This experienced combat pilot found himself, like most of his comrades, bitterly dismayed by the experience of operating B-29s. “There is no getting around it,” he wrote in December, “we are all scared and scared plenty. This stuff of losing crews on every mission is a hard pill to swallow. It wouldn’t be quite as bad if our losses were just because of the enemy, however planes ditch out in the middle of the Pacific because of engine failure and other mechanical troubles. The thought of landing a $600,000 plane and twelve men on a rough ocean at night, a thousand miles from nowhere, makes men
...more
