The Real Last Mission of WWII - Clyde V. Hussey

The growl of 564 Wright engines, even at an idle, can surely be heard by everyone on the island. It is an unmistakable prediction of the mission ahead. There are 141 Boeing B-29B Superfortresses strung out along the taxiways and parking areas of Northwest Field on the island of Guam on August 14, 1945, all waiting for the signal to start tonight's long flight to Japan.

Guam, the southernmost island of the Mariana group, has become a major U.S. base since its recapture. It is also the home base for the 315th Bomb Wing of the Twentieth Air Force. Today's mission was scheduled for this morning, then delayed We have been told to shut down our engines and wait for further orders. The rumor is that the Japanese might make a surrender announcement. If they do, this mission will not be flown.

It is hot and humid, as usual, as we try to get a little air to circulate through the interior of our airplane, lovingly called Horrible Monster. We are proud of these big birds. The Superfortresses represent the last word in technology in World War II combat aircraft. This one has seen us safely through 13 long night-bombing missions, 10 of them flown over the mainland of Japan.

Designed to be a high-altitude, long-range bomber, the B-29 was rushed into production before the prototypes were finished. There were problems, but the airplane got into service on a fast track. By the time we flew Horrible Monster to Guam in the spring of 1945, it was a reasonably reliable and trustworthy aircraft.

We got our B-29B in Kansas, fresh off the assembly line, in the dead of winter. Our first reactions were, in exactly this order:

"Wow, that north wind is cold!" We were walking across the ramp toward the parked airplanes ahead. It felt as though there was nothing between us and the North Pole but the stubble of the wheatflelds that surrounded the air base.

"Wow, that is a big bird!" We first saw it parked alongside a B-17. The B-17 looked like a toy.

'Wow, it looks brand new!" Its unpainted aluminum skin was glowing in the bright winter sum. It was beautiful.

"Whoa...wait a minute...where are the guns?"

There were no guns. As we came a little closer we could see what looked like 50 caliber guns in the tail, but the dorsal and belly turrets were not there. Equally strange were the metal, wing-looking appendage between the bomb bays and the dishlike gadget hanging from the tail guns. We were even more astonished by these things when we got close enough to see that our first impressions were correct.

The bigness of the B 29 was intimidating. The tail assembly looked to be three stories high. The B-17 would nearly fit under one of its wings .The fuselage was like a carefully crafted cigar wrapped in seamless tinfoil. The wings and tail assembly flowed from the fuselage as if the whole airplane had been formed in one giant mold. The tricycle landing gear allowed it to sit level and permitted the huge four-bladed propellers to nearly touch the ground. Incredibly beautiful in spite of its size, but...no guns!

Later, piece by piece, it all came together. We were to he part of a specialized bomb wing, flying only night missions. Our primary targets would be Japan's oil refineries and oil-storage facilities. The "wing" on the belly between the bomb bays was the phased array antenna for a new and secret bombing/navigation radar designated AN/APQ-7 "Eagle". We would bomb from a relatively low altitude using the radar to track and and identify the target.

The guns, except for those in the tail turret, have been removed to increase our speed and range. It as thought that Japan does not have a night fighter that can make more than one pass at us because they cannot match our speed. The tail guns have a new radar aiming sight (ARG 15) that allows the gunner to see a target at night. It lets him know when it is in range so he can fire with a good chance of a hit, even in total darkness.

My crew position is radio operator. At my desk is the newly designed transmitter, made by Collins Radio, that eliminates complicated tuning every time a frequency change is required. That is a real blessing, because my job mostly entails emergency communications, and getting on the correct frequency in a hurry could save our lives. The knobs on the Collins unit whirl and turn to the required settings automatically once the proper frequency is selected. It is a technological wonder compared to the radio equipment we used in training.

A B-29 crewman sleeps. . .

The rear crew compartment contains the APU (auxiliary power unit), a DC electric generator driven by a gasoline engine. It is capable of supplying the power necessary to start the huge Wright Cyclone engines without any outside ground support. We can deliver more than 20,000 pounds of bombs to most targets in Japan. Reducing the bombload slightly will allow us to reach any target in Japan from our base on Guam. With the extra room inside resulting from the removal of gun turrets, the 15-16 hour missions ahead will not be so tiring because we can get up and move around. We are excited and proud to have been selected to crew this remarkable airplane.

I was touched to the point of tears when we first climbed aboard. There, on the bulkhead, just above the radio table, was a note written with a soft pencil. It said "God bless you son," and was signed "Rosie", the universal name for the women factory workers who assembled America's aircraft in the 1940's. I left the note there to remind me of that dear lady who understands and cares that real people are going to fly her airplane. My confidence in Horrible Monster never falters knowing it was put together by Rosie and her co-workers.

I don't remember much about our brief transition training but a few memories are still vivid. First, the picture the secret radar painted as we flew over the St. Louis airport one night. There was about nine-tenths cloud cover over the city, but the radar picture of the airport was perfect. I could see the runways and taxiways clearly. We should have no trouble finding our target in any weather with this fantastic Eagle system.

We were returning to our base in Kansas after one training flight to the Caribbean and someone, the pilot or the flight engineer, said "Let's see how high it will go". We did, and I remember that we were over 50,000 feet when the engines quit. All four of them. The carburetors had frozen. No one panicked, though I will admit that I was much relieved when a shallow dive to a much lower altitude allowed the engines to be restarted with no trouble.

I wondered later if 50,000-plus feet was some kind of a record for the time, but, of course, we told no one about it. We did not discover it that day, but other high-flying B-29's were first to encounter and identify the jet stream. That high-altitude weather phenomenon probably confounded a lot of B-29 navigators before it was understood.

There is one more vivid memory of a lesson learned during transition training. Crew compartments were pressurized and we could fly at high altitude without wearing an oxygen mask. That was great, but it had some interesting consequences. The urinal was a funnel connected to a small holding tank then through a valve and a tube to the outside. Open the valve, and a rush of inside air quickly flushed out any liquid in the system. Then you closed the valve so that higher pressure air from inside the plane could not escape. The proper procedure was to hold the funnel in position, flush the tank with liquid through the funnel, move the funnel, open the valve to flush, then close the valve. You were not likely to forget this sequence more than once. If you opened the valve before moving the funnel, the outrush of air could do real damage to any body part that was close enough to get caught. That device had some real suction at 20,000 feet.

The pressurized front and rear crew compartments were connected by a tunnel over the unpressurized bomb bays so that it was possible, if not easy, to move back and forth. Were it not for the connecting tunnel, the tail gunner would have been isolated.

The possibility of explosive decompression was ever present. The Army Air Forces required that all crew members' tooth fillings be replaced with airtight ones so their teeth would not explode in the event of a rapid decompression. I had a large number of fillings replaced by an AAF dentist. It was the most painful price I had to pay for admission to the B-29 aircrew.

On Guam's Northwest Field this August evening, we are still waiting for the signal to take off. It is 4:30 p.m. local time. At times like this after I have checked everything for the umpteenth time, I do mental exercises like adding up the number of spark plugs that are firing at a given moment. Let' see...maybe 560 engines, 18 cylinders per engine, two plugs per cylinder....

Before I get this calculation worked out, the word comes to start takeoffs....the mission is a go, but we are instructed to monitor the radio closely for a possible recall at any time. We are in about the first third of the lineup, but it could still be an hour before we make it to the takeoff end of the runway and start our run.

The takeoff of a fully loaded B-29 from Northwest Field on Guam is simple in theory. The aircraft commander (the left seat pilot) and the pilot (right seat) stand on the brakes and bring the engines up to full power. If everything looks OK and the flight engineer agrees, they release the brakes and start the takeoff roll. When the runway is all used up, the landing gear is raised and the airplane does what to an outside observer looks like a swan dive off the 500-foot cliff at the end of the runway.

I usually watch from the navigators dome in the top of the tunnel entrance as the airplane sinks below the level of the runway. It is eerie to look back over the tail end and see the runway above us. The pilots and engineer are tense as they attend to the critical task of getting the flaps up and the engine cowl flaps properly adjusted and achieving climb airspeed before the engines overheat or the blue Pacific comes up to meet us.

Someday I plan to calculate how many extra tons of bombs were dropped on Japan as a result of having that 500-foot cliff at the end of the runway. Our gross weight would have to be reduced cousiderably for the B-29 to lift off the runway and immediately enter a climb. That calculation is not so easy but my guess is that thousands of extra tons of bombs were carried to Japan due to the "free" 500 feet of altitude the cliff provided.

The roar of our No. I engine brings me back to the business at hand. Just prior to takeoff, magnetos must be checked. There are two per engine, and they provide the high voltage for the spark plugs. The engine is run up to a prescribed rpm and each magneto is checked by switching off one at a time. If the rpm drops more than the specification allows, no takeoff. Usually, a few seconds of maximum rpm will clear the problem if the drop is due to a fouled spark plug. In that case, a repeat check will be OK.

Number I engine checks out OK and the sound gets closer as No. 2 is run up for its check. The roar switches to the other side as No. 3's rpm increases. I hear a little roughness as the magnetos are switched. It is too much. I just know it. Run up, then check it again. It still sounds too rough. I can't see the tachometer, but the sound leaves no doubt. The rule is that we cannot go if even one magneto on one engine causes excessive rpm drop.

The possibility that we may be left out of this August 14, 1945 mission, probably the last and for sure the longest mission of the war, is just not acceptable to the Horrible Monster crew. We are turning out of line now and heading back to our hard stand.

A couple of hours later a devoted ground crew has Horrible Monster ready to go again and a determined aircrew gets her back in line well before the last of the B-29's is gone. We are the last airplane in the line, but we are going to make the mission. All magnetos check out OK this time as we creep along toward the takeoff end of the runway. None of the crew gives any thought to the fact that those fouled plugs that put us in the tail-end takeoff position will give our crew the dubious distinction of dropping the last bombs of World War II on a primary Japanese target.

It is 7 p.m. when we dive over the cliff and head toward our target in northern Japan. Our night bombing missions do not involve formation flying. The departure interval of less than two minutes is theoretically maintained throughout the entire trip.

The hope is that seven or eight hours later, over the target, there will still be enough separation to prevent running into, or dropping your bombs on, another B-29. It is amazing that it works at all, but it does, most of the time. Usually we seldom see another airplane from shortly after takeoff until we are over the target, in the light of the fires andsearchlights. Then you can sometimes see other B-29's but not clearly or for long.

We were told back in Kansas that the Japanese did not have effective night fighters. On other raids we had seen one occasionally but they were not a serious threat. One night, near a target, a Japanese fighter pilot was flying pretty close alongside us with his cockpit lights on. We could not shoot at him at that angle. He just stayed there, then disappeared. Perhaps he was a decoy, and another fighter was in the dark hoping to make a pass at us if we shot at the decoy so he could see the tracers. Who knows? We were told later that some Japanese pilots thought our radar "wing" was a small fighter plane we carried for protection.

Tonight everything is going great. We could still get a message canceling the mission, so I am paying very close attention to the radio. No message as we pass over Iwo Jima. No message as the coast of Japan shows up on the radar. Tokyo is a long way off our course but I look that direction anyway to see if I can see the light of fires from the daylight bombing. I see nothing. If rumors are correct, every available B 29 is bombing targets in Japan during this 24-hour period. That could be a thousand or more planes.

It would be nearly 50 years before I would understand the significance of the blackout out in Tokyo that evening. James B. Smith's book, The Last Mission, includes a fascinating account of a palace coup executed that evening to prevent the emperor from making his surrender announcement. The coup was thwarted by a series of events triggered by a blackout. It is an easy leap to the conclusion that the B-29 missions of the night of August 14 actually ended the war by causing the coup to fail. Smith makes that leap in his book, supporting it with abundant data from the long-classified files he researched. Of course we we knew nothing of that as we moved closer to our target, the Nippon oil refinery at Tsuchizaki, high on the northwest coast of Honshu, near Akita.

Everything is still OK. It is early morning August 15 now. No message yet and we are close enough to the target that I doubt we will be recalled. I'm not even sure that I would hear the message if it were sent. We are a long way from Guam. We push on across Japan and finally see our target already burning from the bombs dropped by planes ahead of us.

"Bombs away!" The sudden upheaval of our B-29 as fufty-six 250-pound bombs are released makes that announcement by the bombardier unnecessary. We have encountered neither flak nor searchlights, the location of which I am supposed to note and report during debriefing back on Guam. There is some cloud cover that limits my view of the ground, but I see nothing worth reporting The fact that we are able to bomb this target is probably a surprise to the Japanese. Considering its distance from the Mariana Islands, base to all the B-29's, they likely assume only a minimum defense is needed. Wrong again!

We head home now. Wishful thinking supported by the instructions prior to takeoff leads us to believe this will be the last mission. As the coast of Japan slips behind we begin to unwind. We have a long way to go. The engines are purring smoothly at a low power setting to conserve the remaining fuel. It will be close. We may have to land on 100-octane fumes - we usually did. But Iwo Jima with B-29 sized runways, is a couple of hours ahead if we need it.

The sunrise is beautiful. Things just seem better in the light of day. We are returning from the longest, and probably the final, bombing mission of World War II, and all is well. The crew is relaxed and sleepy. I have my headphones on, listening for the surrender message.

My mind flashes back to the mission we flew the night of August 9, just a few days ago. Actually, it was the night of the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Our target that night was a Nippon oil refinery at Amagasaki. It was a well defended target. We had bombed it before, with less than the desired results.

The target was burning brightly as we proceeded along the bomb run. Search lights were everywhere. Flak was thick, but still not close to us. It was breath taking and frightening. We lumbered steadily through the darkness toward the lights and the flak bursts. Suddenly, the inside of the airplane was as bright as day. At least 12 searchlights caught us and locked on. They stayed with us as we moved closer and closer to the bomb release point. The flak was brighter and thicker and much too close now.

Every crew member waited breathlessly for the Bombs away and the steep diving turn that always followed. Finally it came. This time we unloaded forty 500-pound demolition bombs and Horrible Monster shuddered in relief. Darkness returned as we lost the searchlights and turned our tail to the fireworks. A deep breath, the first I'd taken since we started the bomb run, cleared my mind and restored my composure....but not for long. One of the crew in the rear reported that No. 4 engine was losing oil fast. It was shut down quickly and the prop was feathered. The pilot verified that all the crew members were OK.

Losing an engine was not a major problem at that point inthe mission if there was no more damage. We could make Iwo Jima easily on three engines. Of course we had no way of knowing if that was all the damage. We assumed we had been hit by flak, and that there might be more trouble just waiting to show itself.

Preparing for the worst, we took a course that would bring us to the coast of Japan as quickly as possible. It was simply not an option to bail out over Japan We believed the stories that came to us about the Japanese practice of beheading B-29 crews. The preferred procedure was to get a few miles offshore and try for a safe ditching. Allied submarines and airplanes were on rescue duty off the coast of Japan during every mission.

I contacted Air Sea Rescue and alerted them to our possible ditching. Luck was with us, however, and we made a safe landing at Iwo Jima. We got out of the airplane to the sound of an air-raid siren. We ran for shelter and found it in a hole, partly filled with water. The raid turned out to be a single airplane perhaps flown by a less than totally committed kamikaze pilot.. He made a low pass then disappeared over Mount Suribachi.

The cause of our engine problem on the 9th was a flak-damaged oil cooler that was quickly repaired. We made it back to Guam the same day, thankful to our Navy and Marine comrades for providing, at great human expense, that safe place to land.

Iwo Jima is about an hour behind us, now. My flashback ends with a mental picture of the bloody ground battle that finally secured that island and airstrip Our job is a piece of cake by comparison.

I start as the silence of my headphones is suddenly broken by Morse code. It is the messsage. The war is over! Japan has accepted the terms of surrender. Our spirits soar, but we are quickly overtaken by fatigue. Until now, we have been kept awake by the anticipation of the surrender. Now, we sweat over the remaining fuel and watch the horizon for a speck in the mist that will grow to be Guam. We will have covered nearly 3,300 miles by the time we start our final approach

I have total confidence in our flight crew The pilots, engineer and navigator are carrying the load now. The pressure is off the rest of us. They will get us back.... they always do. I make a note in my log: "War over! Going to sleep!"

Seventeen hours after takeoff from Northwest Field the slight bump and squeal of a perfect landing does not wake me. What does wake me is the coughing of the engines as they inhale the last of the 100 octane they can reach. We brake to a stop and my mind fog begins to dissipate. We made it!

It is a few minutes after noon, August 15, 1945. This day is, at this very moment, being celebrated all over the world as V-J Day, the end of the war with Japan. It Is the last day of World War II.

We enter the Quonset hut used for debriefing, get our ration of whiskey (a single jigger traditionally issued to returning aircrews to help them relax), and tell the intelligence officer on duty about our mission. That done, we head for the barracks and some real sleep

Random thoughts twist through my mind in a hazy tumble....thoughts of home, family, thanks for my survival, home...but never a glimpse of the fact that the crew of Horrible Monster and hundreds of other B-29 crews like us, who fought this war up to and past the last minute, are already forgotten from history by two giant mushroom clouds.

Clyde Hussey was a radio operator on a B29B of the 16th Bomb Group, 315th Wing, Twentieth Air Force, during World War ll.