The mission. Tinian to the Osaka shipyard. 1944. (my final exam when I was about 14.)

(Or how I was a victim of child abuse by current standards.)

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This took place almost 60 years ago and the details may be off and the times mistaken but it is the best I recall.

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I begin.

I've mentioned before that I was doing poorly in math early on and my genius father clear out of the blue asked me if I wanted to learn to navigate a B-29.

What kid could refuse such an offer? I jumped on it only to find myself at the kitchen table anywhere between about 3 to 7 nights a week for about 8 months. Maybe it was longer than that. by the time it was over I had a stack of Big Chief writing tablets about three feet tall full of calculations of various types.

Dad had a box of stuff in the upstairs closet left over from WW2 and most of it was books. Books that were full of tables and formulas. I had snooped through them a few years back but they didn't look too interesting so I had simply put them back and never asked.

The night after I told him I wanted to learn what he had offered he told me to get the box and he started shuffling through it. Most of the stuff was dated 1944, but not all. Some was dated earlier, some as late as 1945.

Anyway, my father taught me celestial navigation at the kitchen table along with a lot more than that. Sun shots, star shots, wind vectors, plotting, you name it. During the clear, cold winter nights he taught me the stars of the Northern hemisphere. I can remember laying on my back in a nearby field freezing my a$$ off while he pointed them out to me.

Looking back on it, I wish I had a shot or two of cognac to keep me warm but that was LONG before I knew of its warming qualities. 

After months and months Dad asked me what kind of final I wanted. 

"Just want to do the work on actual flying or want to fly the whole mission?" he asked. "From getting up to hitting the rack. You call it."

"I want the whole mission," I said. I didn't know what I was in for.

"I was afraid of that," he said. "Actually I expected that. You asked for it."

We spent a couple more nights at the kitchen table and one (IIRC) Friday night dad said I needed a break and to sack out early because he had an idea we needed to get up early for. I had heard him talking to my mother about taking me fishing.

0100 Saturday. "Wake up, Kiddo. You're flying lead navigator today. Breakfast is in 20 minutes. Synchronize your watch, dress and get to the mess hall. Eat a lot. You've got a big day ahead of you."

I was a shortwave listener at the time and simply reached over to the power supply for the surplus receiver and clicked the toggle switch. 

Thunk.

I waited for it to warm up and grabbed my watch. It was mechanical and lost 2 seconds a day. Then I spun the dial to 3.33 MHz, CHU Canada, Eastern Standard time. I added 4 or 5 (I forgot which) hours to the CHU reading to get UTC (Then IIRC GMT) and got the watch synchronized. Accurate time is essential to a navigator.

Then I hopped out of bed and climbed into jeans and a shirt and headed upstairs where the bacon was sizzling. There was a large glass of OJ on the table and Dad crammed the chow into me. I was stuffed. "God bless your appetite," he said with a big grin. "You'll need every bite of it before this is over. Briefing is at 0230."

After I hogged down I went over my 'navigators bag' and checked its contents according to my check list and threw in a couple of extra pencils. (remember them?) Dad handed me an unused chart of the Pacific between the Marianas and Japan. We had several and I found out that Dad had gotten them from the National Geographic Society. My mother had offered to type his request but Dad refused the offer. He had written them a letter asking them for a few charts with a pencil on a Big Chief tablet, explaining what he wanted them for, to teach his son navigation. The society had sent him a stack of them.  

Back in the day home spun letters from a kitchen table commanded respect and the Society sent us a bunch of them, free. They were pretty generous in those days, especially if it was for learning.

The briefing took about an hour and took place in the living room. He has an improvised easel and had a chart and some improvised things set up and took a whole hour explaining all the details. We were to bomb an imaginary shipyard in Osaka, Japan. Some of the pictures were just hand drawn and Dad was no real artist.

"OK, this is this, this is that and here's the fleet we gotta paste."

He wasn't just briefing me, a navigator. He was briefing a bunch of imaginary pilots, co-pilots, navigators and bombardiers. I got a bunch of superfluous information and listened to everything because you never know what can effect you.

Almost 60 years later I realize this is probably historically incorrect but looking back on it Dad had just pulled this entire thing out of his hat which coincides with my entire life because I have pulled MY entire life out of a hat. I guess it runs in the family and I got it from him.

Anyway, the briefing included expected fighter activity, flak, the IP for the bomb run and dad carried on in great detail. The briefing ended about an hour later. It was now about 0330 and we went through gear issue. We walked to the imaginary gear issue facility (a walk down the street and back) and I was issued an imaginary Mae West, parachute and some other stuff. Dad took great delight with handing me several pieces of paper and making me sign them. They were blank sheets and he made me sign my name a bunch of times. "The Army," he said triumphantly. "Floats on a sea of paperwork! He was busting my chops and I knew it but I played along.  

At about 0430 I climbed aboard which meant I was now sitting at the kitchen table, my 'navigator's station' while the pilot and co-pilot did a preflight inspection. The whole thing dragged on. We were slated to go gear up at 0500. 

I laid out all my gear and on the virgin map plotted a course for Osaka, adding a dogleg to go west of the Bonins. There were radar installations on Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima and I was trying to do what I could to avoid them. They were a warning station. I also took out a larger scale chart of the Osaka area, found the initial point (I forgot what it was, maybe a  small town) and plotted the bomb run. 

At 0450 Dad said "Stand down."

"What?" I  was shocked.

"Someone said that one of the guys on guard duty rounded up a starving Japanese soldier last night and Curtis LeMay wants him interviewed to make sure he wasn't spying on us and letting the Japs know we're  coming." I rolled my eyes. "Hey, Kid. You wanted the full mission!" Then Dad walked out. I think he sneaked into the living room and I think he took a nap while I sat there.

I turned on the radio at the kitchen table. If I recall it was WNAC (I Googled this and it is no longer on the air) It was Dad's favorite station. Mine was WBZ, a rock station.

"What's with the radio?" asked Dad as he returned from his nap. Glenn Miller was playing.

"I told the radio operator to see if he could get anything from the States. He got us a skip from Hawaii," I replied. I spoke in the same sarcastic tome he gave me when he said Curtis LeMay had put things on hold.

Dad snickered. "I see you've figured out how to play the game."

"Curtis LeMay personally interviewed the poor starving Jap the guard picked up and says it's OK to take off," he said. His tone of voice just oozed sarcasm. 

"Being a guard all night must be boring duty," I said.

"If I had washed out of flying I would have prayed for a job like that! I joined the Air Corps because I knew I didn't have the balls to be an infantryman and shoot some poor bastard in the face. You forget my mother came from Austria!"

"And the Japanese?" I asked.

"Same difference. They're people, too. They have mothers, fathers, wives and kids, too." he shot back. "Now let's get this show on the road! We're gear up at 0630.  

I didn't know it then but that became a valuable lesson. I learned how to play 'hurry up and wait' and not get pi$$ed off too much.

I know Tinian is UTC (Then GMT) +10 and this is all a blur to me now but we took off in daylight according to memory. I had to get us to the target in daylight. That meant sun shots all the way to Osaka. No stars. 

Sun shots are one LOP (line of position). Star shots are several, usually 3 to 5. Ideally they should all intersect at the same point. Star shots are like taking more than one sun lines at once.

I spent the next six hours pretty busy with plotting sheets, maps, air tables, a nautical almanac and constantly converting my true course corrections to the airplane's magnetic compass. 

Dad had given me a big break. I could use the tables. Early on I had to do all the calculations by hand. Only after I had mastered that I could use the Air Tables. 

Early on I said to Dad, "I gotta take a dump."

Dad grinned and handed me a shoe box and a couple paper towels. (He had figured on that one coming.)

"We used ice cream containers, but this is close enough."

When Dad saw me put the box on the floor and unbuckle my pants he snapped, "Jesus Christ! You signed up for the whole mile, didn't you? Just go use the Goddamned toilet like a human being!" He shook his head. 

The way I looked at it, if I had to crap in a box, I'd crap in a box. I wanted to pass this test in the world's worst way and I would do what I had to do. I wanted to graduate. Period.

It was sun shots to west of the Bonin Islands and when we passed them I changed course directly to Osaka.

Immediately after I course changed after the Bonin Islands I found something dreadfully wrong had happened. We were going 100 knots over the ground in an airship with a cruising speed of 220. We were in the jet stream! I instantly ordered Dad (the hotshot pilot) to drop 5000 feet and Dad grinned. "You figured that one out fast!" he said.

I also made a note of that on the chart. The jet stream could cost an airplane a LOT of fuel and if one dropped to near stall speed you could actually be flying backwards! In fact, although rare the jet stream winds can well exceed the cruising speed of a B-29 and you can fly backwards at full power!

Back to sun lines, advancing them and applying the running fix. The angles were acute and that meant not nearly as accurate as a 5 star wheel. I thought that hopefully we could get some star shots on the way back.

We got to the IP and I gave the course of the bomb run. The bombardier would fine tune it on the bomb run and do his job. I also gave the pilot the course back to Tinian, straight line this time. We were headed home.

Dad made a break in the action and declared a lunch break and handed me about 4 soggy baloney sandwiches and about a quart of tepid coffee and kept me busy shooting the bull for about an hour. 

Then he suddenly said to me, "OK, Mister hotshot navigator. The pilot's been following the course you gave him and hour ago. Now where are you?"

Mom came in and pointed out I'd been up most of the night.

Dad snapped back. "He's not going to know what he's capable of until he's been pushed! Please! Leave us alone! Six hundred men and 60 machines are depending on him!"

I vaguely remember a fading sunshot as a running fix and twilight coming on. I based it on the sun line intersecting the plotted course and knew it was all I had to go on until twilight. The position made sense even though I knew it was probably off because of wind drift. I had no way to gauge wind speed so I couldn't plot a vector.

Then Dad handed me a wheel of stars to plot and I adjusted my course from that. 

I plotted a few wheels of stars and Dad said fuel was getting a bit iffy. I looked at the note on my chart and remembered the jet stream and ordered climbing 5000 feet. We were near the Bonin Islands. We could fly over them. We were on the way home and the anti-aircraft fire couldn't reach us.  

The next star shot told me we were going about 350 knots over the ground! Great fuel mileage! We'd overcome the fuel problem. In two hours we had gained 260 miles of flying time.

A couple of hours later the jet stream dropped off and we were just slightly above the cruising speed of 220, maybe 230, course over ground.

I plotted several wheels of stars and we neared the Marianas and I plotted a course for Tinian. Most of the Marianas were in darkness but Dad (acting as pilot) said, "I see the lights. I got it from here."

Dad was pretty funny when he 'landed' the 'plane'. He feigned a really rough landing and bounced up and down in his seat for several seconds. He turned to me with a big grin and said, "I never landed one of these before! Now we gotta turn in our gear and get debriefed." It was just past 2000 local time. I had been up over 19 hours.

We went through a bunch of paperwork and I noticed that all of the blank papers I had signed had a rubber stamp on them of some sort. I don't remember what it was. Maybe it was the never used 'For deposit only' stamp that was in the family desk somewhere. He handed the paperwork back to me and told me "Don't lose this. Some idiot of a supply sergeant is going to come up short a parachute and if you have this he can't pin it on you!"

It was yet another lesson imparted on me that didn't go to waste. I learned to keep various receipts to cover my ass. It actually saved me a couple of times over hand receipts in the Army and another couple of things later on. It was a good lesson.

After that Dad handed me a glass containing about 3 ounces of Seagram's 7 Crown and told me to choke it down before the debrief. Thank God Mom wasn't around. She'd have flipped her lid.

I poured it down in one hard, burning gulp and fought to keep it down and in a few short minutes it went straight to my head.

Dad grilled me about all sorts of stuff for about an entire hour. I was as high as a kite.  Fighter activity, cloud cover, flak, he even asked me what color tie Harry Truman had on when he was sworn in! I remember that one because I stopped to think a second and realized this was 1944 and Truman was still vice president at the time. When I gave that as an answer dad sheepishly said, "I must have lost track of the time. Good answer, Kiddo!"

He asked me a bunch more questions about various things regarding the airplane itself and I commented the pilot made a lousy landing.

He laughed and said, "You aced it! Now hit the rack!"

I'd been running for about 21 hours.

I went into the bedroom kicked off my shoes and sprawled out and slept like a corpse for almost 11 hours. I woke up to an empty house because the family was at St. Christine's for the 0830 mass.

Years later I asked Dad why he had given me the Seagram's.

He told me it was a last minute decision because I was starting to get punchy and he figured when I found out I'd aced it I'd be too keyed up to get and sleep so he just decided to simply knock me out. Besides, I had opted to go the whole mile and that was actually a part of it. Aircrews were often given a shot or two to settle them down before debrief.

I've never had a drop of Seagrams 7 since then. I swear that if I had a shot now it would trigger me and come up immediately.

This post is a memory of almost 60 years ago. I'm sure some nitpicker can come along and pick it to death citing time differences and a million other details. I realized that while I was writing it. It is what it is. I know I missed a lot.

One other thing. This is something to think of. We didn't have a real airplane and I didn't have a sextant because we couldn't afford to buy a B-29 from the scrapyard and make it flyable. Poverty sucks. Dad gave me sextant readings and times to work up my sunlines and star shots with.  

Years later when I bought my sailboat I picked up a pair of Marine sextants and figure them out in about 10 minutes. I'm pretty sure aircraft sextants are fairly simple so I wasn't cheated by having Dad give me the readings and times.

Twenty years later just after Dad passed I realized what a genius he was. He had to have figured things out well in advance and on top of that figured things out backwards to give me the problems to solve.

Couple that with the fact that he had not done anything like that in about 20 years and it's nothing less than astonishing.

How he found the time and energy to do that and still work a long day and have fair time for my other four siblings is beyond me. Looking back on this, while he did spend a lot of time with me at the table, most of my time was spend at the table alone with an old textbook and Dad would answer questions. Sometimes he'd spend quite some time there teaching me things that were not in the book. He'd generally do other things but oversee. 

I learned a lot more than navigation that day. Later on I became an artillery surveyor, a carpenter and a sailor. All of them are geometry based. 

I also learned about 'hurry up and wait', that there's more to a job that meets the eye. A navigator was part of a crew and there was more to the job than navigation. The 'more to the job than meets the eye' part helped me later bidding carpentry jobs.  

Another Important thing I learned is that people don't know what they are capable of until you push them and let them find out.

Still, it's a memory of mine.

I never did learn textbook math. I got Cs in school. I learned practical math and learned it well.

Practical math was one of the things that gave me three successful careers.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY