Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [48]
Frustrated that the wizardry of radar was not being fully exploited, LeMay collared his resident electronics specialist, Dr. King Gould, “a capable scientific type” from MIT. LeMay told him, “Pick out a couple of the stupidest radar operators . . . and Lord knows that’s pretty stupid.” LeMay designated a point on Guam’s coast and asked Gould to determine whether subpar operators could distinguish it from the surrounding water. The chief was not being entirely uncharitable, as radar had come late to the B-29 program and many extraneous gunners had been assigned the duty with little interest and insufficient training.
After some test flights, “Doc” Gould reported back, allowing as how some of his guinea pigs might become tolerable technicians if provided ample training. Gould uttered the magic word—training. True to form, LeMay established a radar school for current operators as well as new crews, featuring both classroom lectures and airborne training.
Apart from remedial education, LeMay had to juggle several administrative balls at once: Allied, inter- and intraservice politics; supply and logistics; intelligence and targeting; maintenance; and personnel concerns. The latter included the all-important aircrew rotation policy. In Europe the twenty-five-mission tour for bomber crews had been increased to thirty owing to reduced losses in 1944, then to thirty-five. That same figure was applied to XXI Bomber Command, but a comparison of the two theaters was incompatible. From Guam to Tokyo and back took fourteen to fifteen hours flying time versus less than nine hours round-trip from England to Berlin. Therefore, during thirty-five European missions a B-17 crew might log 300 combat hours, whereas its B-29 counterpart could expect 500 hours, nearly all over water.
XX Bomber Command’s loss rate from June through December had averaged 5 percent, and the XXI’s first three months in the Marianas ran 4.1 percent. However, more pertinent to aircrews was that in LeMay’s first six homeland missions, losses among effective (nonabortive) sorties ran 5.6 percent. That was not a cheerful number. Extrapolated over a thirty-five-mission tour, it meant that B-29 crews lived on borrowed time after eighteen sorties. Nonetheless, morale held as the actuarial figures improved and the first crews to reach thirty-five missions rotated home in May.
Another problem was facilities for the new units. When the 314th Wing arrived in January, Guam’s North Field was largely completed but had precious few accommodations. LeMay was living in a tent at the time, in vivid contrast to Guam’s admirals, who entertained him in hilltop houses and even on a yacht. Through most of its existence XXI Bomber Command slept under canvas, which was semitolerable, but some engine components and most electronic systems needed indoor spaces, away from blowing dirt and excess moisture.
Under LeMay’s direction, the Marianas command launched six major missions from January 23 to February 19, totaling 646 sorties with eighty-eight aborts (13 percent), a measurable improvement owing to LeMay’s more efficient maintenance policies. But results were mixed: the portion of planes bombing the primary target ranged from zero to 70 percent, mainly depending upon weather. Overall, just one in three bombers attacked the primary—a galling figure to LeMay, whose standard of acceptability was target destruction. Losses were generally light, though the strike against Ota’s aircraft plant on February 10 cost a dozen Superforts, only one directly attributable to enemy action. (One crashed on takeoff; two collided; seven ditched; and one disappeared.) The 505th Group was particularly hard hit, losing five planes operationally. Nevertheless, with the new 313th Wing’s four groups, 118 sorties on the Ota strike represented the largest B-29 mission of the war to date.
Whatever the statistics showed, one inescapable fact stared Curt LeMay in his impassive face: he had destroyed no more targets than Possum Hansell.