The men treading water—O’Kane and nine others, including one who had come up through the conning tower hatch—watched the boat slip beneath the surface. She sank to a depth of about 180 feet, then leveled off. About thirty men in the forward torpedo room had survived, and they managed to seal off the hatches. They burned all confidential papers, but the smoke fouled the air and made their predicament even more desperate. Four parties, thirteen men in all, managed to exit the submarine through the forward escape trunk, and ascended to the surface using the crude breathing apparatus known as the Momsen Lung. Eight died in the ascent, or after reaching the surface, possibly from decompression trauma (“the bends”). After a long night adrift on the surface, a total of ten of the Tang’s crew, including O’Kane, were picked up by a Japanese destroyer.30 They served the rest of the war as prisoners of war, shuttled between various camps in Honshu. Only four came home at war’s end. O’Kane, one of the survivors, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
IN 1932, THE AIRPOWER VISIONARY BILLY MITCHELL, a retired army aviator, had called for the development of a heavy bomber with a flying range of 5,000 miles, a bomb-load capacity of 10,000 pounds, and a service ceiling of 35,000 feet. At the time, the idea had seemed futuristic and fantastic, like a machine conjured up in the imagination of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. But the 1930s was a decade of long strides in aviation. By 1940, as Hitler’s armies rampaged across Europe, aeronautical engineers believed that a very heavy, very long-ranged pressurized bomber had become feasible. With FDR’s backing, Army Air Corps leaders persuaded Congress to reach deep into the taxpayers’ pockets to fund a new Boeing-designed bomber with twice the range and twice the payload capacity of the B-17 “Flying Fortress.” Three billion 1940 dollars later, the B-29 “Superfortress” was born.
The program’s advocates, being keen to the political climate of the times, did not advertise the plane as an instrument for strategic bombing. The very heavy or very long-ranged bomber (“VHB” and “VLR” were the acronyms, used more or less interchangeably) was to be a keystone of the “hemisphere defense” strategy cherished by prewar isolationists. With its awesome range, the B-29 would watch over the Atlantic sea lanes, detecting any approach of enemy (presumably German) shipping. The aircraft would win uncontested mastery in the skies over those mid-ocean zones, intercepting and repelling enemy invasion forces before they could gain a foothold on the North or South American continents. If the Nazis did manage to secure a beachhead in South America, the B-29 could hit the enemy from bases in Florida or the Caribbean. In this way, the giant airplane would serve as watchdog and guard dog for “Fortress America.” So it was said.
As the specter of global war loomed in 1941, the War Department pressured Boeing to accelerate the development timeline and put the new bomber into production before it had been properly tested and modified. Boeing received an initial order for 250 units in May 1941, six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. A year later, the company was under contract to deliver 1,644 of the planes, even though none had yet taken flight.31 Boeing dedicated two large plants to the B-29, in Renton, Washington, and Wichita, Kansas. Many other leading aviation firms were enlisted to produce components or engines, including Bell, Fisher, Martin, and Wright. The Army Air Forces set up a major new command and administrative organization based on future deliveries of this aircraft, at a time when just a handful of experimental models existed. Pilots and aircrews were recruited and trained in B-17s and B-26s; most did not fly (or even see) the Superfortress until they were already proficient in the smaller bombers. An early prototype B-29 crashed during a test flight in February 1943, demolishing a meatpacking plant in downtown Seattle and killing the program’s most seasoned test crew and engineers, as well as twenty-one civilians on the ground. But the pace of the program did not slacken. When the first B-29 was delivered in July 1943, it had many flaws, and thousands of alterations were incorporated into the design even as assembly lines around the country were ramping up.
It was, by far, the largest aircraft that had ever been put into general production. Ninety-nine feet long, it had a wingspan of 140 feet. It weighed 74,500 pounds unloaded, but its combat-loaded takeoff weight was generally at least 120,000 pounds, and routinely exceeded 140,000 pounds. The immense thrust required to lift the Superfortress from the earth was supplied by four Wright R-3350 radial engines of 2,200 horsepower.
When first introduced to the new plane, pilots and aircrewmen gawked. They marveled at the long, sleek fuselage, the enormous Plexiglas “greenhouse” nose, the immense wings and flaps, and the towering tail section, which rose to the height of a three-story building. With its “tricycle” landing gear, the airplane stood proud and level on the asphalt. The airframe was flush-riveted with an aluminum alloy that shone brilliantly in the sun, like polished silver. Most recruits had trained in the B-17, and regarded that aircraft as a big, heavy bomber. The Superfortress was far bigger in every dimension, and about twice as heavy. The airmen knew their lives would depend on those four mighty eighteen-cylinder engines, with their canoe-sized propellers stretching 16 feet from tip to tip.
Climbing inside, they found much to like about their new airplane. Two spacious compartments, connected by a crawl tube over the bomb bay, offered plenty of elbow room for the eleven-man crew. The cabin was heated and pressurized. Even at 30,000 feet, where the temperature outside might be a hundred degrees below zero, they could sit comfortably in their shirtsleeves. While cruising, they would wear no oxygen masks and could smoke freely. The waist and tail-gunners sat in Plexiglas bubbles providing good visibility, from which they controlled multiple .50-caliber turrets simultaneously through electrical remote systems. Engine noise was pleasingly muffled, and the machine guns did not roar in the ears as they did in the unpressurized B-17. The cockpit, perched forward in the conical Plexiglas nose, provided magnificent visibility in every direction, especially above and below. Pilots and copilots had the odd sensation of being thrust out into space, almost ahead of the long fuselage; one remarked that piloting the Superfortress was like “flying a house while sitting out on the front porch.”32
Straining against gravity to lift a 70-ton airplane, the Wright R-3350 engines were prone to overheat, leak oil, blow cylinder heads, swallow their own valves, and spread molten debris into their highly combustible magnesium crankcases. The original air-cooling system had to be rebuilt after hundreds of B-29s had come off the assembly lines. A burning engine trailed fire and smoke behind it, like an asteroid entering the atmosphere—but this asteroid was bolted into the wing of the aircraft, and threatened to burn into the aluminum skin and spars of the wing itself. A misbehaving engine had to be shut down quickly, preferably before it burst into flames. That was accomplished by “feathering” the propeller. A hydraulic system, controlled from the cockpit, turned or “feathered” the four rotor blades until they stopped and spun in the reverse direction, stopping the engine’s rotation. If the crew reacted too slowly, or the feathering mechanism failed, the propeller would begin to “windmill,” creating terrible drag; within a few minutes it would burn free of its shaft and fly right off the engine, sometimes taking a bite out of the wing.
If an engine failed and was properly shut down, the surviving three would bring the B-29 home, even over a long distance. But the three working engines would consume much more fuel than before, so it was vital to redistribute fuel from tanks and lines serving the dead engine. That might require an intricate rebalancing of the entire fuel reserve. The margin of error was narrow; any setback and the flight was likely to end in calamity.
Even the most experienced B-17 pilots needed weeks of classroom instruction before taking the B-29 up for a check-out flight. Every stage of a mission required meticulous attention to a long checklist. Takeoffs involved a long run, more than a mile, and the engines strained audibly to lift the giant machine from the ground. Once airborne, however, the B-29 was surprisingly nimble. “It was the biggest, heaviest, and most powerful airplane I had e
ver flown,” recalled one USAAF pilot of his first flight in the B-29. “Yet it responded beautifully, with a gentle and precise handling of the controls.”33 And it was fast, with a ground speed easily surpassing 300 miles per hour. Its combination of speed, altitude, and well-placed .50-caliber turrets vindicated the airplane’s name: the Superfortress would be a tough nut to crack, for both enemy fighters and antiaircraft batteries.
Pressure to rush the B-29 into service forced the government to take unprecedented measures. The War Department signed contracts to purchase more than a thousand airplanes before they had been properly tested, intending to modify them as necessary once they were on the flight line. The design-testing-manufacturing cycle was accelerated to about double the peacetime pace. This practice was risky and grossly wasteful, but it was the only way to get the B-29 into action by the spring of 1944, as no less a figure than President Roosevelt had insisted it must be. In a sense, the B-29’s introduction into service was a microcosm of the whole saga of American mobilization for the Second World War. At every turn, leaders chose velocity of production over efficiency, thrift, safety, or even prudence.
Before the first echelon of B-29s departed for the long flight to Asia, they were flown by their aircrews into Wichita, to an airfield adjacent to the Boeing plant, to undergo several hundred modifications. USAAF leaders nicknamed this operation the “Battle of Kansas,” or the “Kansas blitz.” Several other modification centers or “mod shops” were set up at airbases in every region of the United States. Rookie pilots and aircrews flew their newly issued B-29s into the centers for modifications. These flights were incorporated into their training regimens, and provided opportunity to build up their flight hours before overseas deployments. But that was not the end of it: many hundreds of new modifications were ordered even after many planes had left the United States. In such cases, modification and repair “kits” were flown out to distant foreign airfields in Egypt or India, with necessary parts and engineers. Modifications were made to the propeller feathering system, the fire control system, the electrical system, and most importantly, the troublesome Wright engines. Two of the largest overseas B-29 modifications centers were established in Cairo and Karachi. Even after major operations commenced in China and (later) the Marianas, ground mechanics were constantly engaged not only with routine maintenance, but with correcting the original deficiencies of the Superfortress. USAAF general Curtis E. LeMay observed that his airmen were forced to conduct a test program while flying live combat missions. It was a difficult and dangerous job, because the B-29 “had as many bugs as the entomological department of the Smithsonian Institution. Fast as they got the bugs licked, new ones crawled out from under the cowling.”34
AT THE ALLIED COMMAND CONFERENCE in Cairo, Egypt (SEXTANT, November 1943), FDR had pledged to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that hundreds of B-29s would be based in China, and would launch a sustained bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands. Chiang had complained stridently about a perceived lack of support from the Allies, and had threatened (in only slightly veiled terms) to seek a truce with the Japanese. FDR often told his military chiefs that bombing Japan from Chinese airfields would catalyze and reinvigorate Chinese morale. Neither the B-17 nor the B-24 possessed the range to do the job. From the beginning, therefore, B-29 deployments to the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater were a political gambit, intended to placate the Nationalist regime and keep it in the war. The operation was given the code name matterhorn.
From the start, however, Operation MATTERHORN was hobbled by wretched logistics. The new Superforts with their balky engines were flown into the theater by recently trained aircrews. Their round-the-world odyssey began at Morrison Field, Florida and continued across a daisy chain of refueling stops in the Caribbean, Brazil, Ascension Island (in the mid-Atlantic), Liberia, Cairo, Baghdad, Karachi, and Kharagpur, India (near Calcutta). Along the way, the Wright engines often overheated, leading to crashes and groundings. With dozens of planes stranded in Cairo and Karachi, it was found that ambient ground temperatures surpassing 110 degrees were causing the engines to fail on takeoff, and the Wright engines’ air-cooling mechanisms had to be rebuilt by engineers flown in from the United States.
In April 1944, B-29s began arriving at their permanent rear-bases at Kharagpur. From there they would stage into advanced Chinese airfields at Chengdu, in Sichuan Province. This involved a grueling and treacherous flight “over the hump” of the Himalayas, the world’s loftiest mountains. The Superfortresses soared over a forbidding landscape of sawtoothed peaks and plunging gorges, tossed by vicious turbulence and sudden downdrafts, with winds surpassing 100 miles per hour and visibility often falling to zero. Every so often, through a clear patch of sky, the aircrews might glimpse the summit of Mount Everest, just 150 miles north of their flight path.
Their destination, at the end of the 1,200-mile flight, was one of four new airfields south of Chengdu, where construction work was ongoing. More than a quarter of a million Chinese peasants had been enlisted to build the 8,000-foot runways almost entirely by hand. Newsreel footage depicts an immense throng of laborers, many barefoot and wearing conical hats, hauling dirt and gravel in baskets and wheelbarrows. Boys aged eight or nine smashed rocks with hammers to make gravel. Stones from a nearby river were carried to the site in sacks hanging from carrying poles slung over the workers’ shoulders. These were laid in tight patterns on the runway beds, and then paved over with gravel and dirt and compacted by a great stone roller hauled by fifty men. When an approaching B-29 entered the landing pattern, a loud horn sounded and the workers dashed to the edge of the runway. After the plane landed, the mass of humanity swarmed back onto the field to resume their labors.
Early plans for MATTERHORN had contemplated basing two B-29 combat wings (150 bombers each) at Chengdu. But the aircraft’s teething problems, and the uneconomical supply line through India, required scaling back to a single bomb wing. The 20th Bomber Command was supposed to have been self-sufficient, logistically speaking, which meant shuttling in its own parts, supplies, bombs, and aviation fuel from India. For this purpose, the command was assigned a fleet of C-109 fuel tankers and C-87 transports. The Superfortresses also performed double-duty as their own transports, with guns and extraneous equipment stripped out of the aircraft and fuel tanks fitted into the bomb bays. But the sheer tonnage of fuel and matériel that had to be hauled over the Himalayan “hump” was daunting. An average of twelve round-trip cargo flights to India was required for each bombing mission flown during matterhorn. For every eight barrels of aviation fuel airlifted from Kharagpur to Chengdu, seven were burned in the round-trip flight. It was soon evident that the 20th Bomber Command could not possibly feed itself its own needed fuel and supplies, and the existing Air Transport Command would have to pick up the slack. That meant reallocating scarce fuel and other resources from Chinese and American ground forces in China, and from General Claire Lee Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force.
The B-29’s combat debut came on June 5, 1944, when ninety-eight planes departed Kharagpur to hit Japanese-controlled railheads in Bangkok, a thousand miles away. The raid dropped 368 tons of bombs on the target, an encouraging result. Ten days later, the Superforts paid their inaugural visit to the Japanese homeland. As U.S. amphibious forces stormed the beaches of Saipan in Operation FORAGER, fifty B-29s lifted off from Chengdu to bomb the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata, Kyushu. This raid, the first on Japan since the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, received headline coverage in the United States, China, and Japan. General Marshall released a war communiqué announcing that the mission had introduced “a new type of offensive” against the Japanese home islands. Chiang Kai-shek and his allies were exultant. Publicly, the IGHQ in Tokyo brushed off the raid on Yawata, falsely claiming that dozens of the bombers had been downed by Japanese fighters and antiaircraft fire. As always, however, the appearance of enemy warplanes over Japanese soil stirred panic among the public. It seemed to matter little that the raid had done ne
gligible damage.
In the weeks that followed, the MATTERHORN B-29s hit enemy targets all around the periphery of the China theater: coke ovens in Manchuria and Korea, oil fields in the Dutch East Indies, steelworks and port facilities in northeast China, piers and depots in Shanghai, airbases on Formosa, shipping at Hong Kong, railroads and depots in Burma. Eventually, the 20th Bomber Command launched eight more raids against military and industrial targets on Kyushu. But long intervals were needed between missions to replenish fuel, bombs, and other matériel. Bombing results were often disappointing, and operational losses heavy. From Chengdu the B-29s could (just) reach Kyushu, 1,500 miles away—but they could not reach Tokyo or other high-priority targets on Honshu. To launch a full-scale strategic bombing campaign against Japan, more airbases were needed in eastern China. But the Allies did not control any seaports on the Chinese coast, which meant that the cargo airlift from India would have to be extended even farther. Moreover, no one had any confidence that airfields in eastern China could be defended against the Japanese army, which was expanding its footprint on the mainland with a brutally successful ground offensive called “Ichi-Go” (Plan One). Indeed, “Ichi-Go” even threatened the Allied airbases around Chengdu and Kunming. General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, the U.S. Army commander in China, gave his opinion that fifty trained Chinese infantry divisions were needed to guarantee the safety of the airfields. But no one (including Stilwell) believed that Chiang could supply forces on that scale.
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