War's End by Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney USAF

Author:Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney, USAF
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510724730
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

We got the green light to commence practice missions over the neighboring islands of Rota and Guguan, which were still occupied by the Japanese. Our forces had bypassed those islands because they possessed no strategic value and, with their supply routes cut off, posed no danger to our forces in the Marianas. The missions would give our crews an introduction to theater operations without exposing them to enemy antiaircraft fire. The last thing we needed was to lose one of our specially trained crews while it was dropping practice bombs on an irrelevant target.

The airplanes on these missions would drop pumpkins, but unlike the Wendover pumpkins, these would be filled with Torpex, an enhanced explosive with an enormous destructive yield for a conventional bomb. We would release from 30,000 feet and the explosion would allow us to spot where it hit, whereupon the crew would maintain course until it took vertical photos of its own damage.

After a series of runs we were authorized to bomb Truk and Marcus, where the Japanese had such limited antiaircraft batteries to throw up at us that they would have little or no effect. This provided our first combat conditions, even though these runs were still recorded as “practice” missions by the air force.

On July 20 we were finally cleared to fly missions over Japan. The targets were Otso, Taira, Fukashima, Nagaoka, Toyama, and Tokyo. With the exception of Tibbets and a handful of the men he’d brought in at Wendover, most of the members of the 393rd would be flying their first combat missions. Tibbets, Beahan, Ferebee, and Van Pelt had flown missions in Europe. Captain Fred Bock and Lieutenant Colonel Classen had seen tours of duty in the South Pacific. It would be my first combat over enemy territory. At long last, we were in the war.

These missions over Japan would have the same profile as the real one, if it ever happened. Each airplane would carry a single pumpkin filled with Torpex, drop it on a target, and then take vertical photographs of the damage. Although inflicting damage on the enemy would be welcomed, it was a collateral objective. We were dress-rehearsing for the big day. The crews would be navigating long-range over water to a primary city in heavily defended enemy territory and dropping the weapon visually from 30,000 feet on a specific enemy target. The target might be a factory or a military base or a railroad yard. The goals were accuracy and assessment.

Unfortunately, these missions would also confirm that the fuses were still unpredictable. On at least two occasions, fuses detonated before the pumpkins reached the point where they were scheduled to explode. The airplanes were far enough away from the explosions at the time not to have taken any damage, but after all the tactics and maneuvers our crews had perfected, we were silently aware that for one piece of the puzzle, all we could do was hope that perfection would be achieved.

Each crew would be briefed on

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