B-29 Superfortress Then and Now - Guest Columnist

"Betty, Betty, Betty."

That radio message signaled that the first bombs from a B-29 were falling on Japan. The date was 15 June 1944. The plane was the "Postville Express" of the 468th Bomb Group, the first American plane to bomb Japan itself since the Doolittle Raid over two years earlier. The target was the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on the island of Kyushu. It was the start of a strategic bombing campaign aimed at crippling Japan's war industries.

Named after aircraft commander Major Donald Humphrey's home town of Postville, Iowa, the "Postville Express" was one of the first B-29s to see combat operations. The 468th was one of the four bomb groups of the pioneer 58th Bomb Wing, which left the United States in March 1944. Passing through Maine, Newfoundland, Morocco, and Egypt on their way to the China-Burma-India theater, the 58th's bomb groups found new homes at raw bases in India with exotic names--the 468th at Kharagpur, the 462nd at Piardoba, the 444th at Charra, and the 40th at Chakulia.

Even these bases, already at the end of long supply lines, were too distant for Superforts to strike Japan itself. To hit targets such as Yawata, B-29s would have to stage through advance fields carved out by hand labor in the Chengtu area of China. Every bomb, every bullet, every gallon of gasoline needed for a mission from Chengtu had to be ferried over "the Hump," the imposing Himalayas. Much of this work would be done by the B-29s themselves. The "Postville Express" flew eight such cargo missions during its career.

The first B-29 mission of the war was a 100-plane attack on rail targets at Bangkok on 5 June 1944. It was not an auspicious start to the bombing campaign. Fewer than eighty aircraft found the target after a flight in poor weather. Strike photos showed fewer than twenty bombs on target. The early B-29s still had bugs that needed to be worked out and the crews were still learning their trade. Nevertheless, the 58th Bomb Wing was under heavy pressure from Washington to produce an attack on Japan proper.

The head of the Army Air Forces, General H. H. Arnold, directed the XX Bomber Command, to which the B-29s were assigned, to launch a strike on Japan by 15 June.

On the afternoon of 15 June, seventy-five Superfortresses at the Chinese fields around Chengtu made ready to take off for Japan. Following a fiery crash and ten more aborts on or after takeoff, sixty-four planes headed for Japan. At their head was the "Postville Express," piloted by Major Humphrey and carrying Brig. Gen. Laverne G. Saunders, the strike commander. Aboard the planes were eleven American war correspondents and photographers, making this among the most heavily covered missions of the war.

In the black night over the target, speared by searchlight beams, fewer than fifty of the B-29s found their target. No significant damage to the steel works, known as "the Pittsburgh of Japan," resulted. Seven B-29s were lost; among the casualties was Newsweek's correspondent. Although little physical damage resulted, the Yawata raid made clear to Japan the growing danger from America's strategic bombers.

And that danger would grow exponentially. One reason Arnold gave for the importance of a 15 June raid was that it would help distract Japan's leaders from another threat. That same day Saipan, the first target of American amphibious forces in the Marianas, was invaded. B-29 operations from India and China would soon be phased out in lieu of operations from the Marianas.

As for the "Postville Express," her moment in the sun was brief. After thirteen combat missions and eight transport runs over "the Hump," she was retired as war weary and sent home in December, 1944. Perhaps she saw additional service in training B-29 crews for combat. In 1949 the aircraft was scrapped.

Interested in learning more about the Yawata mission? Contemporary articles about it, written by correspondents who accompanied the mission, can be found in Time, 26 June 1944, pp. 26-28; and Life, 10 July 1944, pp. 78-81.

You can reach Terry at:lindell@wartburg.edu

A native of Salem, South Dakota, Terry Lindell earned his B.A. in history at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and his graduate degrees in history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is currently a professor of history at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. His interest in B-29s was kindled in 1995 when a local group of B-29 veterans asked him to organize a program on the bomber's role in the Pacific war.