I was a tail gunner in B-29s, and we were based on Tinian. When General LeMay first arrived he had a reputation as a real tough no-nonsense person. He had already made a name for himself in the bombing campaign in Europe.
When we got the word of that first Tokyo firebombing mission, this came as a real shock to us. Up until then we had been doing high-altitude precision bombing like they had been doing in Europe. But for this raid, all that went out the window. We were to go at night and go in low, at 6,400 feet, and set the city on fire with incendiaries. The idea was that the Jap’s war production was taking place not only in big factories and plants, but in small businesses and even private homes. This meant going after the civilian population. I didn’t think much about it at first, and I don’t think anyone else did. We were most worried about going in so low, and trying to get there at night, and whether we could make it back okay.
Those firebomb raids on Japan were really a sight to behold. Just the scale of the operation was incredible. Three planes at a time would take off from Tinian from three of the parallel runways at North Field. We headed straight out from the island. You couldn’t turn until you were well away from the island since there were planes on either side of you. Also, we’d have to go out to the planes in the late afternoon. Those planes had been sitting out there in that tropical sun all day, and they were like ovens inside. We’d wait until someone got in there to start the engines. You’d be soaked instantly once you got inside. Once they got two engines started and got the air circulation going, it took a while to get it comfortable inside.
So we took off in the evening, at 8:15 P.M. for the Tokyo mission and flew all the way there and back alone. It was about a seven-hour trip each way, and that’s a long time in a B-29! As we got close to Japan, we could see the glow from the fires started by the planes in front of us. Well, I mean the guys up front could—I was looking out the tail. As we got over the city, the plane started getting buffeted by the thermals from the fires below. It was really a rough ride! We had a couple of planes in our group do slow rolls, and not on purpose! They would be flipped by the turbulence of the updrafts from the fires. Can you imagine that, a B-29 rolled over by thermals from fires! Amazing. They said some of the wing roots of those planes were bent and they were sent back to Boeing for analysis. Those wings took a lot of punishment under the best of conditions. The wings of a B-29 bent upwards when you first lifted off the runway as they took the weight of the plane and the bombs. Then at “bombs away” they’d straighten out again, and the plane would almost be sprung back to normal. We’d be pressed down into our seats by the upward acceleration when the bombs left the plane.
So we dropped our bombs on Tokyo and turned back out to sea. It was still pitch dark, and the only thing I could see as I looked out my tail-gunner window was the city burning in the distance. It seemed like I could see the light from those fires for a long time. Finally I radioed the navigator and asked how far away we were from Tokyo. He said about 150 miles, and I could still see the glow from the fires on the horizon from that far out!
A few days later on Tinian they announced that for every man who flew that mission, that he had accounted for so and so many dead Japanese. A lot of guys started cheering, but my initial reaction was, what a crime. I have to say that it was an individual thing. The announcement was meant to fire us up, but it backfired on me. But the Japs started it, and that’s war, and it’s terrible. That’s all there is to it.
After the war I was active in my bomb group veterans’ organization, and I returned to Tinian fifty years later to arrange for a marker to be erected at North Field where we flew from. The runways are all still there, but they tore down all the buildings. In fact, everything is pretty well overgrown except for those big runways. It’s kind of odd to go there and still see them, and think about all the times I took off and how glad I was to land on them again coming back from those long missions!