Fleet’s air attack on Tokyo blasts 233 planes, 31 ships
Great Jap aircraft plant 75 percent destroyed – nine carrier planes lost
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Editorial: Keep the blood coming
Blood plasma collected by the Red Cross is defeating death wherever our men are fighting. Its value is beyond price.
Now whole blood, as well as plasma, is being flown in iced containers even as far as Iwo Jima. On that bitter island our casualties are appalling, but our death rate is relatively low.
Says one surgeon on the scene:
I know five men whose lives definitely were saved by whole blood and plasma. Plasma replaces the blood fluid, but not the cells.
Tell the folks at home to keep it coming.
Please note that last sentence. The Red Cross will show you how. Just telephone GRant 1680 for an appointment. Or drop in at the Wabash Building Blood Bank without an appointment.
Gen. Arnold: Must maintain air force to avoid attack
U.S. will be first target in next war, general warns in reviewing year’s record
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Monahan: Mae West queens it in opulent show
She’s a siren whom no man can resist in Catherine Was Great
By Kaspar Monahan
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE MARIANAS ISLANDS – When you see a headline saying “Superforts Blast Japan Again,” I hope you don’t get the idea that Japan is being blown sky high and that she’ll be bombed out of the war within another week or two,
Because that isn’t the case. We are just barely starting on a program of bombing that will be long and tough. Even with heavy and constant bombings it would take years to reduce Japan by bombing alone. And our bombings are not yet heavy.
Too, we have lots of things to contend with. Distance is the main thing, and Jap fighters and ack-ack and foul weather are other things. The weather over Japan is their best defense. As one pilot jokingly suggested, “The Nips should broadcast us the weather every night, and save both themselves and us a lot of trouble.”
Almost the first thing the B-29 boys asked me was, “Do the people at home think the B-29s are going to win the war?”
I told them the papers played up the raids, and that many wishful thinking people felt the bombings might turn the trick. And the boys said: “That’s what we were afraid of. Naturally we want what credit we deserve, but our raids certainly aren’t going to win the war.”
Out of proportion
The B-29 raids are important, just as every island taken and every ship sunk is important. But in their present strength it would be putting them clear out of proportion if you think they are a dominant factor in our Pacific war.
I say this not to belittle the B-29 boys, because they are wonderful. I say it because they themselves want it understood by the folks at home.
Their lot is a tough one. The worst part is that they’re over water every inch of the way to Japan, every inch of the way back. And brother, it’s a lot of water. The average time for one of their missions is more than 14 hours.
The flak and fighters over Japan are bad enough, but that tense period is fairly short. They are over the empire only from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on their target. Jap fighters follow them only about 15 minutes off the coast.
What gives the boys the “willies” is “sweating out” those six or seven hours of ocean beneath them on the way back. To make it worse, it’s usually at night.
Ditching usually fatal
Some of them are bound to be shot up, and just staggering along. There’s always the danger of running out of gas, from many forms of overconsumption. If you’ve got one engine gone, others are liable to quit.
If anything happens, you go into the ocean. That is known as “ditching.” I suppose around a B-29 base you hear the word “ditching” almost more than any other word.
“Ditching” out here isn’t like “ditching” in the English Channel, where your chances of being picked up are awfully good. “Ditching” out here as usually fatal.
‘Buddy System’ helps
Maybe you’ve heard of the “Buddy System” in the Infantry. They use it in the B-29s, too. For instance, if a plane is in distress on the way back and has to fall behind, somebody drops back with him to keep him company.
They’ve known planes to come clear home accompanied by a “buddy,” and you could go so far as to say some might not have made it were it not for the extra courage given them by having company.
But the big point of the “Buddy System” is that if a plane does have to ditch, the “buddy” can fix his exact position and get surface rescuers on the way.
The other morning after a mission, my friend Maj. Gerald Robertson was lying in his cot resting and reminiscing, and he said:
You feel so helpless when the others get in trouble. The air will be full of radio calls from those guys saying they’ve only got two engines or they’re running short on gas.
I’ve been lucky and there I’ll be sitting with four engines and a thousand gallons extra of gas. I could spare any of them one engine and 500 gallons of gas if I could just get it to them. It makes you feel so helpless.