There
has been a lot of confusion on the name "Ready Betty" and "Betty
Bee". We didn't name V-37 Betty Bee until late in the war. I was
rather surprised when the name showed up on our bird.
A Major
Robinson had his plane named "Battlin' Betty" and a second and
third with the same name. (He sure must have been hard on his planes).
I was
the Operations Officer for the 514th/54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron
on Guam from October 1949 until October 1951.
Back
Row L to R: Ray Brashear - A/C, Dick Hart - Co-pilot, Bud Parsons
- Flight Engineer, Ed Bartenstein - Navigator, Don McCabe - Bombardier
Front Row L to R: Lyle Darling - CFC gunner, Bob Wiggans - Left
gunner, Bob Wagoner - Right Gunner, Charlie Alder - Radar Operator, Ted
Douglas - Tail Gunner, Ian Stewart - Radio Operator.
I must say it was a
very good crew in all respects and we survived some very tense moments.
After a few missions, the Ops people seemed to put us on several undesirable
missions. Of course we were a pathfinder most of the time. Once we were
supposed to lead a three ship formation on target, dropping chaff while
the bomber stream hit the real target. As it turned out, the other two
ships aborted before the climb so we plowed on alone. The attacking fighters
broke off after a few pot shots at us and were diverted to the main bomber
force. Man, it was lonely up there for awhile. After we left Kobe we were
supposed to fly over Tokyo and photograph the damage of the fire raids
of a few nights before. This we did. Since we were alone, the fighters
pretty much ignored us as they had more important things on their minds.
One stubborn fighter stuck with us, staying just out of reach behind us.
Occasionally he would pull up and fire a few rounds at us. Ted would fire
a few back with the 50's and he would retreat just out of range. The next
time he closed in, Ted opened up with the 20mm cannon we had on the bird.
That was enough for the fighter and he did a split S and headed for home.
Another
time we picked up a strange crewman who didn't talk to us much. We found
out later that he was an ECM jammer specialist and our bird had a lot
of special antennas on it. After we bombed the target we had to climb
up a few thousand feet and circle the target for 45 minutes while he attempted
to jam the Japanese radar. I did get a letter of commendation for that
little episode, however.
This
photo shows the right horizontal stabilizer shot off after a long and
harrowing trip back from Kobe on June 5th. I led the entire parade over
Kobe that day. Our Group Commander, Col Moris J Lee, rode along to make
any "command decisions". Fortunately, there were none. The weather
was perfect and Don McCabe, or bombardier, hit the target right on the
money, or rather the Kobe dock area.
The fighter that nearly got us was a twin engine Nick. It was a very good airplane. It had a pilot up front and part way back on the fuselage was a gunner's position. They modified some of the Nicks, took out the gunners position and mounted two 20mm cannon pointing straight up. The pilot flew several thousand feet below the bombers and fired the cannon straight up at us.
I met Saburo Sakai several years ago. He mentioned the incident and he said they were called Gekkos. He said they were quite effective and I couldn't help but agree with him!
See Next Page for Ray's combat record