Friday night, Papa came over to Ron & Jody's for dinner and we were sitting around the table talking. He started to tell about his experiences during WWII. It was so great to sit next to him and hear him tell the story I haven't heard before. He was 17 or 18 when he knew he wanted to enlist in the war. But, the age was 19 so he had to wait awhile to enlist. He decided to enlist rather than take his chances with the draft because if he enlisted, he could choose where he went and would go in at a higher officer ranking. So, at age 19 he enlisted in the Army/Aircore. Now it's separated into the Army and Airforce, but then it was the Army/Aircore. He went away to basic training (boot camp)and between that and his first round of training in the Aircore he went home and married Nannie. He commented on Friday night that it really was quite selfish of him to marry her then, but he was in love and wasn't thinking much about the future. I asked him why he felt that way and he said b/c he was going into war and you never knew what could have happened. But, he said, it all worked out in the end anyway. So, Papa was stationed in the states for probably a year or so and Nannie would come stay with him. When he would receive assignment changes, he would have to report at the train station the next day - not knowing where he was going. So, Nannie would go back home to Texas until Papa was settled in his new area and would then send for her. When Papa was stationed overseas in Guam, Nannie stayed home in Texas. Papa was in Guam for about a year.
Papa was trained to be a pilot and I think he was going to be trained for the B-17 planes and he was excited about that, but the Army/Aircore decided not to train anymore pilots for those planes b/c they were the ones used in the war in Europe and that war was winding down. It turns out that Papa was trained for the B-29 plane which was much bigger than the B-17. One difference he mentioned about the B-29 was that oxygen masks weren't needed on this plane like they were on the B-17 plane. According to Papa, it was the top of the line plane at the time. His missions, while in Guam, would be to fly the plane that took pictures after or during battles. I'm not sure that Papa was ever a fighter pilot - but he flew the planes that took pictures. He talked about the cameras and the technology at the time. There were many cameras lining both sides of the plane and they could take shots every 5-seconds. It sounds like they had great abilities with their cameras. He talked about having missions to Japan, the number of crewmen on the plane, which was a lot, and the time it took from Guam to Japan - which was 5-6 hours one way. Keep in mind that they really didn't land anywhere during the missions...they would take off from Guam, complete their mission and fly back. Well, he was on a mission to Japan taking pictures in 1945 and the route of the mission was to take him and his crew right near Hiroshima. There weren't any other planes around for most of the trip but once they were near Hiroshima, they noticed a lone plane in the sky. As they approached, they realized it was one of theirs. As they got closer, the plane did a dive, dropped a bomb then quickly flew away. Papa and his crew had no idea what was going on but the cloud resulting from that bomb was bigger than anything they had ever seen. They thought maybe the bomb hit a fuel station. In the meantime, they got a lot of pictures. Then they were off back to Guam. The lone plane they saw was the Enola Gay. They had no idea at the time what had just happened and what they had just witnessed. It wasn't until the next day when President Truman announced that an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, that they realizes what they witnessed and photographed. Papa said that the next round of planes taking pictures of the event didn't arrive until 45 minutes to an hour after the bomb was dropped.
So, the pictures that were on Life magazine cover and in other magazines of immediately after the bomb was dropped were taken from the Reconnaissance mission that Papa flew the plane for. It was so fascinating hearing his first hand account of history.
