Presentation Date: June 28, 2001
Art Aronsen
B-29 Superfortress Crewmember/Weather Officer, 20th AirForce(GEN Curtis LeMay), 19th Bomb Group, 28th Squadron, DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross). Flew 28 Combat Missions: Japan, China, Korea B-29 Superfortress Crewmember/Weather Officer
20th AirForce(GEN Curtis LeMay), 19th Bomb Group, 28th Squadron, DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross).
Flew 28 Combat Missions: Japan, China, Korea
Weather Office in the Sky
"I figured , the safest thing to be is a weather officer, because you sit behind a desk and tell these stupid damn fools who go flying what the hell the weather’s going to be. And I wouldn’t even know whether it was true or not."
The son of a Norwegian born marine engineer Aronsen graduated from training as a weather officer, and was assigned to Sacramento’s Mather Airfield. He says Mather’s atmosphere as the "country club" of the Air Force, got a little boring so he volunteered to a request for weather reconnaissance with the 19th Bomb Group, 20th Air Force, operating from the islands of Guam, Saipan and Tinian. He spoke at the Golden Gate Wing’s June 28th dinner meeting.
Art wasn’t the first weather officer in the family. His brother was already in the Air Force, serving as a weather officer in China / India / Burma Theater.
In a B-29, a weather officer rode in the bombardier’s seat. From the Plexiglas nose he observed the clouds and gathered his weather information for reports which were filed every half hour. Aronsen says he encoded the data for the radio operator to transmit.
General Curtiss LeMay wanted weather reconnaissance on a continual basis, so he ordered there be a plane over Japan at all times. To accomplish this, a Superfortress took off every eight hours for the overflights.
B-29 bombers firebombing Japan had high loses in the months of November and December of 1944, losses of more than ten percent. By this time, most of the Air Force generals conducting the strategic air war against Japan were those who had led the 8th Air Force against Germany.
"They knew everything, then knew how to do it. But they never flew for five or six hours over the Pacific (1500 miles one-way from Guam to the coast of Japan). A lot of planes went down, not necessarily due to enemy action."
Probably the biggest challenge B-29s had ranging those great distances and returning safely home, was engine failure. Aronsen says he recently spoke with one of the central fire control officers of a B-29, who called the Superfortress "the best damned three engine airplane ever built." Aronsen says about 80 percent of the missions resulted in a B-29 losing at least one engine.
Aronsen says the pilots of Japan’s fighter interceptors were not as skilled as their German counterparts. More often than not, they would simply fly along with bomber formations and call in data to anti-aircraft batteries below. Frequently, they’d make a firing pass or two, then drop down to return to base, although some resorted to ramming B-29s to prevent them from making their bomb runs.
Art recalls the weather mission for which the crew of his B-29 was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. As it was passing through a typhoon over Okinawa, the B-29 lost an engine. "We could have aborted, but you didn’t get mission credit unless you went over Japan." With 18 missions under its belt, the crew decided to continue on to the target. Then a second engine failed, on the same side of the plane.
Art says the flight engineer recommended ditching, given that the emergency strip at Iwo Jima was 500 miles away. Instead, the pilot ordered the crew to dump guns, ammunition, everything overboard. Dumping all this weight involved depressurizing the bomber and then throwing things out through the bomb bay. Lightened, the B-29 made it to Iwo, where the captain radioed the tower that he was coming in to land. When the tower responded that the field was full of P-51 fighters, Art says his captain said, "The hell I’m going around. I’ve got two engines out and no gas. I’m coming in." Disconnecting the radio, the pilot proceeded to make his final approach, while Art says he could see P-51s scattering all over the field.
"The pilot, I admire him... because he was a short guy, yet could jockey that airplane, bring it in." The B-29 was on Iwo two days for repairs before it was flown back to Guam.
On another mission, Aronsen remembers the potential for catastrophe over a broken gas line. To spend the kind of time over Japan for continual weather reports, B-29s on weather operations carried extra rubber fuel bladders in the bomb bay. When a gas line to an auxiliary tank broke, fumes quickly filled the bomb bay. The B-29 was down to about 1500 feet, and a crewmember investigating opened the pressurized door to the bomb bay, which sucked the fuel back into the crew area and soaked the crewman’s pants.
Aronsen says he switched on his breathing apparatus to give him pure oxygen, shutting off any mixing of oxygen and cabin air, which now held gas fumes. Only the crewman in the gun control turret and one other gunner had done so, and everyone else had passed out. Art crawled up to make sure the pilot got only pure oxygen, and when he woke up, flipped a switch to open the bomb bay doors, then a second switch to jettison the tanks. Fortunately, those bay doors were operated hydraulically, as a spark from an electrical switch would have proved disastrous.
Art says he thought of the irony of the moment. Back home, his dad was on strict gas rationing, and here he was dumping the bladder with its heavy fuel load.
Even though the cabin air was clearing, gas fumes made the affected crewmembers sick, and they had to abort that mission.
Food poisoning also hit the crew once. Art says while a mission was delayed, the crew’s food was left aboard, in the tropic heat. Returning from Japan, the crew pulled out their meals, only to find the chicken sandwiches smelled like tuna fish.
"As a Norwegian, I hate tuna fish. I was fed fish my whole life... So I didn’t eat that. I opened a can of fruit. The rest of the guys got sick. We’re coming in to land and the guys were throwing up."
Aronsen says the pilot, with a flak helmet in one hand and the yoke in the other, was coordinating emptying his stomach with his making his procedures for landing. He landed perfectly, and ambulances were waiting to pick the crew up.
Aronsen was sent to Saipan during preparations for the invasion of Japan. For seven days he was put in charge of making ice cream - - that was his week’s contribution to the war effort - - and a duty resulting in Art begging for a flying assignment. The change of pace, though, taught him something.
"I can understand how... you’re at a certain pitch in your sensitivity, your nervousness, you’re really geared up and you get used to that. And that’s the way it’s got to be... Now, (without that activity) you feel something’s wrong. After I got back flying again, I calmed down and wasn‘t such a screwball as I was."
Life on Guam was marked by the presence of guards to protect against Japanese soldiers still on the island, who occasionally came out of the jungle seeking food. Quonset huts, described by Aronsen as "sheet metal bent in a semicircle with a door on both ends and rats running across the beam on top" provided shelter. Except when some of Art’s crewmembers shot through the roof trying to hit the rats, letting the rain pour in.
Art says he was assigned to sleep on a camp cot vacant from a crewmember of another B-29 that failed to return from a mission. He wasn’t too happy about that.
The B-29 crew diet was supplemented by goat and buffalo meat. Water was hung in a canvas bag, usually doctored with a lemonade flavor since the water was desalinated due to a lack of freshwater wells on the coral island.
Blood chits (swatches of fabric with messages of a reward for a downed crewman’s safe return) carried in the crew jackets were complex. Their messages were in Chinese, Japanese, French, Laotian, Thai, and Korean. There were also numbers matching the tail number of the B-29s, to allow quick identification should the aircrew be found. About the blood chits Art says, "I have saved them as a reminder that life many times depends on others. "
Compared with the prospect of being captured, Art feared most the possibility of ditching in the ocean. "They had guys go down and float around, and they never could find them. I had so many flares in my flight suit that I would have sank just from the weight of the flares. But I’d rather take that chance than not have any flares."
The 19th Bomb Group is being inducted into the CAF American Combat Airmen Hall of Fame in Midland this summer, joining the elite company of the Doolittle Raiders, the American Volunteer Group, Eagle Squadron and Tuskegee Airmen.