Unknown Valor by Martha MacCallum

Author:Martha MacCallum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

11

Japan’s Doorstep

I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places / That this heart of mine embraces all day through. / In that small café, the park across the way.

—Bing Crosby singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” in 1944

In hometowns across the United States, families were missing their boys abroad and factories were buzzing overtime, building weapons to win the war and bring them back home.

Ford, General Motors, and Rolls-Royce factories hummed around the clock, building parts, engines, aircraft, and tanks. The shipbuilder Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, was turning out destroyers for the Navy at a blistering pace of one every seventeen days.

The Boeing factory in Seattle rumbled day and night, turning out the B-17 bombers that were the workhorses of the European war. However, the Department of War had put out a call for a new bomber, one that could fly higher and faster and carry more bombs. The top secret project, at a cost of $3 billion, was by far the most expensive program of the war. It was known as the XB-29.

Ninety-eight feet long and metal from nose to tail, the aircraft that would become known as the Boeing B-29 Superfortress could fly at speeds of up to 350 miles per hour and at an altitude of 30,000 feet. It had a 4,000-mile range, making the stretch between the islands in the Pacific and mainland Japan attainable, even loaded down with 10,000 pounds of bombs and equipment. It was a flying silver dragon of cutting-edge technology that boasted the first-ever pressurized cabin. Dual-wheeled tricycle landing gear added stability on landing even for battle-damaged aircraft. The B-29’s five General Electric–built remote-controlled machine guns, which were an early use of computer technology, ultimately made it the dominant, game-changing aircraft of the Pacific.1

But the endeavor to build the “plane that took down an empire” came at great cost. On February 18, 1943, during a secret test flight to measure climb and engine cooling, the XB-29’s number one engine on the left wing caught fire. The highly regarded Chief Test Pilot Edmund P. Allen shut the engine down, and the fire extinguishers were activated. He began his descent and headed toward Boeing Field in Seattle. Then there was an explosion, and radio operator Harry Ralston said, “Allen, better get this thing down in a hurry, the wing spar is burning badly.” In moments, the prototype burst into flames, metal was peeling and flying off, leaving a trail along the ground as Allen successfully avoided the buildings downtown. At 12:26 p.m., the plane crashed into the side of the Frye & Company meatpacking plant. Three crewmembers bailed out moments before impact, but they, along with Allen, seven crewmembers, and twenty employees at Frye, as well as a local fireman, all perished in one of the worst aviation disasters of the time.2

Around the same time in New Rochelle, New York, the Rex Manufacturing Company could barely keep up with the demand driven by the war. Under tremendous pressure and with a

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