1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor: Memoirs of a Flight Engineer

by Donald Cotner

Overview

1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor: Memoirs of a Flight Engineer features the true tales f an aviation officer of the United States Army Air Corps during the final year of World War II. These stories center around an airman's life on the Pacific island of Tinian, the base from which the B-29 Flying Fortress was unleashed against the empire of Japan.

Engagingly written in the first-person, 1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor draws the reader into the human drama of the war in the Pacific theater: the tedium and terror, doubt and wonder, guilt and pride, and finally the joy that peace alone can bring. Numerous photographs complement the narrative and provide an immersive experience.

Suspenseful, enlightening, poignant and often humorous, 1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor reveals the inner thoughts and emotions of a young man loyal to his country and his comrades-in- arms, confident in his abilities and his magnificent airplane, yet longing to fulfill his promise to return to his pregnant wife on the home front. Strap yourself in and prepare for an experience you'll never forget!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462014125
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/18/2011
Pages:	540
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.09(d)

Read an Excerpt

1001 B-29s Avenge Pearl Harbor

Memoirs of a Flight Engineer

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By Donald Cotner

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Donald Cotner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-1412-5

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Contents

Dedications....................v
PART I: PHOTOS, PROLOGUE & PREVIEW....................1
A Photographic Introduction; Papers, Persons, Planes & Places....................1
A Patriotic Award, By Way of Prologue....................21
From Dawn into Darkness, A Preview....................29
Proquotes....................54
PART II: AERO ASSAULT....................56
North of Nagasaki....................56
Kawasaki, Nagoya & Fuselage Philosphy....................62
Shimonoseki, Superdumbo and the Submarine....................74
Beeman....................141
Five and a Half Miles Over Tokyo....................165
Blitz One, Tokyo....................189
Blitz Two – Abort Mechanical....................216
A Little Local R & R....................232
Blitz Three – Osaka....................250
Blitz Four, Kobe....................303
Blitz Five - Bomblets Away....................316
Blockade 101....................338
Ken....................347
Joy....................386
More Bombings, Burnings & Blockadings....................392
Abort, Personnel....................396
The Three Big Bad B's Rebid and Redoubled....................414
Epiquotes....................425
PART III: PEACE....................426
Wing Change....................426
Kwajalein....................443
John Rodgers Field....................446
Mather Field....................448
Camp Stoneman....................455
Union Station....................465
Jefferson Barracks....................473
St Louie, Louie....................482
Lambert Field....................487
Tulsa! Tulsa! Tulsa!....................491
PART IV EPILOGUE....................499
By Way of Pre-War/Post-War Bio-Sketch....................499
Epilogue....................499
PART V POST WAR POSTLUDE....................508
An American/Japanese Afterglow....................508
Acknowledgements....................515
About the Author....................531

Chapter One

A Patriotic Award, By Way of Prologue

Presented at an assemblage of "in-laws and out-laws" at the Herlig Family Reunion, 27 July, 2003

NARRATIVE

During the war time years of the 1940s, beautiful, energetic, patriotic eighteen-year-old Jean Marie Riesinger applies for work in the newly built and occupied Douglas Aircraft Factory, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Her scores in the aptitude test are high. She demonstrates exceptional talent in mathematics. She rates "outstanding" in physical fitness. Douglas hires her immediately and assigns her to the Timekeeping Department.

Dressed in shirt and slacks, right leg cuff restrained by a steel clip, she rides a bicycle along the five and a half- mile circuit of intercommunicating aisle-ways serving the mile-long, 4,000,000 square foot shop floor. At each of the plant's 293 time-keeping stations, she gathers stamped cards and replenishes the supply of virginal cards. She returns to her office.

At her desk, she sorts cards, in accordance with classifications established by the Accounting Department. She totals hours, records sums, and routes reports to the accountants.

Miss Riesinger's rigorous accuracy and expeditious productivity is vital toward the success of Douglas' financial teams, as they negotiate complex contractual agreements with suppliers, and with purchasers, of goods and services. The prime product of worker pride is the swift and elegant twin-engine Douglas A-20 fighter-bomber.

On 25 July '41, at 9:00 p.m., Donald Cotner drives alone toward his home in the eastern outskirts of Tulsa. Lights are strung over the lawn at Yale Avenue Presbyterian Church. It is an ice cream social. Knowing every item for sale will be homemade, Don, a Methodist, stops.

A pretty girl serves him cherry pie á la mode. He soon returns to the same young lady to order chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream. He sits and savors. The pretty girl comes over ... "Don't you go to A. and M.?" ... "Yes, do you?" Introductions and delightful conversation follow. So do a few pingpong games. Before slow-working Don asks for a date, or even a phone number, Jean departs with her parents.

"O.K. Riesinger" is in the phone book. Jean and Don have their first date on 31 July. At 12:30 a.m., 1 August, in an Oklahoma cloudburst, Don drives his folk's Ford into a deep ditch near Jean's house. Jean's Dad rescues them. "Dad" takes Jean home immediately. It's twenty minutes to Don's house. Don can't escape. He hears a twenty-minute lecture. At home he gets a thirty-minute lecture from his mother, for leaving the car in the ditch.

Subsequent dates are blessed with good fortune ... the shortened summer idyll ends. Jean elects defense work. Don forlornly returns to architectural studies in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Declarations of affection flow from pens ... Stillwater to Tulsa ... Tulsa to Stillwater. Scripted, signed professions of passion document the binding, undeniable, indisputable, irrefutable truth of eternal commitment. Sans symbols of gold and stone, sans public utterance of ceremonial vows, their future is sealed.

On Christmas Eve of 1942, Miss Riesinger becomes engaged to Donald Cotner, U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve. On 23 May 1943, Don is called to active duty as an Aviation Cadet. He is assigned for training, as an Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Officer, at the Air Corps Technical Training School, Yale University.

On 27 November '43, Jean rides a Greyhound bus from Tulsa to Little Rock, Arkansas. There she connects with Bonnie Blacklock, wife of David Blacklock, Don's cadet roommate. The two women drive 1,851 miles in Bonnie's 1935 Chevrolet, to New Haven, Connecticut.

At 1900 hrs. Saturday, 4 December '43, in Dwight Memorial Chapel, Yale Campus, Jean and Don are married by Capt. William Green, Chaplain, U.S. Army Air Corps. Bonnie is bridesmaid. David is best man. Dick Davis, a cadet comrade, and his wife, Marie, are present. In Jean's parents' absence, Don's Dad, George, gives Jean away.

At 1350 hours Sunday, 5 December '43, Professor William Colbert*, Don's Electronics Instructor, and his mother, Mrs. W.M. Colbert, host a reception in their New Haven home. Chaplain Green sends regrets. All other wedding celebrants attend. Don's mother, Vera, brings a home-baked three-layered "Pineapple Upside-down Cake"; it is her original-recipe specialty. Don wonders. Can Jean cook? Will she learn?

Gifts are few, small and inexpensive. Jean and Don appreciate them ... But ... Don has a guilt-tinged muse ... In our some-time future home ... as she serves the punch ... Will Jean ever be able to say, "This cut-glass bowl was a wedding present from my dear Aunt Birdie?"

On Sunday, 5 December '43, at 1445 hours, David and Don's twenty-hour weekend leave will expire in fifteen minutes. With sorrowful good byes all around, the two men run to the campus.

At 1600, on New Haven's Town Green, to the music of the "Jersey Bounce" and the "St. Louis Blues", played by the Army Air Corps Band, led down the field by Colonel Glen Miller, the Cadet Corps passes in review. Bonnie and Jean wave as their husbands go by. It is a wave "goodbye" till 1800 hours next Saturday.

Jean and Bonnie return to their lonely rooms in an oversized antiquated firetrap of a lodging house, the only space near the campus they find for rent.

Bonnie's room is on the third floor. Poor Jean climbs a twisted staircase from floor three to her tiny gothic garret cell. She looks into her room. She cries. She sees one small window, an undersized single bed, a little table holding a few non-matching dishes plus a pot and a pan, hooks on the wall in lieu of a closet, a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, an open-flame two-burner cast-iron cook-top/space-heater sitting on a three-drawer chest.

The communal toilet room is on the third floor below. Its lavatory is Jean's single source of water. The lavatory and the tub, plus her portable nine by twelve-inch brass scrub board, are her main laundry resources. She hangs personal things to dry on a string in her room. Bulkier items she lugs to lines strung in the cellar.

Bonnie and Jean apply for war work. Whitney Blake Electric Company hires each of them.

Whitney Blake likes Jean's quick response to visual and auditive stimuli. She is assigned to Quality Control of message-line production. Whitney Blake winds the wire onto 1,001-foot reels and delivers it in million-foot lots to the U.S. Army signal Corps. The Corps uses the wire to establish and maintain battlefield communication systems.

3 March 1944: Don graduates from the Yale program and is commissioned 2nd Lieutenant. He is assigned to B-29 school at the Boeing Factory in Seattle. Jean and Don depart. They pause in the District of Columbia for a brief visit with Don's mother and dad.

4 March 1944, 2200 hours: Sans reservations, Jean and Don board a train for a five-night ride to Seattle. They learn that seating and sleeping accommodations are sold out. They sit up in the smoking car. Jean is allergic to tobacco smoke.

5 March 1944, 0100 hours: The conductor shakes Don awake, "I have an upper berth, if you and the lady wish to share it." We share. It's tight, but we know this five-day cross-country trip is the closest thing to a honeymoon the Air Corps will ever grant us. We're young. It's fun.

In Minneapolis, passengers depart. New passengers board. Jean returns to our seat, "I met a woman in the ladies room. She was brushing rice from her hair. She barely caught the train after marrying a 2nd Lieutenant from Yale. They are the Delahantys ... Eddie and Jane Don thinks, Eddie Delahanty and his bride are on this train?

Jean and Don, and Jane and Eddie, find a house to share in Seattle. Jean and Jane buy the groceries, cook the meals, and manage rationing coupons.

Counting the commute to the factory, Eddie's and Don's six-day week is long, but they are free every evening and all day on Sunday. The newlyweds enjoy Seattle.

30 May 1944: Don graduates at Boeing. The Air Corps assigns him to Flight Engineers School, Lowery Field, Denver, Colorado. Jean accompanies him. They find an apartment of their own. Jean manages the food rationing coupons alone. They buy a '36 Studebaker sedan. Don rides streetcars to Lowery to accumulate gasoline coupons. They use a few precious gallons of gas on sightseeing cruises. Jean and Don love Denver. They love each other.

8 Sept. 1944: The Air Corps awards Don his Wings and assigns him to the 9th Bomb Group for combat flight training. Jean and Don drive to McCook, Nebraska via Tulsa. They visit Jean's mother, Emma, father, O.K. (Otto Karl), and brothers, Frank and Teddy. Jean visits an obstetrician. Pregnant? ... Yes.

Jean's Dad knows a filling station owner who gives them extra gasoline coupons. Sans fuel-supply worries, Jean and Don depart for McCook.

Jean and Don share a big farmhouse near town with Mrs. Smith (owner), Henry Smith (adult son), Okie Blugs (an Air Base M.P.) with Maggie (his wife) and Chuck Meeks (a 9th Group Bombardier) with Nancy (his wife).

Tenant couples share bathroom facilities. All wives and Mrs. Smith share laundry facilities, namely an ancient Maytag with a hand-crank rubber-roller wringer. Jean hangs her washing out to dry. It freezes. She thaws it in the house. She spreads newspapers to catch the drips.

All women share kitchen facilities, including a monstrous cast-iron-kilnof-a-cooking-stove water-heater combination. Henry faithfully fills the firebox with timbers. Nebraska winter arrives early. Chill saturates the house. In bed we have mattress, comforter and bolster of feathers, plus youthful ardor, to keep us warm. Out of bed, we spend much time in the communal kitchen. When we become overheated, we retire to our own room to cool down before nesting into the feathers.

During daytime, 9th Group wives hang out at the Officers Club on base. Jean becomes a Charter Member of the Pregnant Wives Club.

The Officers Club throws a costume ball. Jean cuts armholes and leg holes in an olive-drab barracks bag. She is "Private SNAFU" (from a newspaper cartoon character. The acronym abridges an endlessly iterated soldierly lament, "Situation Normal, All Fucked Up"). Jean wins Grand Prize, Best Dressed Woman. The judges want to loosen the drawstrings and peek inside to prove her title is honest. Don doesn't let majors and colonels pull rank on him, a lowly 2nd Louie, nor on his private little Private. Judges settle for a pat of her padded belly ... from outside the bag.

20 Dec. 1944: Forty-five factory fresh B-29s are delivered to the McCook Air Base. A crew is assigned to each. Captain Feil gets Serial No. 224876. All soldiers are superstitious. The crew believes the sum of the last three digits is a lucky number.

21, 22 Dec.: Each crew inspects, test flies and accepts its airplane.

23 Dec.: The 9th flies in its first group-formation to Herrington, Kansas. (In training the forty-five crews had shared three B-29s, four B-17s, and thirty-eight broomsticks.) Jean, with three pregnant passengers, drives the Studebaker. In Herrington, the Group has six days of "staging" for overseas duty.

25 Dec. 1944: Our holiday is poignant, and swift in passing. Past our window snow falls ... and falls ... It silences the little city ...

Our room in the inn is warm and cozy ... We lie on our bed ... We glory in the beauty of our bare young bodies ... The babe in the womb senses the touch of soft hands on Jean's sweet belly ...

The babe moves ... it kicks ... Jean speaks the chosen names, "Merry Christmas, little Donna Marie. Merry Christmas, little Karl George. We can't know which till you get here". We have a pretty little tree here, just for you". We meditate in awe and delight ... We croon soft carols ... We tell the babe of Christmases to come, but as we contemplate a future ... we wonder in silence ... as we wonder ...

9 Jan. 1945: Jean and Don say goodbye. The 9th Group flies off to war. The heading is west. Destination is not revealed.

Jean's brother Frank arrives via bus from Tulsa. Frank chauffeurs Jean to Tulsa in the Studebaker.

After departing the California coast, Capt. Feil opens sealed orders, "We are heading for Tinian". The crew puzzles ... Tinian? ... What is Tinian? ... Where is Tinian? ...

25 February 1945: Don and his B-29 comrades-in-arms begin to earnestly assault Japan's home islands.

13 April 1945: Don, over Tokyo, delivers bombs; Jean, in St. Johns Hospital, delivers Little Cadet, Donna Marie. Jean's dad sends Don a wire.

1 August 1945: The B-29s, and the U.S. Navy, hold Japan quarantined, via blockade, from intercourse with any outside entity. Japan is defeated.

6 August 1945: The Enola Gay drops "Little Boy" on Hiroshima.

9 August 1945: Bock's Car drops "Fat Man" on Nagasaki.

2 Sept. 1945, 0840 hours: The 9th Group parachutes food and other necessities of comfort and weal, to American prisoners at a camp north of Nagasaki. It is Don's thirty-third, and last, mission.

2 Sept. 1945, 0840 hours, plus sixteen minutes: Japan surrenders.

11 Oct. 1945: At Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, Don is separated from service. He flies, via Braniff Airlines, to Tulsa. Jean, Donna and Don are united.

AWARD

For honorable and excellent service in the manufacture of arms, for suffering the sometime horrors of wartime housing, for enduring the necessities of material shortages and the officiousness of rationing, for comforting your special airman with love and the commitment of marriage, for regularly sending your husband messages of solace, cheer, and love across long months, and many miles, of separation, for bearing our babe sans the support of my presence, for braving the terrifying possibility that little Donna may never see her father, for the sum of all these things, though nearly sixty years late, I hereby award this Medal:

WOMEN ON THE HOME FRONT, 1941 THROUGH 1945 TO MY DEAR WIFE, JEAN MARIE COTNER MATRIARCH OF THE HERLIG FAMILY

Donald Cotner Long time ago 1st Lieutenant U.S. Army Air Corps

From Dawn into Darkness, A Preview

First Published 1995, Chapter 6 – Mission Procedures, 9th Bomb History, Lawrence Smith, Ed.

5 June, 1945, 04:47: Dawn comes gently to the Southern Islands of the Mariana Chain. On Guam, Saipan and Tinian, earth and all earthly objects are dimly illumined by the cool lavender-gray radiance softly suff using the air. At the island encampments of the twenty Bomb Groups of the fi ve Bomb Wings, comprising the 20th Air Force, no reveille sounds, yet offi cers and men are summoned from sleep, some by the clocks of the diligent, some by the call of conscience, to the duties of the day.

On Tinian, in the 9th Bomb Group Encampment, men yawn and stretch. They relax, pause and rest a bit. They gather their wits. Goats, of a flock liberated from Japanese rule, goats gone half-feral and yet still half-tame, frolic and gambol through the streets and walkways of their adopted Bomb Group.

Continues...

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