass bird.” Ziel added, “When we got to Tinian with all those other big ass birds and our flight crew hesitated to give our plane a name. . . . Jerry and Ray Snyder took it upon themselves to approach Captain Wendell Hutchinson, aircraft commander of the unnamed plane.” Hutchinson agreed to have his bomber called The B.A. Bird. More than that, however, the name of each engine mechanic was lettered on the appropriate cowling with names of wives and sweethearts. “As far as I know, we were the only ground crew so honored,” Ziel said.
Official recognition of ground crews also was rare, though citations were issued to mechanics with outstanding records. A case in point was Sergeant William J. Owens, who kept the 6th Group’s Gravel Gertie flying. His citation said, “Sergeant Owens was crew chief at a base in the Marianas Islands supervising the maintenance of a B-29 aircraft. Working under adverse conditions which frequently involved new problems never before faced in aircraft maintenance, he directed the