Wow. Thanks for telling us about your dad. Was he very disapointed he didn't get to go?
Good Morning stand watie.
Free Dixie!
I remember the first time I saw that Earthrise picture. It was awesome, still is!
Straight talk from him.
Wish tehre were more who'd say it like that without any retribution.
But these days, step on anyone's toes even a little, and you lose rank, or have some effite pantywaist block promotion on you or worse.
Need more people like him both in uniform and in civilian life.
Thank you, Sam. I had heard about these leaflets, but was unsure if it was true. Neither did I know where to even go to check on it. You did though. :-)
A "P.S." to my post this morning. Our Methodist church is requesting the loan of special American flags to hang in the church from Memorial Day to July 4th. I have loaned them the flag that draped my father's casket in 1945. If this turns out as well as hoped, I would like to send you a picture of the church decorated with the different flags. Can I send you a digital picture via a private post? I am so pleased and proud that our current minister is so pro veterans/military.
Hello.
Been wandering, as I do.
IMHO That's a lame name for a B-29. :-(
PC is going to be the death of this Country.
It's preventing the military from doing it's job, it's allowing Arab terrorists to enter and live in our Country, it's preventing us from protectiong our borders and it's allowing millions of illegals to bankrupt our cities and States.
John,
I read much of this page.
The story of your dad, has been one of the few things to help put a grin on my face; been too long.
I easily picture you, in your father's writing; his, your, sense of humor ("going in the 'right direction'") is a match. Along with his, your, sense of adventure.
Brig. General Paul Tibbets lives rather quietly, down the street, so to speak. In general, people don't, and they aren't able, to bug him. I imagine him to be a pretty self-determined character, though I have never met him.
About twenty years ago, Maj. General Charles Sweeney (*Great Artiste* and *Bocks Car*) showed up with his wife, at friends of ours up in northern Michigan. It was one of those "mutual admiration society" things, in both he and my dad discovering they had several mutual friends in the U.S. Army Air Corps - U.S. Army Air Force - U.S.A.F.
In one of the above photos, is General Davies. Davies showed up one day (1941) at Randolph Field, or Kelly Field (I don't recall which), and had my father spend the entire afternoon flying him all around Texas. Davies took along a copy of the *Saturday Evening Post* and quietly spent the entire afternoon appearing to be reading it in the back seat (AT-6) or viewing the countryside.
I believe that Davies was making a measure of the results of the training command in Texas, based upon such examples. Yet I also wonder if it did not have something to do with my dad becoming "a maintenance engineer."
One of the reasons that I am a stickler about airfield security, is because it was part of the environment wherein the projects were conducted.
For example, pertaining to the above story, the U.S. Secret Service had personnel assigned to the protection of each C-54 (Douglass DC-4), because these aircraft carried so many VIP's and so much important/urgently needed material.
Keeping those aircraft performing the circuit around the world, and preparing them for the estimated workload in the event of invading Japan, was a lot of work; and it required secrecy, because we did not want to play our hand, nor did we need saboteurs messing things up.
Wherever the C-54's went, had, as you know, technical requirements.
Wherever the C-54's went, they brought back the wounded, only fleeting photos of which, or an old newsreel of which, has the public an inkling.
The plan was to bring back as many of our casualties as possible, by way of these aircraft, flying routes to and from the Pacific Theatre War against Japan.
On the trip out, the aircraft would carry people and material. In the 'right direction,' they would carry the wounded.
For the invasion of Japan, the estimated casualty loss was 700 men per day. That is 700 litters per day. That comes to 25 to 30 C-54 aircraft landing in the States, from the Pacific Theatre, per day, carrying wounded Americans.
Every day of the week for how many months?
Not to mention the dead.
The numbers of people who would need attention and care, when actually planned out on the charts of how to perform the jobs required to get it all done, is more accurately the picture presented to President Truman by the Joint Chiefs.
All that, combined with the daily failure for four years running, of the Russians, who could have at least lent us some airfield room and dockspace ... but did not. In fact, they interned our people and seized our aircraft and equipment. As you know, their "Bear" bomber was developed upon their "reverse engineering" a B-29 that they never returned to us.
Not only have the leftists never apologized for the massacres by communism, the leftists particularly at university, have never directed their attention to our "Ally," and revealed to the students, the Soviet Union's failure to help us by at least loaning us a little space to work from, against Japan.
In my opinion, Stalin was obsessed with conquering central Europe and realized early on, that to help us in the Pacific, would have earlier led to the containment of Japan and freed up our forces to rotate to the European Theatre where they probably would have captured the terrority that Stalin sought.
Perhaps, if the Russians had not so helped Japan, and instead had thrown their weight behind the Allies fight against Japan, then Japan might have missed out on the use of the atomic bombs.
Still, they were our bombs and our decision, and it was the 'right direction,' because it saved the lives of probably close to a million people.
Furthermore, the Japanese culture is unique, in that it, in contrast to several others, had the self-discipline to bear the attacks, and thus Japan, in effect, saved the world, because we saw how terrible the bombs are, through actual use ... instead of our not using them then, and leaving their much worse application in the hands of politicians and militarists who, I suspect, would be more likely to use them without such a mind-checking experience restraining them.
You might say, that in effect,
We are all Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, by the blessings of the Japanese and God's forgiveness. We have seen quite enough of the kind of demonstration necessary to stop madness, in contrast to what leftists claim would have worked by making a loud bang off in the horizon.
During the war, on two occasions, at Wright-Patterson and then at Kirtland, my dad observed the B-29's mentioned in the above story, as they were being prepared. He says that, when he saw that big hole in the belly, "they knew something was up."
The B-29's went through some of the design feasibility studies at Wright-Patterson, and then were test flown from Kirtland, carrying fake "bombs," because of the plateau drop off at the west end of the runway, there.
Weight was a big problem. They needed a drop at the end of the runway, so that the aircraft would have a flying chance in the event of some difficulties. All interested personnel, standing at the edge of the airfield, tense for the duration of "the show."
Pop watched some of the takeoffs. He says that the B-29 would sink and then follow the downhill slope to the Rio Grande, building airspeed, whence it would begin to climb up the western slope from the Rio Grande. The whole of it being roughly a "10 mile takeoff" at which point the aircraft would have climbed back to the runway's altitude. There was much to learn about making the B-29 lighter and more efficient.
Later, the model of the air plan for the relief of our people from the Battle of Japan, was used as the model for the 1948 Berlin Air Lift.
My dad became involved in the B-47 project, the look-down attack RADAR and training systems, among others.
I really, really, really miss the determination of these people.
If not for my parents still being in reasonably good shape, and you and Joanie and some other daring souls, here, I would feel quite alone.
Thank you,
Mike
