Last to Die

by Stephen Harding

  The combat-ready Dominator was a formidable aircraft, as this in-flight shot shows. The B-32 could carry up to forty 500-pound general-purpose bombs, and was armed with ten .50-caliber machine guns in five powered turrets. Like the earlier B-24, the Dominator had a shoulder-mounted, high-lift, low-drag Davis wing. (National Archives)

  Ground personnel inspect Hobo Queen II soon after the aircraft’s arrival in the Philippines as part of the Dominator combat test. Most people in the USAAF had never even heard of the B-32, and anywhere they appeared Dominators were sure to draw curious onlookers. (National Archives)

  Considered by many of his subjects to be the direct lineal descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of Shintoism, Emperor Hirohito came to believe that the only way to preserve Japan as a sovereign nation—and to protect the hereditary monarchy—was to end the war as quickly as possible. The August 15 announcement of his decision to surrender to the Allies sparked an attempted coup and prompted restive Japanese fighter pilots to attack the B-32s that appeared in the skies over Tokyo. (National Archives)

  Douglas MacArthur, left, and George Kenney formed an effective team in the fight against Japan. Kenney lobbied hard to bring the B-32 to the Pacific Theater, and MacArthur ultimately decided that the Japanese attacks on the Dominators over Tokyo did not warrant a resumption of hostilities. (National Archives)

  Shown here during training in the United States, Joseph Lacharite was the twenty-nine-year-old 20th Reconnaissance Squadron aerial photographer tapped to fly the August 18 mission. Tony Marchione was assigned as Lacharite’s helper, and together the two were to load and unload the cameras in First Lieutenant John Anderson’s Dominator. (Courtesy Rich Lacharite)

  Twenty-nine years old in August 1945 and an ace many times over, Saburo Sakai was one of the Yokosuka Kokutai’s most formidable pilots. During his August 17 attack on a B-32 the aircraft accelerated away so quickly that the legendary fighter pilot wondered whether the bomber was equipped with some sort of auxiliary rocket engine. (National Archives)

  One of several high-scoring pilots assigned to the Yokosuka Kokutai, twenty-five-year-old Warrant Officer Sadamu Komachi was a highly professional and experienced fighter pilot whose first combat mission was the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. He’d downed some forty Allied aircraft by the time he encountered the B-32s over Tokyo. (National Archives)

  Though by August 1945 it was one of the older types in service with the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Mitsubishi A6M (known to the Allies by the reporting name “Zeke”) remained a formidable interceptor and was in service with both the 302nd Kokutai at Atsugi and the Yoko Ku at Oppama. (National Archives)

  Designed specifically to intercept enemy bombers at high altitudes, the Mitsubishi J2M-series land-based Raiden single-engine fighter (known to the Allies as the “Jack”) made up in performance and armament what it lacked in maneuverability. In the hands of a good pilot it was extremely dangerous to high-flying Allied aircraft—including the B-32. (National Archives)

  Heavily armed and ruggedly built, the Kawanishi N1K-J Shiden (“George”) interceptor was more than a match for late-war Allied fighters and was particularly lethal against the hordes of B-29s that daily appeared over Japan. The type was in the Yoko Ku inventory and may have been the aircraft Sadamu Komachi flew during the August 18 engagement. (National Archives)

  A photo officer in the 20th Reconnaissance Squadron, Second Lieutenant Kurt F. Rupke was assigned to supervise the photo runs made by Anderson’s aircraft on the August 18 mission. Tony Marchione died in Rupke’s arms. (Courtesy Theresa Marchione Sell and Geraldine Marchione Young)

  George Davis (right), the flight engineer on one of the Dominators involved in the August 17 mission, proudly points to the three victory symbols added to the aircraft’s nose. Despite the gunners’ claims, surviving Japanese records list no fighter losses on that day or the next, and the claims are not reflected in the official USAAF record of confirmed World War II air-to-air kills. (Ralph T. LeVine Collection via Roger LeVine)

  Gunner Sergeant Burton J. Keller (left) and flight engineer Sergeant Benjamin J. Clayworth of Anderson’s crew stand below the hole in the B-32’s fuselage (just above and to the left of the observation window) made by the 20mm cannon round that killed Tony Marchione. (Ralph T. LeVine Collection via Roger LeVine)

  Crewmembers indicate the damage inflicted on John Anderson’s 578. The man on the left is pointing to the small optical-glass port and the holes next to it made by the machine-gun bullets that wounded Joe Lacharite. The other man is indicating where the 20mm cannon round that killed Tony Marchione punched through the fuselage. The thin metal framework to the second man’s right is the folded-up settee, minus its thin cushion, and the large hole in the floor is the belly entrance hatch that also served as a mounting for the aerial camera. (Ralph T. LeVine Collection via Roger LeVine)

  After initial processing by the 3063rd Quartermaster Graves Registration Company, Tony Marchione’s body was wrapped in a shelter half and buried on August 19, 1945, in Plot 2, Row 1, Grave 4 at Okinawa’s Island Command Cemetery. There the young airman’s remains would rest until disinterred on July 7, 1948, in preparation for their repatriation to the United States. (Frank Pallone Sr./Viracola Collection)

  The burned-out remains of Leonard Sills’s 544 lie in the coral pit at the end of Yontan’s runway. The August 28 crash killed all thirteen men aboard. (Ralph T. LeVine Collection via Roger LeVine)

  American personnel look on as one of two Japanese aircraft carrying Lieutenant General Torashiro Kawabe’s delegation taxies after landing at Ie Shima on August 19. The arrival of the Japanese party helped convince MacArthur that the attacks on the Dominators—and the death of Tony Marchione and wounding of Jimmy Smart and Joe Lacharite—had been the work of a relatively few diehards and did not require the Allies to resume hostilities. (National Archives)

  The short, troubled operational life of the B-32 came to a swift end following Japan’s surrender. The Dominator program was canceled, all flyable aircraft were sent to disposal sites and demolished, while nonflyable machines and those still under construction were scrapped in place. Though initially intended for exhibition at the U.S. Air Force Museum the sole remaining B-32, 42-108474, was scrapped in August 1949. (National Archives)

  On March 21, 1949, more than four years after his death in the skies above Tokyo, Anthony J. Marchione—the last American killed in air combat in World War II—was laid to rest in the cemetery of Pottstown’s St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church. (Stephen Harding)

  The two intelligence officers fleshed out the bare-bones V Bomber Command mission plan with file photos of the target airfields and maps of the areas surrounding them, all of which were pinned to the large bulletin board at the front of the 386th Bomb Squadron’s briefing shack. The crewmen assigned to the flight walked quietly into the building at 4:00 A.M., and over the next forty-five minutes were given details of the mission by both Barnes and the group’s operations officer. During the course of their remarks each man said that, despite the ceasefire, the flight crews should stay alert for enemy opposition and be ready for anything.

  The two Dominators assigned to the day’s mission were Hobo Queen II and Harriet’s Chariot (42-108543), the latter being one of four B-32s that had reached Okinawa from Clark Field on August 12. Both were fitted with auxiliary bomb-bay fuel tanks for the long flight, and each carried two members of the 20th Recon Squadron in addition to its regular twelve-man crew. With preflight checks and engine run-ups completed, the two aircraft lifted off from Yontan just after 5:30 A.M. and turned their noses to the northeast.29

  The mission was initially uneventful, the Dominators flying in loose formation with Hobo Queen II in the lead and her pilot, Frank Cook, as mission commander. Then, at 9:35, still over the ocean at an altitude of 16,000 feet and some 155 miles due south of Tokyo, the exhaust collector assembly in the number 2 (left inboard) engine of Harriet’s Chariot failed. This allowed hot gases to flood the nacelle and ruptured fuel
and oil lines, sparking an immediate fire that blew off one of the R-3350’s exhaust ports.30 The bomber’s pilot, twenty-two-year-old B-24 combat veteran First Lieutenant Lyman Combs, immediately cut the fuel and oil flow, closed the throttle, feathered the propeller, opened the cowl flaps, and ordered his flight engineer to activate the power plant’s fire extinguishers.31 The flames quickly died, but with only three good engines there was no point in Harriet’s Chariot continuing the mission, given that the loss of a second R-3350 would force the Dominator to ditch in the sea. After radioing his intentions to Cook in Hobo Queen II Combs turned his aircraft around and headed back to an eventual safe landing at Yontan.

  Hardly had the damaged B-32 completed her turn toward home when the ball turret gunner aboard Hobo Queen II sighted an unidentified aircraft several thousand feet below the bomber on a perpendicular course. Though the machine, most probably a Japanese navy flying boat, was headed toward the coast of Honshu and posed no obvious threat, the gunner’s alert over the intercom undoubtedly quickened a few pulses. Then, barely forty minutes later, more excitement: as Hobo Queen II came abreast of the southern tip of the Chiba Peninsula the bomber was “painted” by a Japanese Type B search radar, most likely the army-operated system at Shirahama.32 The B-32 flew on without incident, paralleling the coast about eighty miles offshore, but her radar countermeasures operator noted “a large number” of emissions throughout the Kanto region.

  Things got even more interesting as Hobo Queen II began her photo run. Having turned northwest and crossed the Japanese coastline at 20,000 feet just south of Kashima, the B-32 was again illuminated by a Type B radar, this one the system at Chosi. Then, without warning, a far more ominous signal filled the countermeasures operator’s headphones—the steady hum that indicated a Japanese fire-control radar had locked onto the Dominator. The system provided altitude, course, and speed data to crews manning Type 10 120mm anti-aircraft guns, weapons whose 33,000-foot vertical range made them more than capable of knocking down a high-flying American bomber. Before Cook and his crew had the chance to wonder if the war was back on again, however, the radar broke lock of its own accord and the signal vanished.

  The Dominator’s first photo target, the airfield at Konoike, was almost completely obscured by a layer of stratus clouds between 4,000 and 6,000 feet and the 20th Recon Squadron photographer did not capture any usable images. Things were better over Katori, however, which came into the K-18A camera’s viewfinder barely three minutes later. The device automatically exposed a number of frames—one every three seconds—as the B-32 passed over the heavily bombed but apparently still operational airdrome. Then, her photo run completed, Hobo Queen II banked sharply to port, maintaining her altitude and initiating a tight 160-degree turn back toward the coast. The course was intended to allow the big bomber to slip between the coverage arcs of the Type 2 radars at Hiraiso, north of her track, and Chosi to the south. The tactic worked, and the Dominator made it back out to sea without being “painted” by either system. Once at a point about forty miles offshore Cook turned Hobo Queen II to the southwest and started back for Okinawa. That last leg of the mission was uneventful except for the sighting of another aircraft at about noon—the machine was too far distant to be identified—and the B-32 landed safely at Yontan early that evening.

  The August 16 mission was judged to have been largely successful, despite the difficulties encountered by Harriet’s Chariot and the cloud cover that prevented effective photography of the airfield at Konoike. The fact that Hobo Queen II had not been fired on by anti-aircraft artillery—despite the brief lock-on by a gun-laying radar—or attacked by fighters was taken by the aviators in the 386th and by those higher up the chain of command as a positive indication that Japanese forces were apparently willing to abide by the ceasefire. That was especially important, given that even before Hobo Queen II had returned from the initial B-32 reconnaissance flight over Japan Fifth Air Force headquarters had scheduled a second—and more ambitious—mission.

  Unfortunately, it would not go anywhere near as well as the first.

  AS OUTLINED BY THE planners at V Bomber Command, the second and more ambitious recon mission would put four Dominators over the greater Tokyo area to photograph seven airfields, both to ensure that none was still conducting offensive operations and to determine which of them might be in suitable condition to accept incoming Allied aircraft when the occupation began.33 Two of the installations—Imba and Matsudo—were long-established army bases. The airdrome at Haneda was Tokyo’s prewar civilian airport, now being used as a satellite army air-defense field. The remaining four were naval air stations: Katori, which the B-32s had visited the day before; Kami-Miyagawa, an auxiliary field fifteen miles to the south, near Chosi; Tomioka, a seaplane base on the west side of Tokyo Bay, about halfway between Yokohama and Oppama air station; and Oppama itself.34 The choice of fields to be photographed indicates that the mission planners must have been fairly confident that there would be no enemy resistance: Not only was the Kanto region dotted with hundreds of known anti-aircraft weapons ranging from 25mm to 120mm, since mid-1944 it had been protected by more aircraft than any other part of Japan. Indeed, Imba and Matsudo were both home to crack army interceptor units, the former to twenty Nakajima Ki-44 Shoki (Allied code name “Tojo”) single-engine fighters of the 23rd Air Regiment and the latter to thirty-four Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu (“Nick”) twin-engine night fighters of the 53rd Air Regiment. And, of course, Fifth Air Force intelligence officers were well aware that the Yoko Ku flew from Oppama.35

  The mission plan called for the four Dominators to fly together from Yontan to the small island of Miyaki Jima, some 870 miles northeast of Okinawa and roughly eighty-five miles due south of Yokosuka. The aircraft would then turn north toward the Kanto Plain, begin their climb to the photo altitude of 20,000 feet and gradually assume a widely spaced echelon formation that would permit them to fly parallel courses roughly two miles apart as they “mowed the lawn” on their photo runs. Each B-32 was to photograph three of twelve planned flight lines; although this would require the individual aircraft to make two course reversals over the greater Tokyo area, it would also ensure overlapping coverage of the target airdromes, cloud cover permitting. At the end of the last photo pass the Dominators would hit the coast just north of Katori, tighten their formation, and turn back to the southwest to begin the 900-mile return flight to Okinawa.

  The four aircraft chosen for the mission were the hardworking Hobo Queen II, again with Cook as pilot; 578, flown by 312th commander Selmon Wells; Harriet’s Chariot—her bad engine replaced overnight—with Tony Svore at the controls; and 539, piloted by First Lieutenant Emory D. Frick, a former B-24 aviator with extensive combat experience. As on the previous day’s mission, the Dominators would fly with bomb-bay fuel tanks and full loads of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition for their gun turrets.

  The latter provision was normal operating procedure; Fifth Air Force headquarters had decreed that despite the ceasefire all combat aircraft would fly armed until Japanese officials had actually signed the surrender documents. However, during the predawn briefing for the men who would be taking the B-32s to Tokyo the possibility of enemy attack was rated as “minimal”—most probably because of the lack of opposition to the previous day’s mission and the news that on the evening of the sixteenth Emperor Hirohito had issued a second rescript, this one ordering all members of Japan’s armed forces to lay down their arms and stop fighting. Though this would have helped ease the apprehension some of the aviators certainly must have felt about the idea of flying back and forth over the Kanto Plain, not all were convinced the flight would be a milk run. Svore, for example, believed that the Japanese would be far more likely to react violently to the B-32s’ appearance above their capital than they had been to the overflight of the relatively unimportant airfield at Katori.36

  Whatever the men assigned to the second recon mission might have felt about the possibility of enemy opposition, they did what military p
rofessionals do: they got on with the job. All four B-32s were in the air by 5:45 A.M., and the first leg of the flight went exactly as planned—there were no mechanical problems and other than being “painted” by a Type B radar upon arriving over Miyaki Jima the Dominators had not encountered any sign of Japanese interest in them. At 10:15 Cook in Hobo Queen II radioed the other aircraft to disperse and begin their photo runs, then turned his own aircraft toward its first assigned airfield.

  Though the men aboard the B-32s didn’t realize it yet, the radar station that had illuminated the American bombers had relayed the contact information to anti-aircraft batteries throughout the Kanto region. More important, as it turned out, the alert also went to the 302nd Air Group and to the Yoko Ku. At Atsugi a young lieutenant named Muneaki Morimoto quickly secured the fever-stricken Kozono’s permission to launch an interception, and within minutes Morimoto was leading a flight of four Zekes in a full-power climb toward the Americans’ last known position.37

  AT OPPAMA, THE FIRST inkling the Yoko Ku pilots had that something was amiss was the shrill scream of an air-raid siren. As Saburo Sakai later remembered, he and the unit’s other pilots were caught totally off guard. Although they’d voluntarily been standing alert despite the emperor’s August 15 rescript and his order to the armed forces the following day to lay down their arms, the Yoko Ku aviators had been told that the Americans had pledged not to fly bombers over Japan following the ceasefire, and they therefore were not really expecting to launch any interceptions. When the call came in that there were, in fact, what appeared to be B-29s flying up the Boso Peninsula, Sakai and his comrades were momentarily at a loss. The war was supposed to be over, yet it appeared the Americans still wanted a fight. They turned to their commander, Masanobu Ibusuki, for guidance. After a quick call to higher headquarters he ordered the engines of the alert aircraft to be started, then turned to his pilots and said, “international law forbids us to attack the enemy after surrender, but it is okay to get back at planes that attack us. Come on men, go get him!”38