Man on a Mission: a brief biography of Col. James T. Connally by James Connally

Author:James Connally [Connally, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2017-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

Notorious “Cook-offs”

Another bug on B-29’s in my department was a gun that would cook-off after having been fired. After extended firing the guns would be so hot the 50 caliber shell in the gun chamber would actually bake until it fired, thus acquiring the name, cook-off. This was not a great problem, except when this happened the gun was usually aiming at an important part of the B-29, such as an engine. It was my responsibility, as gunnery officer to develop procedures to prevent cook-offs and retrain the gunners.

A few days after starting the procedure one of our bombardiers let one cook-off into an engine, set it on fire, and the crew almost had to bail out. That afternoon I was called into Connally’s office, where I stood in a brace, as he bellowed out, “The next time one of your gunners shoots one of my airplanes, your ass is going to be grass.”

I fired him even though the offender was a friend of mine in Omaha so was really angry with me and threatened me with dire destruction. However, making an example of him in the Army way, really worked, we had no more cook-off damage.

Fairmont was good duty and the time there just flew by. Most of the married Officers lived in the nearby town of Geneva, Nebraska. The government had built some inexpensive housing in a development on the east side of town, where most of us rented apartments. We all became good friends and gathered together regularly to commiserate. We were to learn, in comparison to where we were going only too soon — how happy in Geneva, we had all become.

Bob Allen

Letter from Tom Classen to Bill Price, Feb 19, 2000:

Bill,

I think I might like to read the bio from Maxwell if you will send me a copy. There is a lot about Jim that I don’t know. Another source for you to pursue if you can find the guy is Charles Tilton. He was the executive officer for the 9th BG and knew Jim very well.

What we did—There was another squadron at Orlando that did all the equipment testing and new gadgets were coming out by the hundreds in the early days of the war. These projects all came to the school and those that applied were funneled down to the group. Earl Tash, another friend of mine and of Connally’s, was the CO of this squadron. They had a variety of different aircraft which they used to do the evaluation of these projects. At Brooksville I had 20 B-I 7’s and four or five other types which we used in our training program.

The cadre consisted of the group staff plus the Squadron CO’s which had been gathered up from many different non flying jobs in the AF. During this period the AF was short on senior people to man the higher ranking jobs in a group. They had been checked out in the B-17s but were short of flying experience. The AF was short of everything during this period.

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