The four crews tapped to fly the August 18 mission gathered in the 386th’s makeshift briefing tent at 5:30 in the morning, sunrise still half an hour away. Clasping canteen cups full of steaming coffee the men settled into rows of wooden folding chairs facing several bulletin boards, each of which illustrated a different aspect of the mission upon which they were about to embark.
On one board a length of string anchored by pushpins traced the flight path the aircraft would follow from Yontan to Tokyo and back, essentially the same track followed by the aircraft on the previous day’s mission. The route kept the big bombers far offshore from the southeastern coasts Kyushu and Shikoku, a precaution that had been in place for all Allied aircraft since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and which was intended to keep aircrews safe from any potential radiation hazards. After takeoff the Dominators would shape a direct course for the 880-mile leg to Miyake-jima, the large island directly south of Tokyo Bay and, upon reaching it, would turn further to the north toward Chosi. Still some twenty miles offshore they would then proceed up the east coast of the Boso Peninsula to a point almost due east of Chiba, where they would turn inland to start their photo runs. Attached to a second bulletin board was a map encompassing the area from Okinawa to southern Honshu, upon which the 312th Group’s meteorologist had annotated the latest weather information. A third bulletin board bore a large-scale map of the Kanto region, marked with the various airfields to be photographed and the Japanese units thought to be based at each. The map also indicated the positions of known early-warning and gun-laying radars—including the sites at Shirahama, Choshi, and Hiraiso—and their frequencies. This latter data would assist the countermeasures operators aboard the Dominators in jamming the radars, if the need arose.
The question of whether such measures would be necessary and, indeed, if the Japanese could be expected to oppose the day’s mission as they had the previous one was obviously a topic of immense interest to the crewmen gathered in the briefing tent. They had, of course, all heard about the fighter interceptions the day before, and at least three men present for the briefing had been aboard the B-32s that were attacked. When the squadron intelligence officer, Bill Barnes, stepped forward to address the issue of possible enemy action, he could add little more to what most of those present already suspected. Nobody on the Allied side really knew with any certainty who was in charge in Tokyo, or whether the Japanese could be trusted to lay down their arms and abide by the ceasefire. The best advice he could give, he said, was for the B-32 crews to be ready for anything.3
No one in the tent that morning relished the idea of getting shot at by the Japanese, and it’s fairly certain that Tony Marchione in particular was regretting his decision to volunteer for the mission. Though as an airman with three combat missions and countless training flights under his belt he was no stranger to the idea of his own death or maiming, he undoubtedly had no wish for either of those possibilities to occur when the war was all but over. What had sounded like a milk run on August 16 was now likely to turn into something quite different.
And it is entirely possible that twenty-nine-year-old Staff Sergeant Joe Lacharite, an aerial photographer and one of the eleven other 20th Recon Squadron members sitting next to Tony during the briefing, was feeling equally unsettled by his decision to get himself assigned to the flight. Lacharite had been grounded because of a bad chest cold when his regular F-7 crew had flown a photo-recon mission over Japan, something he had always wanted to do, so when the Dominators were not attacked on August 16 he decided that perhaps the best way to see the Japanese capital was from a B-32. Lacharite had put his name on the volunteer list but had not been needed for the August 17 mission. Now, however, his services were needed, and his opportunity to fly over Tokyo was soon to become an experience from which he would never fully recover.
JOSEPH M. LACHARITE WAS born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, in January 1916 and was brought to the United States by his parents soon after. One of seven children, he grew up in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where his father first worked in a textile mill and later opened his own building-maintenance business. Life was not particularly easy for the family, and Joe left high school before graduating in order to help his father, but he also worked part-time as a spot news photographer for a local newspaper and even briefly ran his own small photo studio. He was fascinated by cameras and the ways in which photos could be enhanced in the darkroom, and those interests ultimately allowed him to do something most World War II draftees couldn’t—he spent his military time working at something he loved.4
Inducted into the Army Air Forces in March 1944, Joe left his wife, Ruth, and their infant son in Holyoke and traveled to Sheppard Field, Texas, for basic training. It was during his time there that he made his photographic skills known, and when he completed basic in May he was sent to Lowry Field in Denver, Colorado. The base had been home to the Aerial Photography School since 1938, and by the time of Joe’s arrival the institution was training both officers and enlisted men. For the latter, the two main courses of instruction were initially in photo laboratory work and the repair and maintenance of cameras, with each subject lasting ten weeks. Early in 1944 the two courses were combined, with enlisted students first mastering laboratory techniques and then progressing to the camera-technician training.
Although these courses prepared students to develop the images captured by cameras mounted in aircraft, and to service those cameras, combat operations in Europe and the Pacific eventually proved the need for more men qualified to actually operate the cameras in the air. As a result, in July 1944 the Photography School instituted a program to train aerial photographers and aerial photographer-gunners. Men who had successfully completed the combined laboratory-camera technician course and who were physically and psychologically suited for aircrew duty were given two additional weeks of training in such things as photographic-mission planning and camera operations while in flight. They also put their new skills to the test during actual aerial photography missions flown in Lowry’s fleet of obsolescent Douglas B-18 Bolo twin-engine medium bombers. And, finally, those individuals tapped to be photographer-gunners underwent an abbreviated gunnery course at Lowry’s Armament Technicians’ School.5 Joe Lacharite was a member of the first class to complete the laboratory-camera technician-aerial photographer-gunner course, graduating in November 1944.
Upon leaving Denver, Joe was posted to the Combat Crew Training Station-Photo-Reconnaissance at Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma City. It was, of course, the same organization at which Tony Marchione and the other members of Bob Essig’s crew were making the transition from bombardment aviation to reconnaissance. Joe was assigned to a different crew, but he and Tony came to know each other and, although the two were not close friends, Joe later remembered that the young Italian-American gunner impressed him with his own knowledge of cameras and photography.
On joining what at the time was still the 20th Combat Mapping Squadron, Joe Lacharite flew three combat missions in F-7s, all from Luzon. His first, on May 21, saw Joe serving as a waist gunner as he and his crew journeyed to the same Balete Pass area that Bob Essig’s aircraft would visit just over a week later, though bad weather made photography impossible. Joe was the assigned photographer on both his second mission, a fourteen-hour round-trip to Hainan Island, off the Chinese coast, and on the third, an only slightly shorter journey to Formosa’s northwest coast to photograph the Japanese navy airfield at Taichu.6 None of these flights encountered any serious enemy opposition.
Lacharite and his crew flew several training missions following the newly redesignated 20th Recon Squadron’s move to Okinawa, but surviving records do not indicate that Joe participated in any further F-7 combat sorties with the squadron. This may have been because of the cold he’d developed just after arriving at Yontan, which by the first week in August had become severe enough that the flight surgeon grounded him. It was during this period of Joe’s enforced idleness that his crew flew the mission to Japan, which in tur
n led the aerial photographer to volunteer for a B-32 flight. Joe, like Tony Marchione and probably every other American service member in the Pacific Theater, believed that the August 15 ceasefire was exactly what it purported to be—the end of armed conflict with Japan. And Joe, like Tony, was likely shocked to discover that the mission he’d believed would be something of a milk run might well turn into something far more threatening.
TONY MARCHIONE AND JOE LACHARITE were not the only men from their unit who would be participating in the August 18 mission, though as far as we can tell they were the only two who had actually volunteered. In keeping with 20th Recon Squadron’s policy, each B-32 would carry a three-man photographic team: a photo officer, who would be stationed in the Dominator’s nose and who would use the Norden bombsight to steer the aircraft over the correct photo path; the aerial photographer, who would install, load, and maintain the K-22 camera in the B-32’s rear cabin; and a gunner, who would act as the photographer’s assistant but would not be responsible for manning a weapon. Twenty-eight-year-old Second Lieutenant Kurt F. Rupke—the navigator on Tony’s F-7 crew and a man who had known the young Italian-American since combat crew training in Oklahoma—would lead a team consisting of himself, Joe, and Tony. The second 20th Recon team would be led by First Lieutenant J. E. Stansbury, with Technical Sergeant G. L. Chartier as photographer and Sergeant H. G. Thorsvig as the assistant. The names of the members of the other two teams have, unfortunately, not survived.
The men from the 20th Recon were given their aircraft assignments at the end of the preflight briefing. Rupke’s team would fly in 578, which for the day’s mission would be piloted by twenty-seven-year-old First Lieutenant John R. Anderson, whereas Stansbury and his two men would be aboard Hobo Queen II, flown by twenty-four-year-old First Lieutenant James L. Klein. The other two photo teams were assigned to Harriet’s Chariot and 544.
When the briefing ended the men of the photo teams joined the B-32 crewmen in walking to the aircraft, parked on hardstands some 200 yards away. As Anderson and his crew began their preflight checks, Rupke boarded 578 through the small stair-equipped hatch on the left side of the aircraft’s fuselage just forward of the nose wheel. Tony Marchione and Joe Lacharite, between them carrying the K-22 camera in its case and a barracks bag bearing each man’s fleece-lined flight pants and jacket, personal oxygen masks, small tool kits, film canisters, and other items, stopped near the rear of the aircraft, marveling at the machine’s sheer bulk. Neither man had ever been that close to a B-32, and compared to the B-24s and F-7s they were used to, the Dominator was a behemoth. After a moment they climbed into the plane’s rear compartment through a belly hatch just aft of the retracted ball turret and stowed their gear next to a fold-down settee attached to the port side of the fuselage. They were soon joined by Sergeant Jimmie F. Smart, the rear upper gunner, and Sergeant John T. Houston. The latter was normally the aircraft’s ball turret gunner, but he announced to Tony and Joe that the unit’s retraction mechanism was inoperative and the ball could not be lowered, so on this flight Houston would man the tail turret. The news that the aircraft’s belly would be defenseless should the Japanese prove hostile struck Lacharite as an ill omen.
Nor was the balky ball turret the B-32’s only mechanical difficulty. Sergeant Burton J. Keller announced over the intercom that his nose turret was partially inoperable; he could elevate and depress the two .50-caliber machine guns hydraulically, but they had to be traversed from side to side manually. Moreover, only one of the guns was actually capable of firing.7 And, as if weapon issues weren’t enough, when Joe and Tony attempted to seat their K-22 aerial camera in its mount—which attached to the inside of the belly entrance hatch above a hole covered by a detachable metal disk—they discovered that several of the springs intended to hold the camera upright and steady were broken. Moreover, the electrical junction box attached to the camera mount—through which Rupke would remotely operate the camera from the nose compartment—didn’t seem to be working. When Joe informed the photo officer of the issues over the intercom, Rupke told him it was too late to do anything about it, and to just do the best he could.8
Tony and Joe then pulled on their leather flying helmets, attached their oxygen masks, and connected the masks’ long, ribbed, rubber hoses to the regulator panels just above the settee. After ensuring that oxygen would flow on demand, the men disconnected the hoses and removed the masks and then pulled their fleece-lined pants over the single-piece, tropical-weight, belted flight suits that were their normal working uniform. Sitting on the ground with various entry hatches open the B-32 was fairly hot and humid, but within a half-hour after takeoff the aircraft’s interior temperature would drop significantly despite the heated air from ducts scattered throughout the fuselage. Then, having completed their preflight rituals, Tony and Joe seated themselves on the folded-down settee and attached their seatbelts, to be joined for takeoff by Smart and Houston.
The four B-32s trundled from their hardstands just after 6:30 and the final aircraft lifted off from Yontan’s runway fifteen minutes later. The big bombers assumed a loose echelon formation as they set a course for Japan, their crews settling in for what they undoubtedly hoped would be a routine and trouble-free mission. Barely two hours later that hope died, however, for within minutes of each other both Harriet’s Chariot and 544 developed serious engine oil leaks that forced them to abort the flight and return to Okinawa. Their departure was a serious blow, for it not only cut by half the defensive firepower that would be available should the Japanese prove hostile, it also meant that each of the remaining two aircraft would have to prolong its time over Japan to photograph additional targets. James Klein, pilot of Hobo Queen II and now the de facto mission commander, had no choice but to lead his diminished force onward. Senior leaders in FEAF and V Bomber Command had decided that the images the recon flight would produce were potentially important enough to send the Dominators back over Japan despite the possible risks. Like all good soldiers Klein and his fellow aviators would do their best to follow the orders they’d been given, though as they flew on they were all undoubtedly wondering just what sort of reception awaited them.
AS THE TWO DOMINATORS droned on toward their landfall at Miyake-jima, some of the men best prepared to ruin the American aviators’ day were dealing with their own apprehensions.
The navy pilots at Atsugi and Oppama who had participated in the previous day’s attacks on the four B-32s had done so either because they believed that the Bushido code forbade Japan from ever surrendering to a foreign power under any circumstances, or because they felt that the nation’s sovereignty—and thus its airspace—should remain inviolate until the surrender document had actually been signed. Moreover, as many of either persuasion would certainly have pointed out, the orders that had filtered down from IJN headquarters regarding the ceasefire had stated that units could defend themselves if attacked.
No matter which of the two positions an individual pilot might have supported, however, the fact remained that the August 17 attack on the Dominators had been in direct disobedience of both Emperor Hirohito’s clearly expressed wishes and the explicit orders of the navy’s most senior officer. While Saburo Sakai, Ryoji Ohara, and the others were not the only Japanese military personnel to have ignored the ceasefire—anti-aircraft units throughout the Kanto region had fired on American aircraft on August 15, 16, and 17, after all, and Vice Admiral Ugaki had himself attempted a final kamikaze attack—the 302nd Air Group and Yoko Ku pilots were undoubtedly aware that they had disobeyed orders in a most dramatic and flagrant way. They could not even legitimately claim to have acted in self-defense, because the Americans had not attacked any Japanese installations and had only defended themselves against the intercepting fighters. Although the more glib among the naval aviators might have argued that it would have been pointless to attack a bomber after it had proven to be hostile by dropping its ordnance, the fact remained that the actions of the Japanese fighter pilots involved in the August 17 acti
on against the Dominators technically constituted mutiny no matter what its moral or ethical underpinnings might be, and in Japan’s armed forces at that point in time that most uniquely military of crimes was punishable by death.
And yet, as far as most of the participants in the August 17 attack would have been able to tell, their actions either had gone largely unnoticed or had been purposely ignored. Messages from Tokyo continued to deluge the communication centers at both Atsugi and Oppama demanding the grounding of all aircraft and the unquestioning observance of the ceasefire, but no truckloads of heavily armed troops had yet appeared at either installation’s gates to force compliance. Indeed, the 302nd Air Group’s increasingly malaria-crazed Captain Yasuna Kozono still held court in his barricaded command bunker as the sun rose on August 18, and the Yoko Ku’s Lieutenant Commander Masanobu Ibusuki was still ordering that aircraft be fueled and armed and made ready for takeoff at any moment. The pilots at both Atsugi and Oppama must have understood only too well that, whatever their motivation, they would ultimately be held personally responsible for their continuing determination to engage American aircraft and several—most notably Sakai—decided for their own reasons that the August 17 fight was their last and grounded themselves.9 Many others, however, awoke on August 18 determined to continue the battle if the opportunity presented itself.
Last to Die Page 16
