Hello everyone, just a heads up that I’m on mobile so I apologize for formatting or miss spelling.
My great grandfather was a tail gunner on a B-29. Ive know this for years and knew he never actually saw combat, I never truly knew why until the other day when his local newspaper wrote a story about him.
He states in the paper that everyone was trained on the B-29’s in Arizona and after training all the crews were sent to Mariana Island except for ten. His crew was one of these ten. He said he knew they were training for something big but no one knew what it was. After sometime he says five crews from the ten were selected and sent to the pacific ocean.
After the dropping of the atomic bombs he realized his crew was being trained to drop one of those bombs but his crew wasn’t picked.
I really have no reason not to believe him but I would love to have some hard facts! Thanks!
The story your grandfather tells does not line up with how pilots were trained to drop the bomb. The bombs were dropped by the 393rd Bombardment Squadron (Very Heavy) part of the 509th Composite group which was activated on 17 December 1944 in Wendover Utah. This squadron had to be specially trained for dropping Atomic bombs, as it required different skills that a standard crew would not be expected to master. The squadron was sent to Batista Field in Cuba for a period of extensive training in radar bombing from 20,000 to 30,000, and simulated combat missions. The high-level training was especially important, as the atomic bomb could destroy the plane that dropped it at less than 25,000 feet. With those completed, and with the crew familiarized with the special SilverPlate B-29s that were modified to be able to carry bombs the size of Little Boy and Fat Man, crews began to fly to Tinian, with 13 of the 15 bombers en route by June 27th. There the flew more training missions, mostly missions to practice overseas navigation to Iwo Jima, and then practice bombing the Japanese held island of Rota. On July 20th, 1945 the group attacked their first targets in Japan with the pumpkin-colored and shaped bombs that were copies of the shape of Fat Man. These bombs were both training tools and cover story. The odd shape of Fat Man gave it ballistics that was very different from all other USAAF bombs so practice dropping them was useful, and it also gave time to practice the 180-degree diving turn that would be necessary to get a safe distance from an atomic bomb blast. This technique was something no other B-29 crews were trained on, and it would have run counter to their training. They were used against special single targets, that require special attention.
When it came to dropping the first bomb, seven of the groups B-29 were used. One carried the bomb, one was deployed to Iwo Jima as a spare, three were sent as weather planes to assess the weather over the targets, and the other two carried camera equipment and scientific instruments for observation. These escorted the bomb plane to the target and then waited 15 miles away from the target to photograph and collect data. The bombing plane dropped from 31,600 ft and then pulled a 180 diving turn in an attempt to gain proper distance. The second bomb was dropped using 5 planes, there only being two targets left, thus requiring only two weather planes. The drop itself proceeded much the same.
Sources:
History of 509th Composite Group 313th Bombardment Wing Twentieth Air Force, declassified in May 1959
web.archive.org/web/20120127130713/http://www.afhra.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-080128-037.pdf
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes