FOUR

AN OLD BROMIDE observes that chance favors the prepared. On what started out as an otherwise uneventful day in September 1943, chance swooped down and favored me.

It was highly unusual for an aide to a commanding general, such as General Grandison Gardner, to come to my office. If the general wanted to speak to a captain, the captain was summoned. Yet there was the general’s aide standing in front of my desk. The well-scrubbed major wasted no time. “Captain, the old man wants extra military police out at hangar seventeen this afternoon,” he stated precisely. “A B-29’s coming in from Seattle. The area will be cordoned off and no unauthorized personnel are to be within three hundred feet of that airplane.”

I assured the major that I would take care of everything. What I didn’t tell him was that I had no idea what a B-29 was, which certainly piqued my interest. If it had wings and belonged to the air force, I knew about it. I told my staff sergeant to pull the technical orders on it. At all airfields, operational manuals called technical orders are on file for every aircraft in the military inventory. They provide detailed information on the operation and maintenance of each aircraft. The sergeant returned a few minutes later and told me there were no technical orders for a B-29. No one had ever heard of such an airplane.

Shortly before two P.M. I went up in the control tower and scanned the sky in the direction of the approach. Off in the distance I saw a small silver dot. As it drew closer, it grew into the largest airplane I had ever seen, and it had four huge engines. On its final approach, I quickly made some rough mental calculations: wingspan, 150 feet; length, 100 feet. This thing was massive.

The gleaming silver fuselage glided in like a feather. A single puff of dust kicked up as the wheels touched down. Rolling down the runway, it dwarfed any other olive drab airplane of the time. It was twice as large as the B-17, the Flying Fortress, the largest heavy bomber then in service. It could have come from another planet, its size and appearance were so radically different from the combat aircraft known to me. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in flight. Its majesty on landing took my breath away.

I ran down the tower, hopped into a jeep, and drove over to where this magnificent airplane would come to rest. A perimeter guard had already formed as instructed. The MPs waved me through, and for a moment I stood alone as the B-29 taxied to a stop within a few feet of me. Fifty years later, I can still feel the awe I experienced as I stood in front of that polished, shiny silver behemoth. Its nose canopy gleamed with Plexiglas. I could easily view where the pilot, the copilot, and the bombardier would sit in flight—in this glass bubble with 180-degree unobstructed visibility. I would later learn that this area was designated the “greenhouse” by the engineers. It was the first time the pilot, the copilot, and the bombardier were all in the same compartment. As the airplane turned and came to a stop, I could make out two large bomb bays under the belly, one forward of the wings and the other aft. Another first. This airplane was special in every way.

I stood on the tarmac looking up. The plane was like a beacon sending a single message, and sending it specifically to me: Fly me. Whether it was youthful exuberance or just ego, I knew for sure it was just my size, and come hell or high water, I was going to fly it.

Staff cars pulled up, and General Gardner and Major Waugh joined me. From beneath the forward compartment, out stepped a handsome, jaunty lieutenant colonel dressed in a perfectly fitted flying suit. My first reaction was that he must be special if he had been selected to command this imposing airplane. The rear bomb bay doors opened and an elevator let down four Cushman scooters and members of the crew. Unbelievable. They carried their own transportation.

Pleasantries were exchanged with the general while the colonel introduced himself to the group as Paul Tibbets. His manner was reserved and soft-spoken, yet he projected an air of professionalism and self-assurance. I stuck out my hand. “Colonel Tibbets,” I said, “I’m Chuck Sweeney, Base Operations Officer. Anything you need, just let me know. We have staff cars waiting here for your use.”

Colonel Tibbets replied politely, “We’ll use our scooters, Captain. Thank you. We’ll need the usual refueling arrangements. And I want security maintained as long as this aircraft is here.”

As I observed the rest of the crew, it became clear that they held this man in high regard. There was an unmistakable crispness in their manner that conveyed their pride in being part of his crew. He was a star, no doubt. I resolved to get on his team.

As the group dispersed and Colonel Tibbets departed, I hung back. The copilot was finishing up a conversation with the flight engineer, who disappeared back into the airplane. The copilot, Captain Bob Lewis, walked in my direction. Lewis was a bear of a man. At six feet tall, he had broad shoulders, blond hair, and a stocky build. He was physically imposing, one of those people who fully occupies the space he’s in. In sharp contrast to Tibbets, Lewis had an air of arrogance that fit perfectly with his physical appearance. I decided to play to his ego to perhaps learn a bit more about the airplane and the colonel.

“Captain, Chuck Sweeney. Any chance I can get a closer look?” I asked, gesturing toward the airplane.

“Not if my mother’s life depended on it,” Lewis replied, giving me a look of disdain and annoyance. He was a man who had important things to do.

I had no intention of pressing the point, although, as the base operations officer responsible for the security detail, I could have. What I wanted from this arrogant SOB was information, not a fight. I continued calmly. “Some kind of airplane. You guys must be the very best we’ve got to fly this monster.” That injection of flattery hit the mark. We were now talking about him.

“I was handpicked,” he responded. “There’s a whole wing of B-29s forming at Smoky Hill Air Base, Kansas. Me and the old bull are in charge of the entire testing program with Boeing,” he concluded, nodding his head in the direction in which Tibbets had gone.

An entire wing of B-29s! Up until two hours before then I hadn’t even known this grand airplane existed, and this guy was telling me an entire wing was forming in Kansas. How do you form an entire wing without anyone knowing? My interest in Tibbets was growing stronger by the minute. “That’s quite a job, I imagine. So what do you have to do to get into this outfit?”

“Don’t even give it a second thought, Captain,” he answered dismissingly. “To start with, you need a degree in aeronautical engineering and at least four hundred hours in four-engine airplanes.” He paused for effect and to give me a patronizing, sympathetic look.

I thought to myself, “This guy must be one hell of a pilot, because he wouldn’t win any popularity contests.”

But my reconnoitering had yielded some good intelligence.

In wartime, everything is possible. Perhaps there was a way around the requirements mandated for pilots in this project. I didn’t know what Tibbets was doing, or what his aircraft had been designed to do, but I knew chance might favor me if I acted. If I could hitch my wagon to Paul Tibbets’s star, there was no telling how high or far I could go.

That night Tibbets came into the officers’ club unaccompanied. I had already resolved to act, and then was as good a time as any. In fact, if I hesitated, I could squander the only opportunity I might have for a one-on-one discussion of my plans with the colonel in a relaxed social setting. I walked over to him and asked, “Colonel, would you care to join me for dinner?”

To my happy relief, he answered, “Yes.”

We took a table at the far end of the club. My first impression was confirmed. He was a man who knew exactly where he wanted to go. His speech and demeanor were low-key and measured. He talked about his combat experiences over Europe, but not in the usual pilot’s bravado about close calls or spectacular successes. Rather, he talked about the nuts and bolts of flying—the art of it, his respect for airplanes, and his knowledge of the machines he flew. He knew flying. Not just the how, but the essence of it. His love of flying struck a sympathetic chord in me. He asked about my background, and I gave him the Reader’s Digest version of what I’d done for the past few years, stressing the experience I had had with different types of aircraft.

He turned the conversation to his assignment at Eglin. The B-29 he’d flown in on was one of two prototypes being tested by Boeing. The other B-29 would be delivered shortly. I had come pretty close in my estimates of its size. The actual wing-span was 141 feet, 3 inches; length, 99 feet; range, 3,800 miles with a full bomb load. It was the first airplane with a pressurized cabin that could really operate at 30,000 feet carrying a full bomb load of ten tons—forty iron bombs weighing an average of 500 pounds each. By comparison, the B-17 could carry only six 500-pounders. Over Europe, the B-17 Flying Fortress was theoretically capable of operating at 30,000 feet, but practically, it performed at peak at about 23,000 feet, fully loaded. And at these altitudes in unpressurized cabins, the crews were forced to wear bulky flight suits and oxygen masks while working in temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees below zero. Add to these conditions the ferocious pursuit of the Luftwaffe and the withering antiaircraft fire over France and Germany, and casualties among airmen in the air over Europe were climbing into the tens of thousands.

Tibbets explained that he was at Eglin to test a central fire control gunnery system for the B-29 using two prototypes—the XB-29 and the YB-29, each having a competing system. In the XB-29 the central gunnery system had been manufactured by Sperry; the YB-29 used a General Electric system. The air corps needed data on the performance of each in order to determine which one to purchase. As with everything else on the airplane, central fire control was revolutionary. In earlier planes, each gunner manually controlled and aimed just one set of guns. With the B-29, a single gunner could control several turrets with one sight and be able to direct all the fire on a single target. The guns would slave to the sight.

Although Tibbets’s testing had been given a top priority, pilots were still a precious commodity as the war intensified. To carry out his assignment he needed pilots to fly target tow airplanes, the XB-29 and the YB-29 that was coming in soon. Here was a chance for me. I made no effort to hide my enthusiasm to join his unit.

“I would love to get into your outfit, Colonel,” I offered directly. “I understand there may be special requirements, but I know I can fly.”

In a manner that was to become familiar to me, he sat back, thought for a moment, and said matter-of-factly, “That’s a possibility.”

I then realized that I had left out one minor point. “Colonel, I should have mentioned that I have orders to report to India with the Tenth Air Force.”

“That’s no problem,” he said without hesitation.

No problem? I didn’t believe that in this military my orders could be canceled by any colonel on God’s green earth, even a colonel who obviously was part of something big. In James Michael Curley’s Boston . . . no problem. In the United States Army . . . highly doubtful. But from the way Tibbets answered, I got the feeling he had the juice to do it. I didn’t need to get into the details, and the colonel wasn’t giving me any.

As we left the dining hall that night, I could not have imagined that in a few weeks I would become responsible for the entire B-29 central control gunnery systems testing program while Colonel Tibbets attended to other matters.

Tibbets called me a few days later. He needed an airplane to go up to his administrative offices in Marietta, Georgia, and then on to the Boeing plant in Wichita, Kansas. I told him I’d make the arrangements and meet him on the ramp in an hour.

“I’ll go as your copilot,” I offered. Here was an opportunity to spend some time with him in the environment I loved most, maybe show him what I could do.

“Fine,” he replied.

I took a look at the aircraft roster. We had a Martin B-26 available immediately. It would not have been my first choice, but that’s what we had. The B-26 was derisively known as the “flying prostitute” because it had no visible means of support. It had a very short wingspan, which gave it a lot of speed but a small lift ratio. Even for experienced pilots the Martin was a tricky airplane to fly. I had flown it only once before.

While the Martin was being fueled I went to the weather office. The noncom on duty started in, “Captain, we got zero-zero in fog. I’d suggest you wait until it burns off.”

I asked to see the report. The fog topped out at about four to six hundred feet up. Above, clear skies. There would be no real danger taking off. Landing, however, would be a different matter.

“Captain, I’d strongly urge you to give it a couple of hours. Should burn off by ten or eleven,” the sergeant offered again apprehensively.

I knew one thing for sure, Tibbets wanted to go, and he’d asked me to arrange it. Therefore, we were going. Period. End of discussion. This was an opportunity I wasn’t going to blow because of some early-morning fog.

Uncharacteristically, I snapped at the startled noncom. “Sergeant, your job is to hand me the weather report. My job is to make the decisions about flying. So I’ll make the decision and you can go back to your work.”

It was an overreaction I regretted the moment the words left my mouth.

Colonel Tibbets was waiting for me at the airplane in the company of three Boeing civilian technicians who were hitching a ride back to Wichita. It was a gloomy, thick, humid Florida morning. We made our walk-around, accompanied by the crew chief.

Deferring to rank and my own limited experience with this airplane, I said, “Sir, why don’t you go ahead and fly it.”

“Sure,” he responded. “I’ve never flown one.”

This was going to be interesting. Our combined experience with this airplane approached zero. We climbed into the cockpit. There was an awkward silence. Neither of us knew how to start it. Thank God for the crew chief. As if it were normal operating procedure, he offered, “Let me turn this over for you, gentlemen,” and started it up.

Once we were off the ground, Tibbets lit his pipe and settled in, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the thermos.

My job was to navigate, his was to fly. He said very little. Even though I was anxious to learn more about him, the B-29, and whether he really could cancel my impending ocean cruise to India, I followed his lead and didn’t try to engage him in conversation. Looking over occasionally, I saw him puffing away, eyes on the horizon, the picture of contentment.

We touched down in Marietta. Tibbets asked me to stay with the airplane. Thirty minutes later he was back. We taxied out and took off. As we completed our climb and banked toward the west and on to Wichita he said, “Your orders to India have been canceled. You’re assigned to my unit.”

That was it. My orders had been canceled. I didn’t know where this would lead me, but I was certain I was going to be part of something special. I wanted to hoot, but I responded simply and directly. “Thank you, sir,” I said.

We cruised at 8,000 feet. I set us on ADF—automatic direction finding. ADF locks on to a radio frequency and the pilot flies to the source of the transmission. It could be a commercial station or a published FAA frequency. This was the standard navigational technique in those days. As we approached the Mississippi, the skies became undercast at about 6,000 feet. My guess was that the clouds bottomed out at maybe 4,000 feet. We couldn’t see the ground. No big deal.

Then I looked down at the ADF. It was out.

I flipped the switch off, on, off, on; nothing. The unit was dead. The question hit my brain and stomach at the exact same instant—how long had it been out? Five minutes? Ten? When had I last looked at it? As my brain raced and my stomach turned, I sorted out the options. If I could judge when the ADF had gone out, I could fix our last known location and figure out where we were by using the time/distance formula. Some copilot. The only job I had was to sit there and navigate—to keep my eye on the ADF. Damn it. I didn’t even know what the wind speed was. I was trying to impress Tibbets, and the first time out I got us lost.

Reaching over to get out the maps, I steadied myself and informed him in a flat tone, “Boss, the ADF is out. I’m trying to get a fix on our position.”

“How long’s it been out?” he said, and resumed puffing away on his pipe.

Here it comes. “I’m not sure.”

What a picture I must have struck studying the map. Taking a sideways glance at Tibbets, I saw him sitting there unperturbed, puffing on his pipe. Not a sign of anger or concern.

“Why don’t I take it down for a look?” he asked calmly.

We came out from the undercast at about 3,500 feet. Below, the landscape offered few clues. We could have been over Kansas or Oklahoma or Nebraska. It was certain we were lost as hell, and it was my fault. Scanning the terrain and considering the options, I guessed that we had drifted south and could be in Oklahoma. I offered a suggestion that we fly due north.

Tibbets nodded, and we proceeded north. In the distance, I picked up a set of railroad tracks and a water tower. Descending to 100 feet, we made a slow pass. The letters painted on the tower told us we were in Iowa. Strike two. Navigation was proving to be my weak suit. I was positive that my new future with Paul Tibbets was going up in flames. But if he was upset, he was doing a superb job of hiding it.

He broke the silence. “Now we know where we are.”

We changed course. It was getting dark. What should have been a three-hour flight had evolved into a six-hour odyssey through the Midwest. We hugged the bottom edge of the cloud cover. On our new course we reached Kansas. Another water tower sat on the horizon, and we went down to 200 feet to verify. Close but no cigar. Painted in big block letters on its side was “Independence.”

For two experienced pilots, we weren’t having a good day. Yet Tibbets was still relying on and taking my suggestions.

We had just started our climb back up to 500 feet when it happened: our right engine started sputtering. The oil gauge indicated we were rapidly losing oil pressure in that engine. The Martin was difficult to fly with two good engines. If we lost the right engine at this altitude, the airplane could drop like a rock with no room to maneuver. For the first time I felt the urge to take the controls. I had great confidence in Tibbets, but in this situation, like any pilot, I wanted to be in control. I told our passengers in the back to buckle up and sit tight.

With a final gasp, the right engine quit. On a single engine, Tibbets gradually nursed the Martin up to 1,500 feet. It was the first of many flying feats I would witness him perform. My uneasiness about not being at the controls subsided. I noticed that he didn’t have his safety belt on.

“Boss, why don’t you let me fly it, just hold it for thirty seconds while you put your safety belt on? If the left engine cuts out we’re going to catch a cornfield.”

As he buckled up I told him the closest airfield was Kansas City, presuming he’d want to land this beast as soon as possible.

“Nah. We’ll press on to Wichita,” he said nonchalantly, taking back the wheel.

I ran the situation through my mind. We were flying on one engine in an airplane that was hard to control even with both engines. Neither of us had much experience in a Martin B-26, except for this flight. And I wasn’t at the controls. But I did have confidence in this man. If I wasn’t flying, then the only other pilot I’d want at the controls would be Paul Tibbets. Of course, I was also the guy who’d gotten us into this mess, so my vote probably didn’t count for much.

“Boss, whatever you want,” I replied matter-of-factly. I understood the gravity of our situation, but it would be a waste of energy to get rattled or even to express doubt. The situation would not improve by my getting upset. We were professionals. Staying cool and focused were the primary tools necessary to fly through this problem.

Darkness was now swallowing the last light of dusk. Approaching Wichita, Tibbets took the airplane up to 2,500 feet for our final approach and started the run at about six miles out instead of the normal two. We would start out high and long to give us a little more margin on the approach. The tower was alerted that we were coming in on one engine. In sight of the field, he let up on the power a little, throttled back, and cranked in some right trim to help compensate for the lost engine as we came in. I let down the landing gear. The airplane rattled slightly as Colonel Tibbets gradually eased it down, making continuous minute adjustments on the descent. This was it. Long, short, or just right, we had one shot. He held the nose up and kept it steady. In the last light remaining of the day, the ground was coming up to meet us. A few final slight adjustments on the stick and we were over the runway and settling down.

He had made a perfect landing. The B-26 couldn’t taxi on one engine, so he let it roll to the end of the runway. Fire trucks rushed to each side of the aircraft. Men came clambering out and onto the runway ready to douse the airplane with foam. I opened the hatch, and Tibbets climbed down, followed quickly by the three white-faced civilian technicians, who spilled out onto the tarmac.

“Boss, you hitch a ride into town and take care of your business and I’ll stay with the airplane and have the engine changed or repaired,” I recommended, believing that my days with Paul Tibbets had come to an abrupt end. No sense inconveniencing him more.

He bid me a good evening and disappeared into the night as I stood in the darkness next to the crippled Martin B-26. I was devastated. I had wanted to make an impression—and I had. My failure to pay attention to the ADF had led to a series of problems that could have gotten us killed. My navigational skills had been reduced to leaning out the window at 200 feet to read the printing on water tanks and making judgments about our location by the type of soil below: “Too sandy to be corn country, so we must be in Oklahoma.” I wondered if my orders to India could be reinstated.

The next morning the colonel met me at breakfast. “Chuck, we’re taking the YB-29 back to Eglin. Make the arrangements to have the Martin ferried back; you’ll fly with me,” he said.

“Oh, God. This is beautiful,” I thought. “I’ll be his copilot in a brand new B-29.” I was still okay.

Tibbets never mentioned the flight to Wichita. Reflecting on the previous afternoon, I considered that he might have seen that I had kept my cool, stayed focused, and reacted professionally under difficult circumstances. Making mistakes was human. The pilot’s skill was in rapid, effective reaction. I concluded that my conduct during the emergency actually might have helped boost my standing with him.

We walked over to the Boeing ramp. In a few brief days I had gone from fantasizing about getting into a B-29 to actually climbing up into the flight deck of the sparkling YB-29, settling into the brand-new leather seat, and preparing to conduct a preflight check with Paul Tibbets. The only other crew member was a flight engineer from Boeing who introduced me to the operating procedures of the Superfortress.

The flight back to Eglin was both uneventful and exhilarating—although I did make one interesting observation. When Tibbets flew, he never left the pilot’s seat. During our six-hour flight to Wichita the day before, I’d thought he stayed in the seat because we were in a tenuous situation. But on this day, for the next three hours he drank coffee, puffed on his pipe, said very little, and never got up to stretch or use the toilet facilities on board. I like to occasionally move around on long flights in a bomber. But again, I followed his lead and stayed put, much to the regret of my aching bladder.