Ferguson: Good program
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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Compromise mapped on guaranteeing of land frontiers
Proposal for delay drafted by U.S.
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Simms: Senators show their usefulness
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE MARIANAS ISLANDS (delayed) – The B-29 is unquestionably a wonderful airplane. Outside of the famous old Douglas DC-3 workhorse, I’ve never heard pilots so unanimous in their praise of an airplane.
I took my first ride in one the other day. No, I didn’t go on a mission to Japan. We’ve been through all that before. I don’t believe in people going on missions unless they have to. And as before, the pilots here all agreed with me.
But I went along on a little practice bombing trip of an hour and a half. The pilot was Maj. Gerald Robinson, who lives in our hut. His wife, incidentally, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the very same street as our White House.
I sat on a box between the pilots, both on the takeoff and for the landing, and as much as I’ve flown, that was still a thrill. These islands are all relatively small, and you’re no sooner off the ground than you’re out over water, and that feels funny.
Odd sensation
If the air is a little rough, it gives you a very odd sensation sitting way up there in the nose. For the B-29 is so big that, instead of bumping or dropping, the nose has a “willowy” motion, sort of like sitting out on the end of a green mb when it’s swaying around.
The B-29 carries a crew of 11. Some of them sit up in the cockpit and the compartment just behind it. Some others sit in a compartment near the tail. The tail gunner sits all alone, way back there in the lonely tail turret.
The body of the B-29 is so taken up with gas tanks and bomb racks that there’s normally no way to get from front to rear compartments. So, the manufacturers solved that by building a tunnel into the plane, right along the rooftop.
The tunnel is round, just big enough to crawl in on your hands and knees, and is padded with blue cloth. It’s more than 30 feet long, and the crew members crawl back and forth through it all the time.
On missions, some of the crew get back in this tunnel and sleep for an hour or so. But a lot of them can’t stand to do that. I’ve heard combat crewmen bring up the subject a half dozen times. They say they get claustrophobia in the tunnel.
A fellow does get sleepy on a 14-hour mission. Most of the pilots take naps in their seats. One pilot I know turned the plane over to his co-pilot and went back to the tunnel for “a little nap,” and didn’t return for six hours, just before they hit the coast of Japan. They laughingly say he goes to sleep before he gets his wheels up.
The B-29 is a very stable plane and hardly anybody ever gets sick even in rough weather. The boys smoke in the plane, and the mess hall gives them a small lunch of sandwiches and oranges and cookies to eat on the way.
Wear regular clothes
The crewmen wear their regular clothes on missions, usually coveralls. They don’t have to wear heavy fleece-lined clothes and all that bulky gear. because the cabin is heated. They do slip on their heavy steel “flak vests” as they approach the target.
They don’t have to wear oxygen masks except when they’re over the target, for the cabin is scaled and “pressurized” – simulating a constant altitude of 8,000 feet.
Once in a great while one of the plexiglass “blisters” where the gunners sit will blow out from the strong pressure inside, and then everybody better grab his oxygen mask in an awful hurry. The crew always wears the oxygen mask over the target, for a shell through the plane “depressurizes” the cabin instantly, and they’d pass out.
The boys speak frequently of the unbelievably high winds they hit at high altitudes over Japan. It’s nothing unusual to have a 150-mile-an-hour wind, and my nephew, Jack Bales, said that one day his plane hit a wind of 250 miles an hour.
Another thing that puzzles and amuses the boys is that often they’ll pick up news on their radios, when still only halfway home, that their bombing mission has been announced in Washington. Thus, all the world knows about it, but they’ve still got a thousand miles of ocean to cross before it’s finished. Science, she is wonderful.
Gen. Marshall: ‘18-year-olds sent to battle properly trained’
By Earl Richert, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
I see they have Nazi prisoners of war helping out with the citrus crops in California. Well, they’ve certainly had the right experience for the job after picking a lemon like Hitler.
Just imagine those mean old Nazis living in this famous California climate. Well – it serves them right. Of course, if the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce reads this, I’m only kidding. You fellows write some beautiful weather. Maybe you should write some propaganda leaflets to drop behind Nazi lines.
Think of the allure in a folder with the lines: “see our Sunny California prison camps. No rains, no fog, no Himmler.”
Goodness knows the Germans should be used to unusual weather themselves what with the current Berlin weather reports reading: “moderate showers of incendiary bombs, heavy cloud formations of American bombers – complicated by advancing Russians and departing government officials.”
There are many B. Huttons, an interview reveals
Very confusin’, says Maxine
By Maxine Garrison
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John Carroll has it bad, calls it ‘pantaphobia’
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Bucs hope to buck player problem
Training date remains same, officials say
By Chester L. Smith, sports editor
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Plans for new brake on debt to be studied
House group to ask Treasury for comment
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Much of surplus is non-saleable
RFC report explains pileup of stocks
By Roger W. Stuart, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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