Presentation Date: October 25, 2001
SGT Andy Doty USAAF (Ret.)
Tail Gunner, B-29 Superfortress, "The City of College Park" 93rd SQ., 314th WING, 19th BOMB GROUP, 20th AIR FORCE 21 Missions Over JAPAN, one of which cost the lives of three crewmembers. Andy wrote a terrific book entitled Backwards into Battle, A Tail Gunner's Journey in World War II. Click here for more information! Andy's 19th Bomb Group is the one that will be inducted into the CAF's American Combat Airman Hall of Fame on October 5th 2001. Tail Gunner, B-29 Superfortress, "The City of College Park"
93rd SQ., 314th WING, 19th BOMB GROUP, 20th AIR FORCE
21 Missions Over JAPAN, one of which cost the lives of three crewmembers.
Andy wrote a terrific book entitled Backwards into Battle, A Tail Gunner's Journey in World War II.
Andy's 19th Bomb Group was inducted into the CAF's American Combat Airman Hall of Fame on October 5th 2001.
Backwards into Battle
Andy Doty says he was lucky enough to enter the service late in the war, after the air war over Europe and at a time of Allied air superiority in the campaign against Japan. And he says he was fortunate not to have been a ground soldier in the bloody late-war island invasions, as the Marines did.
Andy grew up in upstate New York, in the town of Hudson Falls, one of seven children whose father was a paper maker who earned $18 dollars a week during the depths of the Depression.
Yet Andy recalls the richness of playing sports, swimming naked in the Hudson River, building model airplanes and the like while growing up. He says he and his peers were among the "last truly innocent generations in America. We did not drink, nor smoke nor gamble."
It was a Sunday in December, 1941 when Andy and his twin brother Chuck came into the house to find their parents listening to accounts of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Two years passed before Andy and Chuck came of age in October of 1943, to join the armed services. Chuck became an Army infantryman and Andy joined the Air Corps.
Doty's training led him to aerial gunnery school at Harlingen, Texas, as at this point in the war, the Air Forces were well stocked with pilots. There, amidst learning the ins and out of firing and maintaining .50 caliber machine guns, he heard from instructors about the freezing cold of high altitude bombing missions, the damage antiaircraft can fire can inflict and the deflection of bullets by the armored noses of Focke Wulf 190s.
But he says there was a general feeling of being detached from information about the horrific experiences bomber crews could and regularly did have. When an officer told a gathered group of gunner trainees that one third of them would be killed, wounded or taken prisoner, Andy says, "I felt sorry for the others, for surely nothing would happen to me."
By the fall of 1944, Andy got word he was to be a crew member on a B-29, a "deadly beauty" which Andy says totally awed him. "It had a top speed of 358 miles an hour - - downhill, unloaded, I think. It had a range of 4,100 miles, could carry ten tons of bombs, and we could fly in comfort at 32,000 feet in pressurized compartments. And it had remotely controlled gun turrets."
Andy became a tail gunner, due to his smaller, wiry stature and his training as a B-24 ball turret gunner. Training, in Texas now in B-29s, continued until March 14, 1945, when Doty found himself on his way in a B-29 from Mather Field near Sacramento to the war.
"I sat in the tail and watched the Golden Gate bridge, the city and the continent fade from sight and wondered when we would see it again. We were a replacement crew headed for Hawaii, then Kwajalein, then onto Guam. It was there we joined the 93rd Squadron of the 19th Bomb Group..."
Andy's first mission was a high altitude run against the Mitsubishi aircraft factory in Nagoya. It was a night departure for a morning bomb run.
In the moonlight, "Nose to tail the bombers edged ahead in a slow parade to the head of the runway. The air was filled with noise and fumes. A green light flashed in a wooden control tower and we began lumbering down the long runway. It was a dangerous moment with little margin of safety. The temperamental engines had to haul a 35-ton bomber, tons of bombs, eight thousands gallons of gasoline, thousands of rounds of ammunition and eleven men into the air."
Three hours later, they passed over the halfway mark, Iwo Jima, just taken by the Marines at a cost of 25,800 US casualties. Three more hours and Andy crawled back into his tail gunner compartment, as his B-29 joined formation with 250 others headed for Japan. As the bomber stream reached Nagoya, the sky filled with black bursts of flak, "each burst sending jagged bits of steel flying in all directions."
"I tried to shrink my body into the smallest possible target. The deadly puffs contrasted with the long, almost beautiful white tentacles of phosphorus bombs that were dropped into our formation by a Japanese plane flying above us. It was a surrealistic scene. Several bursts walked silently a line toward our plane, but stopped short. Out of range toward our right a Japanese fighter radioed our speed and altitude to the ground batteries. I was struck by the unreality of it all."
Andy's B-29 held steady on course to complete its bomb run, dropped its payload and moments later Andy could see "explosions twinkling in the target area, much like strings of tiny Chinese firecrackers." The attack knocked the Nagoya plant out of the war.
A few days later, the takeoff came during afternoon, for a midnight low-level (6,000 feet) incendiary bomb run over Tokyo. Doty says the B-29s were each carrying enough incendiary bombs to create a flaming swath half a mile wide and a mile and a half long. Previous firebombing missions had earned the wrath of the Japanese populace, with Tokyo Rose propaganda broadcasts branding B-29 aircrews as criminals, and torture and death often facing crewmen who were shot down over the capital city.
"Over the target I looked down into a roaring inferno. Eleven square miles of the city were aflame, columns of smoke towering thousands of feet into the air. Searchlights swept the sky and tracer fire laced the night. A light picked us up. It was quickly joined by others. There was enough light to read a newspaper. We felt naked in the relentless grip of those beams. Our pilot drove up into a column of smoke to escape the searchlights and we were driven suddenly upward. We were pinned to the seats and I could not even lift my hand. We climbed wildly ahead, waiting for our load of bombs to drop. They finally fell free. We banked away and headed home... more than 100 miles from the city. I could still see the red glow above the city."
On Andy's fifteenth mission, June 7th, 1945, a twin-engined fighter swept out of the clouds and jumped the B-29 about 100 miles off the Japanese coast. Andy had been watching and had seen the airplane slide in and out of the clouds. When the enemy aircraft made its attack, Doty started started firing his twin .50s as the Japanese fighter's tracers flew past his compartment. The .50 caliber rounds found their mark on the fighter's right wing and engine. Doty says the plane banked down and into the clouds, a long plume of black smoke trailing behind him.
"Several hours later, less than a hundred miles from home, our pilot came on the intercom to tell us that we'd encountered unexpected headwinds and might not make it back. We'd better prepare to ditch or bail-out. I hurried back into the tail where my life raft pack was resting in my seat. I put on my chest parachute and clipped the life raft pack onto my parachute harness. I threaded the long strap of the pack under my harness and attached it to my Mae West vest. I folded my seat and slid it up, out of the way.
"The bail out bell began ringing. I unplugged my headset, unsnapped my throat microphone and opened the escape window. The air went by in a fearsome roar. As I moved to dive out, I found I could not - - I was caught by the life raft strap, which had become snagged in my folding seat. I felt a wave of panic, and began tugging desperately at the strap. It would not come loose. The bell kept ringing. I thought of cutting the strap with my knife, but told myself to calm down and work it free. I unfolded the seat, slid it back down, and released the strap. I pushed the seat up and dove out the window."
Doty says the parachute opened with a pop, though he has no memory of pulling the ripcord handle. His helmet was gone, and it was strangely quiet except for the hum of the disappearing bomber. The evening sky was still pink from the sunset as he plunged into the dark sea. Splashing hard on his back, Andy sank deep into the water, but came up and opened the life raft.
Eight of the B-29 crew survived and were picked up by a merchant ship. The navigator and engineer did not open their life rafts and were drowned. The radar operator refused to jump and went down with the bomber.
A few days later, the bodies of George Walker and Donald Hutchinson were buried on Guam. Radar operator Richard O'Brien was also included in the emotional memorial. As Andy puts it, "none of us dared look at the others."
Today, Andy still ponders why the captain of his fuel-starved B-29 failed to land on Iwo Jima, Tinian or Saipan to refuel. Instead he pressed on, only to ditch short of Guam.
Andy Doty vividly tells his own story in his book "Backwards into Battle", a very reflective portrait of the ending of naivety through the grim realities of aerial warfare.