Enola Gay by Gordon Thomas & Max Morgan Witts

Author:Gordon Thomas & Max Morgan Witts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Premier Digital Publishing
Published: 1977-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

Tinian Island, 1945

He checked the IFF; the device continued to give out the silent signal which identified the B-29 as an American military aircraft.

The flat voice of a ground controller on Tinian gave Lewis the wind’s speed and direction at North Field.

Now Lewis gave the crew an enthusiastic view of the island. “It’s wonderful! The jungle looks just like in the movies! Those beaches are made for Esther Williams! And the water’s the bluest I’ve ever seen! We’re gonna have a great time!”

After some six thousand miles and three days of flying, Lewis called out the landing orders.

When the wheels had been lowered, Stiborik and assistant engineer Shumard, in the waist blister turrets, confirmed the landing gear was locked in position.

“Flap check. Five degrees.”

Again, Stiborik and Shumard reported when the flaps were down.

“Flap check. Twenty-five degrees.”

The men in the blister turrets confirmed the change.

Moments later, Lewis touched down on North Field and taxied to the 509th’s special dispersal area.

Caron’s immediate—and abiding—impression when he crawled out of the tail turret was that “we had landed on the world’s biggest latrine.”

The bomber had parked downwind of one of the giant cesspools dug by the Seabees.

Lewis guessed he would soon get used to the stench. If that was the only drawback to Tinian, it really was Paradise, with its Quonset huts beneath palm fronds, and paths made of crushed coral kept tidy by smiling natives.

To further a feeling of home-away-from-home, and because Tinian was roughly the same shape as Manhattan, the principal roads had been named and signposted as New York streets.

Broadway was the longest thoroughfare, running from North Field past the foot of Mount Lasso down toward Tinian Town; a splendid highway, over six miles in length, lined with living and working quarters.

Parallel to Broadway, on the western side of the island, was Eighth Avenue, running from the beachhead the marines had established when they invaded Tinian, down past the island’s second-largest landing strip, West Field, and eventually ending at Tinian Harbor.

Hugging the west coast was Riverside Drive, a gently curving road off which were several small beaches and coves.

Forty-second Street was at a busy crossroads in the southern section of Tinian, close to Wall Street, Grand Avenue, Park Row, and Canal Street, which led to Second Avenue, and another group of familiar-sounding roads, Fifty-ninth Street, Sixty-fourth Street, Seventy-second Street, and Eighty-sixth Street.

The 509th were in temporary quarters just east of Broadway near Eighty-sixth Street. When Lewis and his crew reached their huts, they found them empty. Nine of the 509th’s crews were away on a practice mission, dropping high-explosive bombs on Rota.

It seemed to Lewis that he had arrived on Tinian not a moment too soon.

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