Last to Die Read online

  The Dominator’s introduction to combat had been essentially a “milk run,” but Cook and Wells knew that the remaining ten test missions might well be far more challenging and there was a good chance that enemy action might begin to kill or injure B-32 crewmembers. Given that a pool of at least twelve full crews would be needed to meet immediate and projected operational demands and replace any casualties, converting aviators from the 386th Bomb Squadron and nearby B-24 units onto the B-32 was a distinct priority. Indeed, the importance of the conversion training was reiterated by Brigadier General Jared V. Crabb of V Bomber Command, who in a June 1 memo to Wells underlined the importance of “instructing flying and ground personnel on the operation and maintenance of the B-32 airplane.”21

  Given the need to expand the B-32 personnel pool as quickly as possible, Cook and Wells got the conversion-training effort started almost immediately following the May 30 move of the three B-32s and their support personnel from Clark Field to the 312th’s home field at Floridablanca. Classes were established for each crew position, with Cook and the military and civilian members of his test detachment serving as instructors.

  Although men with less flight time or combat experience would require more in-depth training, for the higher-hour aviators the conversion process could be amazingly brief. The experience of “Tony” Svore, the twenty-eight-year-old 386th commander, was apparently typical. Originally commissioned as an infantry officer, Svore had gone through flight school as a lieutenant and by the time he first saw a Dominator he was a veteran of some eighty-eight combat missions in A-20s. His introduction to the B-32 consisted of reading the pilot’s manual from cover to cover, taking a single introductory flight, and then shooting two landings as Cook looked on from the copilot’s seat. After the second landing the test detachment chief officially designated Svore as a qualified B-32 squadron commander and instructor pilot. The brevity of his training didn’t particularly bother Svore; he later remarked that after two and a half combat tours he’d become a little calloused about flying. “It’s difficult to imagine how we did things in those days,” he said. “Our point of view was, ‘if you can fly it, you can fly it.’”22

  But the A-20 pilots tapped to convert from the diminutive and nimble Havoc to the massive, four-engine B-32 faced other issues besides just mastering the differences in size, capability, performance, and tactical employment. Wells, Svore, and the other 312th pilots would also have to adjust to being responsible for a significantly larger crew—in the Pacific theater the A-20s operated with only a pilot and a top-turret gunner, whereas the B-32 carried between ten and thirteen men, depending on the nature of the mission.

  Nor were the pilots the only ones for whom the B-32’s arrival would cause significant adjustments. Armorers used to the not-inconsiderable effort required to load 2,000 pounds of bombs onto an A-20 would have up to ten times that weight of explosives to deal with when “bombing up” the Dominator. Technicians accustomed to dealing with just two relatively straightforward radial engines would be responsible for maintaining four larger and far more complex turbo-supercharged power plants, and the B-32’s electronic subsystems were far more technologically sophisticated than anything carried by the A-20. Even the 312th’s intelligence officers would have to quickly refine existing skills. Long used to planning the sorts of low-level, tactical interdiction and ground-support strikes for which the A-20 was so well suited, the men of the 312th’s intelligence shop would end up being sent to a nearby B-24 unit on Luzon to learn how to plan for high-altitude, long-range heavy bomber missions.23

  Important though they might have been, the issues that surfaced during the establishment and conduct of the conversion training were not allowed to hinder the conduct of the all-important combat test. The success or failure of the remaining ten missions would literally decide the Dominator’s fate, and each would present its own challenges.

  Mission 2

  Flown by Hobo Queen II and The Lady is Fresh on June 12 (528 was unavailable because of a needed engine change), the second combat-test mission originated from Floridablanca and was intended to knock out a Japanese-held runway near Basco on Batan, an island in the South China Sea about halfway between Luzon and Formosa.24

  The two Dominators lifted off at 9:30 that morning and headed northwest toward Luzon’s Lingayen Gulf, then turned northeast and followed the coastline for about 140 miles. Once past the most northerly tip of Luzon the B-32s began a steady climb as they set out over the open South China Sea, arriving over Basco just after 11:30 at an altitude of 16,000 feet. The complete absence of enemy opposition allowed each aircraft to make two fairly leisurely single-ship runs over the target, dropping twenty 500-pound bombs on each pass. The explosives rendered the runway completely unusable, and the B-32s returned to Floridablanca the same way they’d come.

  After the bombers landed, ground crewmen discovered what they at first thought was a bullet hole in the vertical stabilizer of The Lady is Fresh. Closer examination showed the damage had been caused by a bomb fragment the B-32 had picked up on the previous day’s training mission. The time needed to repair her wounded tail would prevent the Dominator from participating in the following day’s strike.25

  Mission 3

  The third mission, flown on June 13, racked up two firsts for the Dominator combat test: it was the big bombers’ initial visit to Formosa,26 and it marked 528’s offensive debut. That trouble-prone aircraft was able to join Hobo Queen II for the raid on Koshun airfield, a Japanese auxiliary strip located 480 miles due north of Floridablanca on Formosa’s extreme southwest coast.27 The field was a frequent target of strikes by FEAF B-24s and B-25s and U.S. Navy carrier-based aircraft. For their strike, the two B-32s each carried twelve 1,000-pound bombs.

  The Dominators were also hauling quite a few people when they took off at 8:00 A.M. local time. In addition to the usual ten crewmembers, each bomber carried four conversion-course trainees and an observer. In the event, the flight turned out to be a perfect sortie for both the crews and the crewmembers-to-be—there was no enemy opposition, and despite significant cloud cover both B-32s made textbook single-ship runs over the already battered airfield, further cratering the taxiways and main runway. The entire six-and-a-half-hour round-trip flight was uneventful, except for the fact that 528 also seemed to have her usual band of gremlins28 aboard: three of her 1,000-pounders refused to drop on the target and had to be coaxed out of the bomb bay over the South China Sea on the way back to Floridablanca.29

  Mission 4

  One purpose of the Dominator combat test was, of course, to determine if the B-32 could accurately deliver under actual field conditions the full range of ordnance it had been deemed capable of carrying. Having already dropped 500-and 1,000-pounders, on the fourth combat mission the participating aircraft—The Lady is Fresh and Hobo Queen II—were each loaded with eight 2,000-pound bombs.

  Again carrying trainees and an observer in addition to their normal crews, the aircraft took off from Floridablanca at 8:00 A.M. on June 15 and three hours later unloaded their lethal cargoes on a sugar mill complex outside Taito, a town on Formosa’s southeast coast.30 Each aircraft bombed individually through scattered cloud cover from 15,000 feet, with mixed results. This mission is primarily notable for being the first time that a B-32 came under enemy fire: the second aircraft to bomb was the target of some twenty rounds of poorly aimed “ack-ack” (anti-aircraft fire), all of which burst at the Dominator’s altitude but significantly behind the aircraft. Both machines returned to Luzon unscathed.31

  Mission 5

  In what must have seemed like a minor miracle to the 386th Bomb Squadron’s maintenance personnel, all three B-32s were able to take part in the fifth mission of the combat test.

  Although a good omen for the future of the Dominators, the strike flown on June 16 proved disastrous for the Japanese garrison and residents of Taito town, who the day before had watched as the nearby sugar mill was largely reduced to rubble. The agent of that looming disast
er was the 500-pound AN-M17A1 incendiary cluster bomb, forty of which were loaded aboard each of the B-32s. The device consisted of 110 individual four-pound M50 incendiaries containing a mixture of thermite and magnesium, all bound together by thin metal straps and fitted with a rudimentary nose cone and tail fins. An adjustable time fuze set before the planes took off regulated the distance each cluster would fall before a strand of explosive cord would detonate—usually at about 5,000 feet above the intended target area—severing the straps and allowing the individual incendiaries to fall free. The cluster weapon could be devastating against urban areas built largely of wood, as the men aboard the Formosa-bound Dominators were about to demonstrate.

  Having taken off from Luzon at the usual 8:00 A.M., The Lady is Fresh, Hobo Queen II, and 528 arrived over Taito town at about 10:30. Flying in a loose arrowhead formation, the three B-32s dropped their ordnance from 19,000 feet through minimal cloud cover. The American aviators didn’t have to wait long to see the effects of their attack. Within minutes, as the narrative mission report recorded, Taito

  was an inferno of smoke and flames that completely enveloped the center of the town. An accommodating breeze spread the fires northward to cover the sections of town that the bombs had missed. Smoke was rising up to 4,000 feet by the time the planes left the target. Two hours later the 43rd Bomb Group passed by Taito, and reported that the fires were still burning intensely, and smoke was trailing 25 miles away.

  The Dominators’ incendiary attack on the Formosa town closely resembled—albeit with slight differences and on a much smaller scale—the firebombing raids being conducted over Japan by Marianas-based B-29s of the Twentieth Air Force’s XXI Bomber Command, and the narrative mission report noted that the B-32 crews “were enthusiastic over the results of this Taito [version of the] ‘Tokyo Treatment.’” Other than a few bursts of inaccurate ack-ack, the attackers encountered no resistance, and all three Dominators returned safely to Floridablanca.32

  Mission 6

  The first five missions of the Dominator combat test had allowed Cook, Wells, and the others involved in the program to evaluate fairly accurately the B-32’s performance in several key areas, including bombing accuracy from both medium and high altitudes. The sixth test mission would address three important capabilities that had not yet been explored.

  The first was the Dominator’s ability to undertake successful long-range, long-endurance combat missions. Though the two components sound similar and are, of course, interrelated, they differ in that range is a measure of how far the aircraft can fly and endurance is a measure of how long the crew can continue to function effectively. Put another way, an aircraft’s range is based on its mechanical reliability and fuel consumption—if well-maintained and correctly operated the machine should be capable of flying as far as it was designed to. However, if adverse conditions inside the aircraft—excessive noise or vibration, poorly configured systems, and so on—cause undue fatigue or stress for an otherwise healthy crew, the flight’s duration can be significantly shorter than it should be.

  The second thus-far unevaluated capability the sixth mission would address was the Dominator’s suitability to operate offensively at night. The first five strikes had all been conducted in daylight with navigation to and from the targets largely undertaken using visual references. Moreover, the bombing on those strikes had all been done solely with the Norden M-9 optical bombsight, a device that despite its technical sophistication would be considerably less accurate at night unless operated in conjunction with the B-32’s AN/APQ-13 radar bombing and navigation set. The latter system—which had not yet been used on an operational Dominator combat test sortie—would allow the B-32s to locate and attack targets at night.

  The third evaluation of the sixth combat mission was of the Dominator’s capability for low-altitude bombing, or LAB, as it was inevitably referred to. The B-32s had proven their ability to bomb targets successfully from altitudes between 10,000 and 19,000 feet, but the ability to undertake low-level attacks against ships would add to the Dominator’s potential value in the Pacific Theater.

  The most efficient combat scenario in which to evaluate the B-32’s capabilities in all three areas, planners decided, was a long-range, night shipping-interdiction mission. Hobo Queen II was tasked to fly the sortie, which would first take her and her crew northwest from Luzon toward the Luichow Peninsula, the southernmost part of China’s Kwantung Province, then southwest toward the port city of Haikow on Hainan Island, then almost directly south toward the coast of French Indochina33 before returning to Floridablanca. The Japanese were known to use fleets of small merchant vessels, often escorted by warships, to move troops and materiel among the coastal ports of the eastern South China Sea and within the Gulf of Tonkin. Mission planners believed there was a better than even chance Hobo Queen II would find a target for the nine 500-pound bombs nestled in her bomb bay.

  Taking off from Floridablanca just after 7 P.M. on June 18, the B-32 reached the assigned search area some four hours later. Hobo Queen II prowled the area at altitudes of 4,000 to 6,000 feet, but when her radar picked up no suitable waterborne targets her crew elected to bomb Haikow. For reasons now lost to history, the bomb run—conducted just before 3 A.M. local time—was performed visually rather than with the help of the AN/APQ-13 and at 8,500 feet. Bombs were seen to impact west of the town’s center, but owing to the darkness no bomb-damage assessment was possible. Hobo Queen II soon turned for home, and was safely back in the Philippines almost exactly twelve hours after taking off.

  Although the sixth mission did not allow an evaluation of the B-32’s low-altitude or radar-bombing capabilities, it did show the Dominator to be mechanically capable of long-range operations and proved that during extended flights the aircraft was not especially wearying for her crew. In addition, the mission demonstrated that the B-32’s radio communications suite worked very well at long ranges and was apparently not susceptible to jamming by the Japanese.

  The last was a capability that would ultimately help put Dominators over Tokyo.

  Mission 7

  On June 19 all three B-32s were sent against railway bridges spanning the Beinan River on Formosa, the intention being to disrupt Japanese efforts to move men and equipment along the island’s east coast. The attack would be part of a much larger Far East Air Forces effort that would also see seven squadrons of B-24s hitting the extensive port facilities at Kiirun, three squadrons of B-25s attacking the railway marshaling yards at Shoka, and thirty-six P-38 Lightning fighters strafing and rocketing the bridge leading to the yards.34 For their part in the day’s activities the Dominators were loaded with 1,000-pound bombs—twelve on The Lady is Fresh and nine each on Hobo Queen II and 52835—with the fuzes set for .01-second delay. An electrical problem kept 528 on the ground for thirty-five minutes after the other aircraft took off, but the three Dominators ultimately joined up and made the flight to Formosa in loose formation.

  The original mission briefing called for all three B-32s to strike first at the two southernmost bridges—at Paiyapai and Rokuryo—and then hit the bridge at Ikegami if they had surplus ordnance. Soon after takeoff, however, the three aircraft commanders collectively decided to alter the plan: Hobo Queen II and The Lady is Fresh would bomb the Paiyapai span, after which the latter aircraft would move on to hit the Rokuryo bridge; 528 would be solely responsible for the Ikegami structure. Though the decision to alter the briefed plan was presumably made to ensure that enough bombs hit each bridge, in the end the mission was not successful: several of the thirty 1,000-pound bombs dropped during the attack were reported as “near hits,” but all three bridges remained intact and usable when the B-32s headed for home.36

  Mission 8

  The day after the inconclusive strike against the Beinan River railroad bridges the B-32s were assigned to hit a related target 130 miles to the northeast: the rail yards on Formosa’s eastern coastal plain just north of the port of Suo.37 All three Dominators were scheduled for the missi
on, but during the engine start-up process Hobo Queen II suffered a voltage surge that rendered the turbo-superchargers on all four engines temporarily inoperable. Her crew had no choice but to abort the mission, leaving The Lady is Fresh and 528 to carry out the strike.

  The two Dominators—each carrying four 2,000-pound bombs—took off from Floridablanca just after 7 A.M., then turned north to parallel Luzon’s west coast before setting out across the 160-mile-wide strait separating the Philippines and Formosa. The weather was initially good but began to deteriorate as the B-32s passed just east of the burned-out ruins of Taito, and by the time the aircraft reached the Suo area the target was completely obscured by clouds. Choosing not to radar-bomb the rail yards, the mission commander turned both aircraft south toward the secondary target—the same Paiyapai Bridge the Dominators had failed to hit the day before. Weather was also closing in there, and just before the bombardier in the lead B-32 toggled his bombs from 10,000 feet the bridge disappeared beneath heavy clouds. All four 2,000-pounders missed the bridge by considerable distances—the farthest by more than a half-mile—and the pilot of the second Dominator elected to move on to another secondary target, a group of military warehouses near the center of the small town of Tamari,38 some thirteen miles southwest of Taito. The sky over the target was clear, and all four of the B-32’s bombs scored direct hits. Huge secondary explosions rocked the warehouse complex as the Dominators circled the area, taking post-strike photos, and by the time the bombers departed the area a roiling cloud of thick black smoke had climbed 1,000 feet into the air.