Finally, at 3:45 P. M. the three, huge Superfortresses started their engines and with their sides fairly bulging with fuel, taxied out into take-off position. Our B-29 had been designated Number Two behind General Twining who was in the lead plane with Captain William McIntyre of Detroit. The third B-29 was commanded by Major Raymond T. Eakes of Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was a tense moment as the heavy, lead ship used the entire 8,500 feet of runway at North Field, Guam, but they were airborne exactly at 4:00 P. M. as briefed and our crew followed two minutes behind them.

Although the take-off in a loaded B-29 is a tense moment, we weren't too busy to wave to a gathering of people at the end of the runway one of whom was Colonel Henry Huglin, my former Commanding Officer in the 9th Bomb Group which was a part of the 313th Bomb Wing. He was on hand to watch a B-29 from the old 313th go home.

As soon as all three B-29's were in the air and at cruising altitude, we checked in by radio with the leader. Then with our noses pointed westward toward Karachi, India, over 5,000 miles away, we began to "see the world". All we really saw was the all too familiar Pacific Ocean and it looks the same from California to China.

Our course lay just off the northern tip of the Phillipines but by the time we got there it was dark and our only view of the islands was through the radar scope. To look at the scope everyone except the Navigator and Radar Operator had to leave his seat and crawl over all sorts of equipment to get a peek but we had to see the Phillipines.

After a few more hours it began to get monotonous so we were fortunate to have three Pilots aboard. This allowed one Pilot to "sleep'' on a make-shift bed of parachutes, life rafts and jungle knives. Other positions requiring someone awake at all times also had a relief crew member. Actual sleep, however, turned out to be --almost impossible. The steady roar of the engines and the always present thought that something might happen, kept one on edge until it became more pleasant to take benzadrine and keep your eyes open than to attempt sleep. We worked in shifts and almost to a man we found the same result so most of us kept staring out to see what we could see which wasn't very much.

Flying west as we were, we were flying "with the sun". When it got dark the night lasted for almost eighteen hours. All of our sightseeing of such places as Indo-China, Burma and most of India, took place at night and was much more satisfactory through the radar scope than by looking out the windows. If I ever want to see the world it will not be by flying an airplane at night.

The only relief from the never-ending monotony came each hour when we called up the lead ship on the radio and told them we were doing all right. By prior arrangement each B-29 was to perform individual navigation which meant that we rarely saw either of the other two planes except at take-off and landing. As a tribute to the accuracy of our experienced navigators, at no time in the entire flight were we outside a fifty mile radius of each other since the effective range of our VHF radios was not more than fifty miles and none of us ever failed to make the hourly check with General Twining's lead plane.

Across most of India we amused ourselves by listening to the towers of various airfields as we passed near them. We could detect Americans, British and Chinese pilots by their accents and we found their radio procedures were much the same as ours so it made us feel quite at home.