A 19th
century poetess wrote that good things come to he who waits. In 1880 Violet Fane certainly was not thinking
about a flight in a B-29 Superfortress. But I was.
In 2010 the
Commemorative Air Force lured me to Texas to promote Whirlwind, my history of air operations over Japan. I agreed, provided I could get a ride in Fifi, the only flying B-29. She had
recently returned to flight status, otherwise I would’ve tried to finagle an
earlier flight as research for the book.
Came the day. Time passed. Finally I had to abandon the Midland flight line while somebody finally fetched the fuel truck. Therefore, my speech about B-29s bombing hell out of the Empire of the Sun had suitable audio as Fifi motored off, a basso accompaniment to my oratory.
Colonel
Bill Coombes issued an oral IOU for a makeup flight, valid anytime,
anywhere. So when I learned that Fifi’s 2013 tour included Arizona, I
contacted Bill, and he made it happen.
The 100-mile round trip to Deer Valley was small enough price to pay for
a B-29 flight.
The briefing
was conducted under Fifi’s nose. Our pilot, Colonel David Oliver, introduced
the flight crew including copilot Mark Martin, flight engineer Shad Morris, and
the three scanners/observers. Issuing a
cautionary note, Oliver said, “The B-29 was not built for comfort. It was built for freedom.”
He was
right.
With five
other hardies I strapped into the compartment aft of the wing, where gunners
once controlled remotely operated turrets.
It was a tight fit. And it was uncomfortable. But no matter. When the crew fired up number three, the
R3350 belched a wondrous blue-gray cloud that bathed the Boeing in an oil-rich
aroma. The young lady seated next to me
fanned the air in front of her face. I
inhaled, held the breath, and savored the moment.
Aaah…airplane.
I was
reminded of the Army Air Force summaries I consulted for Whirlwind. The twin-row
Wrights had serious cooling problems for the rear bank of cylinders, causing
numerous fires. Because the cases were magnesium,
they tended to keep burning. As I
recall, 87 percent of B-29 in-flight fires resulted in loss of the
aircraft. One CAFer said, “We simply
could not keep flying the airplane with the original engines.”
The Wrights
required extensive modification--$3 million worth—but Fifi now is fully operational.
Even so, Shad Morris said that the maintenance man hours to flight hour
ratio is 100 to one.
After warmup
we taxied to the runway amid 8,000 horses of engine noise. Considerable noise—shoulder to shoulder, we
could not easily talk to each other. When Dave and Shad came up on the power, the
lightly-loaded bomber surged forward. I
timed the takeoff run at 25 seconds.
Once level
at 5,000 feet, the scanners in the waist blisters signaled we could move
around. Now, I’m 5-foot 8 on a good day,
and I had little head clearance. I
climbed into the main fire-control seat, swiveling 360 degrees. The view forward ended with the muzzles of
the top turret’s four .50 calibers. I
grasped the gunner’s handles, imagining my sight reticle framing a Japanese
fighter flying a pursuit curve on Fifi.
Next I
crawfished my way aft to the tail gunner’s position. No easy task—I had to wedge my way through a
couple of bulkheads, sliding over boxes that once contained ammunition, and
remembered to hold my hat when passing the open hatch with its 200 mph
slipstream.
Returning
to my seat, I marveled at what B-29ers endured.
Our half-hour flight was, as advertised, cramped, noisy, and
uncomfortable. But imagine spending 14
or 15 hours in that slim aluminum tube—twice a typical ETO mission time. And except for the brief period over the
target, the entire B-29 combat flight was over water. A round trip of 3,000 miles from the Marianas
to Japan and back.
Fifi missed combat. She rolled out in July 1945, a month before
other B-29s ended the war with single bombs on two Japanese cities. But Fifi
fulfills a mission seven decades downstream from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She not only recalls an historic era, but
honors the airmen whose prospects for survival in the water and enemy territory
were no better than 50-50. And Fifi honors the men and women who built
her and nearly 4,000 of her sisters.
Debarking
from a bomber three years older than I am, I reflected again—good things come
to him who waits.
