Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [81]
A devout Christian, Erwin thought of his friends. If the phosphorus were not disposed of, it could burn through the cockpit floor into the bomb bay and detonate the ordnance. Groping blindly for the fiendish device, somehow Erwin found it and picked it up.
The twenty-two-year-old radioman walked forward, intending to throw the flare out the copilot’s window. His path was blocked by the navigator’s table, which hinged downward. But the navigator was in the astrodome taking a sighting. Erwin had the presence of mind to tuck the burning flare under one arm, raise the table by feel, and continue forward.
Though he was blind, Erwin sensed that he neared the open window and, in a providential toss, flung the device into the slipstream. Then he collapsed over the throttle console.
In a hellish few minutes the B-29 had lost nearly all its altitude. The pilots only recovered control at about 300 feet, having opened their windows to vent the aircraft. The rest of the crew did what little it could to ease Erwin’s agony, marveling that he only spoke to ask about everyone else. Meanwhile, Simeral set course for Iwo Jima.
Doctors could do little for Erwin on Iwo so he was flown to Guam with its fleet hospital. LeMay was quickly informed of the situation and, being advised that Erwin probably would die, determined to get the Alabaman the Medal of Honor, and damn the regulations.
First LeMay dispatched an airplane to Hawaii with orders not to return without a medal. The crew took its responsibility seriously and procured the only one available by breaking into a display case and taking the decoration.
Most Medals of Honor required months to be processed. But LeMay got on the wire, insisting that Sergeant Erwin’s award be approved immediately. Hap Arnold concurred and the citation was placed on Harry Truman’s desk. In one of his first acts as president, he signed the document and 20th Air Force was notified.
In an impromptu bedside ceremony, LeMay presented the nation’s highest decoration to the suffering airman merely six days after the mission. The general order formally issuing the award was not published for nearly three months.
Red Erwin astonished everyone not only by surviving, but recovering. In the next two and a half years he endured reconstructive surgery, regained his vision and the use of one arm. Discharged in 1947, he devoted nearly four decades to helping other veterans in the Birmingham VA hospital. He married, raised a family, and died in 2002, age eighty. He believed to the end that he wore the Medal of Honor for all who served.
Meanwhile, in April, Roger Ramey’s 58th Wing moved from India to Tinian and the 315th alit on Guam, fresh from the States under Frank Armstrong. By the end of the month, XXI Bomber Command was complete with one notable exception, which would arrive in July. The five B-29 wings (twenty groups with sixty squadrons) now constituted the most powerful striking force on the planet, despite larger Allied formations with less capable equipment still blasting Germany.
Almost lost amid the unrelenting pace of operations was awareness of events in Europe. The world learned at the end of April that Adolf Hitler had died in his Berlin bunker, and a week later the Third Reich surrendered. Said B-29 pilot Gordon B. Robertson, “We received the news quite calmly and without celebration. While we were certainly glad and relieved, we realized that our Pacific War was far from over.”
May Climax
By the first of May, XXI Bomber Command had made serious inroads against Japan’s aircraft industry. AAF intelligence reckoned that 70 percent of the known aero engine plants had been hit hard enough to interrupt or seriously reduce output, and assessed that Japan’s factory dispersion program would further interfere with production. Consequently, eight remaining engine or propeller plants became the priority precision targets.
Five notable missions were flown in May, including only the second daytime incendiary