Last to Die

by Stephen Harding

  JUST AS THE CRASH of 544 was not allowed to prevent Hobo Queen II’s takeoff on her important task, the morning’s disaster did not derail the second part of the mission. The departure times of the two pairs of Dominators had been staggered, so the crews of the photo-recon aircraft—528 and 578—were just getting out of their cots when the explosion and fire erupted at the end of the runway. Though they were obviously shocked by the catastrophe and saddened by the death of friends, they still had a vital mission to accomplish, so after a hushed meal in the mess tent the aviators gathered for the preflight briefing.

  Though the first topic of discussion was obviously the crash of 544 and the possible cause for it—engine failure on takeoff? Flap malfunction? Pilot error? No determination could be made until the roiling flames subsided. Rudy Pugliese, his voice occasionally breaking, led the briefing in Bill Barnes’s stead, laying out the operational details of the day’s flight. The two photo-recon Dominators would follow the by-now familiar route from Okinawa to the Tokyo area, tracking northeast to Oshima Island and then turning due north for their photo runs. They were to fly the usual parallel lines, “mowing the lawn” as they photographed a series of targets between Yokohama and the capital. Frank Cook stepped in to remind the crews that they might be called upon at any time to bomb their preassigned targets if there was any sign of armed Japanese resistance to the arrival of the advance occupation unit, and if that order came they were to carry it out immediately. The senior officer also reminded the aviators that the skies above the Kanto Plain would be particularly busy, with Navy carrier-based fighters flying top cover for the many lumbering transports that would be bringing in the initial landing force and the equipment and supplies its members would require. And, finally, the navigators on each of the B-32 crews were given the coordinates of the Navy ships that would be providing air-sea rescue coverage along the routes to and from Japan.31

  The photo-recon Dominators took off from Yontan just after 7 A.M., departing to the northwest so they would not have to fly through the thick column of greasy black smoke rising into the morning sky above the coral pit. After turning onto the heading for Oshima the B-32s climbed gradually to 3,000 feet and their crews settled in for what they fervently hoped would be an uneventful flight to the Japanese capital.

  COLONEL CHARLES P. TENCH was also probably hoping for a day free of conflict. A member of MacArthur’s operations staff, the forty-year-old officer had been tapped by the supreme commander himself to lead the advance group that would land at Atsugi. Given the historic nature of its mission and the very real possibility that it would receive a less-than-friendly welcome, Tench’s group was surprisingly small. The force consisted of just 150 troops, only about 30 of whom were infantrymen. The remainder were the Army Airways Communications Systems radio operators, logistics personnel, air traffic controllers, navigation aids technicians, and other specialists required to prepare Atsugi for the impending arrival of MacArthur and the lead elements of the main occupation forces. Tench, his men, and the mounds of equipment they would need upon reaching Atsugi were loaded aboard sixteen C-47 transports of the 317th Troop Carrier Group, which began taking off from Kadena and other airfields on Okinawa at about the same time as Leonard Sill’s B-32 was rolling from the taxi strip onto the main runway at Yontan.

  The first indication the Japanese had of the advance force’s impending arrival was the sudden appearance over Atsugi of Navy F4U Corsair and F6F Hellcat fighters, which had launched not long before from Third Fleet carriers approaching Sagami Bay. Although those on the ground probably could not see it, Hobo Queen II had also arrived and was flying in a lazy circle at 18,000 feet. At 8:20 Colonel John H. Lackey Jr., the pilot of Tench’s C-47, began his approach from the south, touching down eight minutes later on the airdrome’s center runway. The lead plane was quickly followed by the other fifteen transports, and by a few minutes after 9 A.M. Tench had officially taken control of the airfield from Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, chief of intelligence on the Imperial General Staff, and radioed MacArthur—with assistance from Hobo Queen II—that the Japanese were cooperating in every way. Over the following three hours a further thirty C-46 Commando, C-47 Skytrain, and C-54 Skymaster transports had landed at Atsugi, carrying additional equipment, Army personnel, and members of Admiral William F. Halsey’s staff. With a determination and enthusiasm that stunned Japanese onlookers, the Americans set about preparing the sprawling airdrome for the influx of occupation troops scheduled to arrive in less than forty-eight hours.32

  AS THE MEN OF Tench’s advance element were beginning to unload their equipment at Atsugi, the photo-recon Dominators arrived over Honshu. The two B-32s initially took up a wide orbit above the Kanto Plain as their crews waited anxiously to see if they would actually have to drop the bombs nestled in each aircraft’s belly, but it soon became apparent that there was not going to be any Japanese opposition to the first foreign occupiers. For the next several hours the only excitement the crews of 528 and 578 encountered was the arrival off their wingtips of Navy Corsairs and Hellcats, their pilots politely asking variations of the same question: “Who the hell are you and what kind of airplane is that?”33

  Once Tench’s Army Airways Communications Systems specialists were able to establish radio contact with Okinawa and Manila, Hobo Queen II was released from her special tasking and turned for home, leaving the other two Dominators to begin their assigned photo runs. At that point, however, the gremlins that now seemed to be permanent members of every B-32 crew got up to their old tricks. As twenty-two-year-old Second Lieutenant Collins Orton turned 528 onto the beginning of its third photo run at about 2:15 Second Lieutenant John L. Boyd, the 20th Recon Squadron officer controlling the aircraft’s K-22 camera from the bomber’s nose compartment, announced that the device had failed. Despite the best efforts of the embarked aerial photographer, Sergeant Horace Butler, the camera refused to come back to life. When apprised of the camera problem the mission commander in 578 told Orton to “pack it up and head for home,” and minutes later 528 was pointing her nose toward Okinawa.

  Facing a long flight back to Yontan, Orton and his copilot, Flying Officer John Clark, decided to conduct an experiment. The men had flown B-24s together before transitioning to the Dominator, and during long-distance Liberator missions from the Philippines to China they had perfected the techniques of fuel conservation. By reducing the engine RPM and manifold pressure they’d been able to keep their B-24 in the air for nearly eighteen hours, its propellers turning so slowly that the crewmen could actually count the blades as they rotated. The aircraft would be flying so slowly that, as Orton recalled years later, if a man walked to the rear of the B-24 to use the relief tube, the small change in the center of gravity was enough to put the plane into a stall.34

  To begin the experiment Orton and Clark first had the flight engineer, Master Sergeant Paul E. Fairchild, transfer all of the fuel from the B-32’s bomb-bay tank into the main wing tanks, the only place from which the engines drew the high-octane aviation gasoline. It was something that they’d done all the time in their B-24, and they had no reason to think it would be a problem in the Dominator. Everything was fine for about two and a half hours, but then at about 5 P.M. the aircraft yawed slightly as the number 2 engine began losing power. As Orton later recalled, the power plant “just pooped out”—the cylinder head temperature went down, but the manifold pressure and RPMs stayed where they’d been set. Fairchild shut off the fuel flow to the engine and Orton feathered the prop, which seemed to solve whatever the issue might have been. But at about 6:45 the cylinder head temperature on the number 4 engine also inexplicably dropped, and seconds later the big Cyclone simply died.35

  The loss of one engine was a not-uncommon irritation, but the failure of two was potentially disastrous. The Dominator could not maintain a safe cruising altitude on the two remaining Cyclones, and the big bomber was still some 200 miles from Okinawa and descending through 4,500 feet. A hurried discussion among Orton, Clark,
and Fairchild pinpointed water condensation in the bomb-bay tank as the likely source of the problem,36 and all three men agreed that the B-32 was almost certain to lose its two remaining engines sooner rather than later. Orton asked primary navigator Captain Roy C. Cunningham for a “steer” (course) to “Birddog,” the nearest Navy plane-guard ships, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the destroyers USS John D. Henley (DD-553) and USS Aulick (DD-569) were patrolling air-sea rescue station “Baker,” almost directly ahead of the ailing Dominator. After ordering his crew to begin jettisoning everything but their parachutes, Orton directed radio operator Staff Sergeant Wiley D. Pringle first to communicate the aircraft’s position and difficulties to V Bomber Command, and then to contact the destroyers on the “guard” frequency.

  Henley and Aulick had steamed out of Okinawa’s Buckner Bay on August 25 to take up station at “Baker,” but by the evening of the twenty-eighth had not yet been required to undertake any rescues. That appeared about to change, however, when at 6:15 P.M. the air-search radar aboard Henley, the lead vessel, detected an airborne contact to the north of the ship’s position. A half-hour later the destroyer’s radio operator picked up Pringle’s initial distress message, and just minutes after that the B-32 was circling the two vessels. Commander Simon Ramey, Henley’s captain, urged Orton to ditch the Dominator near the two Navy vessels, but the young pilot believed that his aircraft’s long bomb bay and shoulder-mounted wings would cause it to disintegrate as soon as it hit the water. Orton therefore replied that he and his crew would bail out instead, and immediately ordered the men to begin preparations to abandon their doomed bomber.37

  The bailout process did not go quite as Orton had hoped, however. As he later recalled, he expected that the crewmen would exit the aircraft quickly and efficiently, “like paratroopers.” Instead, he said, “each one would get to the [open] bomb bay or the rear [entrance] hatch, lick his finger to test the wind, straighten out his [parachute] harness, and then finally go. My God, it seemed to take forever.” It didn’t take quite as long as that, though. The first man leapt from the B-32 at 7:00 P.M. and Orton, the last to leave, took to his chute just four minutes later and hit the water thirty seconds after pulling the ripcord. He had barely popped back to the surface when 528 crashed into the sea some four miles away, almost exactly eight miles due north of the small island of Kikai-Jima and just over 195 miles northeast of Yontan.38

  Although all thirteen men aboard the Dominator made it out of the aircraft, those watching from the two destroyers counted only twelve parachutes. Over the next several hours Henley picked up Orton and Cunningham, while Aulick retrieved all the others except armorer-gunner Sergeant Morris C. Morgan. Despite a search that continued well into the next day the young aviator was never found, and he was ultimately listed as “Missing in Action/Body Not Recovered.” Sadly, Morgan was not the only casualty. Though gunner Staff Sergeant George A. Murphy made it out of the aircraft safely his parachute did not fully deploy by the time he hit the water. Despite the best efforts of Aulick’s medical officer, Lieutenant (junior grade) R. B. Laury, Murphy died at 11 P.M. of “traumatic shock complicated by massive internal injuries.” His body was committed to the sea two days later following a burial service conducted by the destroyer’s captain, Lieutenant Commander W. R. Hunnicutt Jr.39

  Henley and Aulick were required to remain on air-sea rescue duty after picking up Orton and his crew, and the aviators therefore did not make it back to Okinawa for several days. While they were enjoying the questionable delights of life aboard a relatively small warship in unusually large seas, events moved on without them.

  EVEN AS 528’S CREWMEN awoke to their first morning at sea the investigation of the previous day’s fatal crash at Yontan had already begun.

  Those attempting to determine the cause of the accident that killed all thirteen men aboard 544—the worst single loss of life in the troubled history of the B-32—had little to go on because the Dominator had been almost completely consumed by the fierce, fuel-fed fire that had engulfed it. Everyone who had witnessed 544’s start-up, taxi, and initial takeoff roll agreed that nothing seemed amiss, and that the sudden reduction in engine noise was the first indication of trouble. Although several witnesses later said they heard the screech of the aircraft’s brakes—indicating that Leonard Sill and his copilot were doing all they could to stop the aircraft—Frank Cook recalled years later that he had walked the entire length of Yontan’s runway and had seen no indication of the skid marks that would have accompanied the application of the aircraft’s brakes at that weight and speed. The mystery deepened when an inspection of one of the few unburned sections of the aircraft—the rear, inboard part of its right wing—indicated that the B-32’s flaps had been correctly set for takeoff.40

  In addition to attempting to find the cause of the crash—which was ultimately ascribed to “unknown causes”—investigators also had to try to positively identify the bodies of the dead. Squadron commander Tony Svore was part of the team that undertook that grisly task, which was made all the harder by the fact that most of the remains had been charred beyond recognition. Only four sets were ultimately identified, one of which was that of intelligence officer Bill Barnes. Svore later recalled that he was able to make that particular identification because Barnes, a close friend, always wore a unique ring that was easily recognized.41 A memorial service for those lost was held at Yontan on August 30.

  That same day the main units of the Allied occupation force began arriving in Japan—the bulk of the U.S. 11th Airborne Division landing at Atsugi aboard hundreds of transport aircraft while other Army, Marine, Navy, and British units went ashore at various points throughout Honshu and Kyushu. August 30 also saw MacArthur’s arrival at Atsugi aboard his personal C-54 transport, Bataan.

  The following day marked a suitably symbolic milestone in the history of the B-32. Just after 4:30 A.M. a single Dominator took off on a photo-recon mission to Tokyo, but its nose gear failed to retract and the aircraft returned to Yontan. The last operational mission flown by Consolidated’s trouble-plagued super bomber therefore ended as so many earlier flights had—aborted due to mechanical difficulties.42

  Nor did the B-32 have a chance to redeem itself. Within months the Army Air Forces cancelled all further development and procurement of the Dominator; those still under construction were dismantled and all flying aircraft were quickly scrapped. The venerable Hobo Queen II never even made it off Okinawa; severely damaged by a nose gear collapse, she was eventually scrapped in place. A single B-32 intended for ultimate donation to a museum was kept intact in Arizona for several years after the war, but it too was finally scrapped and the only artifacts remaining of the ill-starred Consolidated Dominator are an instrument panel, a single gun turret, and various odd pieces in private collections.

  COLLINS ORTON AND HIS surviving crewmembers finally returned to Yontan on September 2, the same day that Japan formally surrendered during the ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

  When Second Lieutenant Elmer O. Jones, the bombardier on 528, walked back into his tent at Yontan he regaled John Blackburn and several other friends with the story of the bailout and ended by saying proudly, “look, I even saved the ripcord D-ring after I jumped.” To which one of the men in the tent laughingly replied, “you damn fool, you were so scared you couldn’t let go of it!”43

  CHAPTER 7

  HOMECOMING

  GENERAL OF THE ARMY Douglas MacArthur’s decision not to reignite hostilities against Japan because of the August 17 and 18 attacks on the B-32s over Tokyo is undoubtedly one of the most important, if perhaps least known, choices he made during the first weeks of his tenure as Supreme Commander Allied Powers. We can never be certain what might have happened had Allied forces resumed even a limited bombing campaign against the Home Islands in retaliation for the interception of the Dominators, but we can make some educated assumptions based on the available facts.

  We know that in August 1945 th
e total number of Japanese military personnel remaining under arms both at home and across Asia and the Pacific was in the millions. Although many units were certainly ill-equipped, ill-trained, or decimated by disease or enemy action, others were highly experienced and remained both combat ready and highly motivated. By war’s end the Japanese had amassed thousands of aircraft and as many small, fast boats for use in suicide attacks against Allied forces massing off the Home Islands. And millions of Japanese civilians were fully prepared to join in the defense of their homeland in the event of an Allied invasion.

  Emperor Hirohito’s decision to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and surrender Japan to the Allies was so unpopular that it had provoked a major armed forces rebellion in Tokyo and minor ones elsewhere throughout what was left of the Japanese Empire. That such mutinies did not succeed in reversing the emperor’s decision and lead to the installation of a fanatically anti-surrender cabinet is due in part to the Allies’ suspension of offensive action after August 15. Senior military officers and government officials who might otherwise have chosen to break with the emperor and prolong the war were almost certainly swayed by the observable fact that the Allies were no longer pounding Japan with incendiaries or, for that matter, additional atomic bombs.

  Given these realities—and the very real possibility that senior Japanese government and military leaders had not been told of the August 17 and 18 interceptions over the Kanto Plain—any resumption of hostilities by the Allies in response to the attacks on the B-32s would likely have been seen in Tokyo as a completely unwarranted abrogation of the cease fire. That, in turn, would certainly have strengthened the hand of the anti-surrender elements, fanning back to life the embers of rebellion that had been nearly extinguished following the unsuccessful August 14–15 coup. And had the Bushido-enflamed diehards in the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy managed to reassert their influence in Tokyo there is no doubt they would have immediately sought to cancel the ceasefire orders their senior leaders had already transmitted throughout what was left of the empire. And that, of course, would have inexorably led to a resumption of widespread hostilities between Japanese and Allied forces, which in turn could have had only two possible outcomes, either of them catastrophic.