"The 'formation' and I use that term loosely because you can never have "several hundred" planes in a formation--twelve is tough enough--the invididual formation(s) assembled way up north and departed Sappahoro (sp)
or in that neighborhood headed south for Tokyo Bay. Units and their formations had definite departure times. It was still quite a distance down to Tokyo Bay. After passing over the Missouri (in reasonable formations)
they turned east and then went back to Northern Japan to turn back south and make a 2nd pass over the Missouri. For an individual formation this probably took about an hour or maybe more. That in itself was very tiring for the pilots.
"From the ground it had to look like 'twice' the numbers if someone was counting for they couldn't see the tail numbers. It was timed to be a continual bunch of formations. The second pass, however, and after an hour or more of hard formation flying, the crews wanted to do a little 'sight-seeing' which is hard to do in formation for the pilots at least. So many actually broke formation and many 'buzzed' Tokyo, the Missouri, or whatever.
"When we got back to the Mariannas there was a TWX there from Gen. MacArthur blasting the 20th AF and the B-29's for what many of them had done (poor military discipline, etc.). It probably fell on many deaf ears but it was 'very strong.' "
Earl Johnson
"... our squadron flew over the ocean to a point northeast of Tokyo Bay, flew down across the bay, then after a time turned to sea and repeated the procedure. A great idea, but I understand that other B-29s went off across Tokyo on sightseeing trips. I can only remember a large devastated area off across the bay --- and of course that fleet of lethal-looking warships of all kinds. A most impressive sight."
Andy
