Dressed For The Occasion
Things now began to happen fast. We flew a couple of practice runs over the supposedly uninhabited island of Rota. A Jap fighter came out of nowhere and jumped us, and he wound up in no where forever. The Japanese fighters, "Zeros" they were called, were like a gnat attacking an eagle, they never had a chance, but they kept trying no matter what the cost, and the cost was always devastating.
When we arrived we were quartered in tents and had our meals (K rations and C rations) off the back of a truck. That only lasted a few days and we were in a pre-fab barracks and meals were now in a mess hall, thanks again to the Cbs. We were called into the briefing tent one day before we flew any major bombing missions and there we met a new crew member. A tall lanky guy some 6 foot 11 named Richard J. Tregaskis. Dick, as he liked to be called, was a war correspondent and was assigned to our crew to cover the progress of the war. He had plenty of combat experience and was the author of "Guadalcanal Diary" later made into a movie. From here on his articles were titled, "Road to Tokyo" and they appeared weekly in the Saturday Evening Post. My family collected these articles and got a pretty good picture of what we were into. The articles carried pictures of us along with the story. Our letters to our families were always censored and had stuff cut out if we mentioned anything the censors thought might be detrimental, but Dick's articles went straight to the publisher with out censoring. I still have copies of the articles and one day my children and/or grandchildren will wind up with them.
Crew #7 & War Correspondent Dick Tregaskis, Tall Guy Next to Me.
We went on to fly fifteen bombing missions over Japan, knocking out their oil refineries. Without oil refineries, there is no fuel and you cannot be in a war without fuel (gasoline and lubricants etc.) This was having a crippling effect or the Japanese. During our first few raids we encountered fighter opposition and anti- aircraft shelling which cause severe damage when the shells explode and send razor edge shrapnel, known as "flack" in every direction. A hit can set an engine on fire, cause a fuel tank to explode, cripple the aircraft so that it goes down, and who knows what else. The enemy knows when we are on the bomb run because the bomb bay doors are open, and that means we are most vulnerable because we can take no evasive action, we have to fly straight and level to the bomb release point. These little gnats didn't have a chance against this powerful eagle. Everything in war does not always run smooth like we would like it to, we are always running into unexpected glitches. I remember on one particular mission when Moe yelled, "Bombs away" and I checked the aft bomb bay, which was one of my jobs, the bombs were all still nicely hanging there. I put on a walk-around oxygen bottle went out into the bomb bay and with a scewdriver, actuated the release mechanism. Ange, our radio operator did the same in the forward bomb bay, and we circled around and went on the bomb run again. This time they released. Fun and games!
It is a long haul from Guam to Japan and we had some interesting times while making the trip. We would sometimes listen to Tokyo Rose tell us that they were waiting for us to blow us out of the sky. She somehow knew our take off time and how many planes were on the mission and where we were headed, a little unnerving to say the least. We weren't too sure, but it just might have been that our intelligence people gave them the information so that civilians would be given a chance to get out of the area before we arrived, I like to believe that. We did encounter their fighters and the "flack," we brought back a few bullet holes and some minor flack damage, but always were able to blow up their oil refineries and sometimes other nearby structures would also go in the blast. I have a set of 8x10 photographs of all our strikes. Each aircraft was equipped with a camera mounting rack in the aft section. We did not fly in formation but each aircraft was on it's own course, and the first and last aircraft in the raid took the pictures for comparison purposes.
The B-29 was designed for long haul service and was very comfortable compared to its predecessor the B-17 in which we trained. We had pressurized cabins fore and aft connected by a crawl through tunnel. We did not have to wear oxygen masks at high altitude. Thirty thousand feet was a nice cruising altitude, but when on a bomb run we were not pressurized and wore oxygen masks. A flack hit might tear a hole in the fuselage and everything including crew members might be sucked out. In our training we had been through a decompression chamber and knew what to do if we suddenly lost pressure. It was also always a good idea to keep your seatbelt fastened whenever possible. We had flack suits for protection should we get hit, but they were so cumbersome we simply sat on them, figuring that at this altitude any hit would likely come from beneath. For additional comfort we had a port-a-potty in the aft section. It consisted of an over sized bucket with a standard toilet seat and another bucket inserted for easy emptying and cleaning after we got back, it did not empty into the atmosphere. We had a rule on our ship that the first one to use it would have to empty it when we got back. It was seldom used although some were feeling a little more than uncomfortable sometimes when we got back. On one particular return trip Moe, our bombardier, came crawling through the tunnel with more than just a worried look on his face. Moe was having trouble with the Gis, better known as dysentery, he had to go. He lifted the lid and bad news, it had not been used. We had been given box lunches and there was an empty card board box that Moe judged to be just the right size. He peeled off his flight suit and proceeded to use the box. After cleaning up and getting back into his flight suit he proceeded to interlock the box lid and carry it out to the area of the camera hatch. He called me to open the camera hatch, which I did. I watched him place the box between the camera hatch brackets, hold it there while he positioned his foot on top of it. It was bobbling on the air stream and he shoved it out with his foot only to have it fly back and hit him in the head bursting open and making a fair mess of one wall of the inside of the aircraft. Moe got busy and after a roll or two of toilet paper cleaning up, finally got the box, and whatever contents there was left, ejected from the aircraft. When he came back into the aft cabin we all acted like we didn't see a thing. We had already exploded with laughter while watching him through the window in the door. When he came in we asked him if everything was ok, he nodded and we asked him what that brown stuff was in his hair and on his flight suit. We all laughed together now and Moe crawled up in the tunnel and slept the rest of the way home.
To continue reading about Auts' military career, click Combat Missions here, or in the frame on the left.