Last to Die

by Stephen Harding

  Luckily, Joe had fallen right next to the barracks bag carrying his and Tony’s equipment, and he was able to yank the braided-cotton closure cord from the top of the bag and hurriedly tie it around his left thigh as a tourniquet. He was struggling to wrap the now-disconnected intercom cord around his right leg when Tony, having turned away from the observation window, carefully lifted Joe onto the settee and then, kneeling down, began tightening the second tourniquet himself. As he was doing this Tony announced over the intercom that Joe had been wounded, and from the cockpit Anderson said he would send Rupke back to help. Tony had just acknowledged the pilot’s transmission when a 20mm cannon round punched a ragged, double-fist-sized hole through the B-32’s thin aluminum skin just above and slightly forward of the portside observation window. The projectile slammed into Tony almost squarely in the center of his chest, driving him backward. He hit the opposite side of the fuselage and crumpled to the floor, his legs splayed out toward the settee and his head resting near the shattered optical-glass port. Joe, immobilized on the settee and now also pierced by razor-sharp splinters of the Dominator’s aluminum skin, could do nothing but gesture helplessly to Smart.

  Seconds later Rupke, having made his way across the narrow bomb-bay catwalk that connected the forward and aft crew compartments, came through the bulkhead door forward of Smart’s turret. Seeing that the upper gunner’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, the photo officer rushed past Joe to Tony, medical aid kit in hand, instinctively seeking to help the more badly injured, longtime crewmate he considered one of his own. When Rupke knelt next to Tony the young man was still alive and conscious, though he was surrounded by a spreading pool of blood, at least some of which was coming from a partial exit wound in his back. The 20mm round had struck him just below the sternum, shattering several of his ribs and shoving shredded bits of his fleece-lined flight jacket and the lighter clothing beneath it into the wound. Rupke looked down at Tony and despite the obvious extent and severity of the young gunner’s wounds told him he everything was going to be all right.27

  Likely aware that things weren’t going to be all right, Tony looked up at Rupke and managed to whisper, “Stay with me.”

  “Yes, I’ll stay with you,” the photo officer replied, gently taking Tony in his arms.28

  At that point Houston came through the small door from the tail section and he and Smart—himself still bleeding—did what they could to help Joe, applying compression bandages to his legs after attempting to get sulfa powder into his wounds despite the frigid wind blowing into the aircraft’s fuselage through the bullet and cannon shell holes. Minutes later the B-32’s navigator, Second Lieutenant Thomas Robinson, and radar officer, Second Lieutenant Donald H. Smith, arrived and covered Joe and Tony with blankets. They cut away part of the sleeve on one arm of the young gunner’s flight jacket and started a line for blood plasma, then tried to stanch the bleeding from both the massive hole in his chest and the smaller exit wound in the middle of his back, just to one side of his spine.29

  Despite everyone’s best efforts, however, Tony Marchione died about thirty minutes after he was hit and just six days past his twentieth birthday.

  EVEN AS RUPKE AND the others were dealing with Joe and Tony’s wounds the men still in the forward part of the Dominator had their own hands full.

  In addition to wounding Jimmy Smart, Sadamu Komachi’s attack had knocked out the B-32’s number 3 engine, which immediately started trailing smoke and throwing oil over the right side of the aircraft’s fuselage. Under normal circumstances the pilot, John Anderson, would have feathered the propeller—that is, turned the blades edge-on into the airstream to prevent the prop from continuing to rotate and possibly further damaging the engine. But he didn’t want to signal to the attacking Japanese that the engine was completely dead, so he triggered the power plant’s internal fire extinguisher and let the propeller windmill. The tactic wasn’t quite as successful as Anderson had hoped it would be, however, for the pilots of several of the fighters saw the smoke before it dissipated and quickly launched the concentrated attacks that resulted in the injuries to Joe and Tony.30

  Realizing that more radical measures were required, Anderson and copilot Second Lieutenant Richard E. Thomas advanced the throttles on 578’s three remaining engines and put the B-32 into a steep descent, like Klein in Hobo Queen II hoping to outrun the enemy interceptors. As 578 dropped, rapidly picking up speed, the Japanese fighters fell further behind. They tossed rounds at the big bomber from increasingly longer range, hoping for a lucky hit, then gave up the chase one by one and turned back toward Atsugi and Oppama.

  But Sadamu Komachi wasn’t so easily deterred. After completing his near-vertical attack on the B-32 the Japanese ace had needed several minutes to pull his fighter out of its dive, reverse direction, and head back toward the rapidly disappearing American plane. His pullout and course reversal had put Komachi off to the side of the Dominator’s track rather than directly aft of the bomber, and by “cutting the corner” at maximum speed he was able to gradually gain on his quarry. By the time Komachi came within firing range of 578 the Dominator was barely 1,000 feet above the water and well out to sea to the east of Oshima Island. Because there was not enough room to make another vertical attack and recover in time to avoid crashing into the water, Komachi decided to come in on a beam run. The maneuver was probably not his best decision, however, for in swinging his fighter wide in preparation for the attack he lost position and airspeed relative to the B-32. Komachi thus ended up having to fire from beyond the ideal range, and only managed to put a few rounds into 578’s rudder trim tab before the Dominator again accelerated away from him. Alone and vulnerable to any Allied fighters that might be in the vicinity, Komachi finally gave up and turned for home.31

  Though John Anderson and the men aboard his B-32 were obviously relieved by the departure of their last dogged pursuer, they were by no means out of the woods yet. They were still facing another six hours in the air, at least, and the Dominator was down to three good engines. After radioing Yontan with news of the attack, the wounding of Smart and Lacharite, and the death of Tony Marchione, Anderson warned his crew that they might have to bail out and directed everyone to put on their parachutes.

  But as the hours passed it seemed more certain that the aircraft would make it all the way back to Okinawa, and everyone tried to relax as much as possible. Conversations sprang up over the intercom, with one of the prime topics of discussion being the reason why the Japanese pilots had seemed to concentrate their most determined attacks on the Dominator’s waist section. The best answer, the crewmembers agreed, came from Burton Keller. The nose gunner expressed the opinion that the enemy attackers must have either mistaken the B-32 for a B-29, or at least assumed the Dominator had the same sort of unmanned gun turrets. The Superfortress’s gunners sat behind large plexiglass observation bubbles in the aircraft’s waist, Keller reminded his listeners, and acquired and tracked targets with sights that remotely controlled the guns. Japanese pilots had learned that by concentrating their initial attacks on the B-29’s waist bubbles they could kill or disable the gunners, thereby rendering the Superfortress defenseless. Other than the B-29 the only Allied bomber most Japanese pilots had encountered in any numbers in the previous three years was the twin-tailed B-24, and when they saw the tall single tail on the B-32 they probably assumed it was a variant of the B-29.32

  Robinson and Smith spent the return flight to Okinawa in the Dominator’s aft compartment caring for Joe Lacharite. The photographer’s injuries were extremely serious—he’d lost a lot of blood and the bones in both of his legs had been splintered by the Japanese bullets—and his pain was so intense that the two young officers had injected him with at least two morphine syrettes. Joe was in and out of consciousness for several hours, and at one point his respiration was so shallow it appeared he might not survive.33

  After reverently wrapping Tony Marchione’s body in blankets and helping to lay it carefully near the bulkhe
ad door leading to the B-32’s bomb-bay catwalk, Kurt Rupke had returned to the cramped nose compartment. Heartbroken by the death of a young man with whom he had trained and flown for months—someone he considered a good friend despite the difference in their ranks, ages, and backgrounds—Rupke was also angry beyond words. From the moment he’d climbed aboard the Dominator that morning the young photo officer had believed that the aircraft was totally unsuited for the mission it was tasked to undertake. The inoperable or mechanically impaired turrets and guns were bad enough, he believed, but sending an airplane on a photo-recon mission when its camera mount and vital associated systems were essentially out of commission was almost criminally stupid. The airplane may have been fit for flight, Rupke seethed, but that was all it was fit for. Tony had been one of “his boys,” and his death had been completely avoidable and absolutely unnecessary.34

  THE CREW OF 578 sighted Yontan air field almost exactly twelve hours after taking off on their ill-fated mission. Anderson wanted to avoid banking his damaged aircraft into the dead engine, so he flew a nonstandard approach and ended up coming in a little higher and faster than usual. As the aircraft rolled out and turned slowly onto the taxiway several field ambulances fell into line behind it. Anderson stopped the aircraft before reaching its assigned hardstand, and medics jumped from the ambulances and swarmed aboard through the Dominator’s belly hatch. They helped Jimmie Smart out the same way, then carefully took Joe Lacharite and Tony Marchione’s body out through the opened bomb bay. As they were doing so the B-32 was surrounded by a huge crowd of people—a crowd that, as Keller later remembered, included reporters, GIs, and “every colonel in the Fifth Air Force.”35

  The Dominator’s tired, dispirited crewmen were hustled from their aircraft and into the same briefing tent they’d sat in what seemed like days earlier, but had in reality been just that morning. There they joined the men from Hobo Queen II, which had landed earlier, and once settled with mugs of coffee and plates of sandwiches the young airmen faced a barrage of questions intended to answer one very important question: was this attack just another aberration carried out by a few diehards, or was it an indication that the war wasn’t over?

  CHAPTER 6

  PEACE, OR WAR?

  THE CROWD THAT THRONGED 578 upon its return to Yontan had begun gathering hours earlier in response to contact reports sent even as the attack on the two B-32s was still underway. When the first Japanese fighter rolled in on Hobo Queen II, James Klein had ordered his radio operator, Technical Sergeant Leslie Christenson, to send an “in the clear” (non-encrypted) message to the 386th Bomb Squadron’s communications center announcing the interception. Minutes later, as 578 came under fire, John Anderson had issued similar orders to his radioman, Sergeant Darrell Champlin. A second transmission regarding the wounding of Jimmy Smart and Joe Lacharite and the death of Tony Marchione followed, and by the time the two Dominators had shaken their pursuers and begun the long flight back to Okinawa news of the attack was pulsing across the airwaves from Yontan to MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila, and from Manila to Washington.

  Rudy Pugliese, the 386th’s assistant intelligence officer, was among the first people at Yontan to learn just how much anxiety the news had stirred up among senior leaders. Barely minutes after Klein’s message was relayed up the chain of command, Pugliese—who was manning the incoming phone lines while Bill Barnes was briefing Selmon Wells, Frank Cook, and Tony Svore—took a call from FEAF commander George Kenney, who asked if there was any additional information about the attack. When the young intelligence officer responded that there was nothing yet, Kenney said he wanted to know immediately when the aircraft landed and, more important, what the aircrew debriefings revealed, and added that MacArthur was at his side. As Pugliese recounted later, “when a three-star general says a five-star general is waiting, you hop.”1

  The urgent concern shown by both Kenney and MacArthur regarding the interception of the B-32s and the casualties those attacks caused was heightened by the news that the 20th Recon Squadron F-7Bs dispatched to Tokyo had also encountered unexpected Japanese resistance. The three aircraft—a fuel leak had forced the fourth machine to abort—had been tracked by early-warning radars on the approach to their photo targets in and around Yokohama. As they started their runs they were painted by gun-laying radars and were then subjected to heavy, continuous, and unusually accurate 120mm anti-aircraft fire. The Liberators took evasive action but at least one suffered multiple hits. There were no casualties and no fighter interceptions, though it is possible that the F-7Bs had avoided the latter hazard because they arrived over their targets after the B-32s had drawn off those 302nd Air Group and Yoko Ku pilots still willing to take to the air.2

  Kenney and MacArthur were not the only people anxious for information about the attack on the B-32s. Military and civilian reporters had descended on the 386th’s headquarters compound the previous day in response to the actions involving the four Dominators, and they began returning as word started to circulate around Yontan that another attack had occurred, this time resulting in American casualties. Several of the newsmen sought out Rudy Pugliese, badgering him for details that he was honestly able to tell them he didn’t yet have. They, like everyone else, the young officer said, would have to wait until the two B-32s had landed and their crews had been debriefed. Although it was almost certainly not the answer the reporters were looking for they, like everyone else, had no choice but to settle in and wait for Hobo Queen II and 578 to return.3

  ARMY AIR FORCES POST-MISSION combat aircrew debriefings were conducted in much the same way in all World War II theaters, no matter what type of unit was involved. Also referred to as interrogations, the interviews were meant to provide both intelligence and operational information. The former would include such things as the number, type, and markings of enemy aircraft encountered; enemy losses, both confirmed and probable; the approximate location of friendly airmen forced to bail out; the damage inflicted on ground targets through bombing or strafing; new enemy installations sighted; the accuracy of pre-mission briefings; and so on. The operational data sought, while somewhat less dramatic, was equally important in that it dealt with the mechanical reliability of the friendly aircraft; ways in which the airplane’s systems or crew interactions could be improved; the accuracy of weather forecasts; and the like.

  The officers on an individual crew were normally interviewed separately from their enlisted men, though before being debriefed every member of the crew, no matter his rank, was offered the same, small shot of whiskey. This last amenity was usually welcomed, for even those missions that did not provoke a hostile response or result in friendly losses could leave crewmembers physically exhausted yet so mentally keyed up that they were unable to relax. And, of course, if the mission involved enemy action or the injury or death of other crewmen the individual being debriefed might well be emotionally shattered.

  The crews of Hobo Queen II and 578 faced all the usual questions during the interrogations that followed their return to Yontan, but they were also asked to respond to some decidedly out-of-the-ordinary queries: Could they somehow have avoided the attack? Did they think the Japanese pilots had been receiving instructions from ground controllers? Could they identify the individual markings of the aircraft that had wounded Smart and Lacharite and killed Marchione? The men did what they could to answer the interrogators’ questions despite being understandably bitter and emotional about the attacks—the Japanese government, after all, had publicly accepted the Allied surrender terms and agreed to the ceasefire—and the mood in the debriefing was decidedly dark. That changed somewhat, however, when Selmon Wells asked the gunners from both aircraft whether they truly believed they’d damaged or destroyed the Japanese fighters they’d claimed.

  John Houston sheepishly raised his hand and said, “I’m pretty sure I really got one, sir.”

  “What do you mean you’re ‘pretty sure,’ son?” the 312th’s commander replied.

  “Well, sir,�
� Houston said slowly, “I was shooting at him and he blew up.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, then laughter rippled through the crowded room and quickly swelled to a crescendo.4

  KENNEY, MACARTHUR, AND OTHER senior officers throughout the Pacific Theater were more concerned by the attack on Hobo Queen II and 578—and on the F-7Bs, for that matter—than they had been about the previous day’s incident involving the four Dominators. The August 17 event could be explained away as the rash action of several diehard pilots. But a second and far more serious attack—which at first glance appeared to involve coordinated action by multiple fighters, radar sites, and anti-aircraft units and that resulted in the death of one American and the wounding of two others—could well be the beginning of an organized effort on the part of Japan’s military to repudiate Emperor Hirohito’s decision to surrender. The United States government was aware through both diplomatic channels and neutral news sources of the August 15 attempted coup in Tokyo, and Allied interception and decryption of encoded Japanese radio traffic indicated that there remained significant anti-surrender sentiment among senior army commanders.5