The Superfortress
Alamogordo Army Air Field · August 1944
August opened on the Tularosa Basin with bonds going home, typhus and yellow-fever shots, and a magazine he sent to Cherry so they could see the airplane the field had become. Alamogordo was no longer only a B-17 school. He drew the crew stations as he learned them and told his mother the difference in two lines: this is a B-17 Fortress; the B-29 is a Superfortress.
Dear Folks, I sent Mother a magazine this morning that has pictures and a story of the B-29. Read the story and you'll know a little about the plane. […] This is A B-17 Fortress The B-29 is a Super Fortress Love to all Austin
Historical note — the B-29 and AlamogordoThe Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the Army Air Forces’ new very heavy bomber: pressurized cabins, remote-controlled guns, a range that could reach Japan from island bases still being taken. In 1944 Second Air Force converted several southwestern fields, including Alamogordo, from Fortress transition to Superfortress crew work. A training mission might carry extra men. On 9 August Austin’s ship went up with thirteen crew and twenty bombs, above a deck of cloud at 3:30 in the morning.
A B-29 crew in combat would settle near eleven: airplane commander, pilot, navigator, bombardier, flight engineer, radio operator, radar operator, and gunners. At Alamogordo he still had only part of that list — four gunners and a radio man, all just made corporal. “We’ll get the balance of the crew at the next field.”
On the 15th the intelligence office had to put up another map. Southern France had been invaded that morning. He qualified Marksman with the .45, sat through physical-fitness tests, and watched the European lines crawl across the wall chart after the breakout in Normandy. Leave was the talk of the barracks for three weeks. Headquarters tried. The airplanes at the next station would not wait.
Hello folks, It looks like I'm not going to get any leave this time. We've been sweating it out now and we are to leave here tonite I guess, I'm going to Great Bend, Kansas […] The Headquarters have tried to get us a few days delay but I think the planes are just waiting up at Great Bend for us to come fly them With love, Austin
Historical note — August 1944Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, began on 15 August. Paris was liberated on the 25th. On the Eastern Front the Red Army was driving through Poland and the Balkans. Austin read the arrows on the Alamogordo map and wrote that the European theater looked close to an end. The Pacific, and the airplane built for it, were what Great Bend was for.