wildbillpilot

Having to crash-land a B-29 at Yakota AB in Japan because the right gear wouldn't come down. I landed on the left main and the nose gear, but it turned into a crash. Luckily, with a crew of 13 on board we all got out safely and there was no fire. At that time the B-29 was infamous for blowing up if you put it on the ground like that.

Fortunately that was the only time I ever had to land an airplane like that.

Two crew members bailed out, although we were still in control, a navigator and one of the weather officers took the opportunity to bail out.

Well, I was not quite 6 months past 18, and I grew up very fast.

Ultimately I was matured well beyond my years compared to my peer group. As were all of my fellow comrades.

Anybody who says he wasn't scared to death was lying. We were all very well trained, and we knew everyone else in the unit had our back and we had theirs. You could elucidate on stuff like that for hours but I'll try to answer some other questions.

The only other time I was the least bit apprehensive was the time I flew INTO a typhoon in the far east. I had always been trained as a pilot to stay away from severe weather, thunderstorms, etc. and here I am flying a B-29 into the eye of a typhoon! THAT was an experience. After that it became old hat.

Well, they weren't really named... the Battle of the Bulge, it started on the 16th of December, shortly before my 19th birthday.

To elaborate a bit on the typhoon, I was part of just about a dozen or so crews in the far east that did the same thing during the typhoon season. We had a crew of 13 men including myself, weather officers and technicians, and drop-sond operators. (a drop-sond was a technical box dropped by parachute to measure weather phenomenon such as wind, barometer pressure, etc in the eye of the storm as well as the periphery).

We would locate the eye of the storm with radar that at the time was still classified. Doppler radar was still classified at the time. We'd fly to the 50-knot wind perimeter, where 50-knot winds were blowing and fly around the storm.

The second fix we did that at 500 feet above sea level/ground elevation.