“Gear up,” ordered Dennings.
“Am I ever glad to hear those words,” grunted Stromp as he moved the lever. The gear motors whined and the three sets of wheels rose into their wells under the nose and wings. “Gear up and locked.”
As the airspeed increased, Dennings dropped the throttle settings to save on fuel. He waited before beginning a slow and gentle climb for altitude until the airspeed touched 200 knots. Unseen off the starboard wing, the Aleutian Island chain slowly curled northeast. They would not sight land again for 2,500 miles.
“How’s that number-four engine?” he asked Mosely.
“Pulling her share, but she’s running a tad hot.”
“Soon as we hit five thousand feet, I’ll drop her back a few rpm’s.”
“Wouldn’t hurt, Major,” Mosely replied.
Arnold gave Dennings the course heading they would maintain for the next ten and a half hours. At 4,900 feet Dennings turned control over to Stromp. He relaxed and stared into the black sky. No stars were in sight. The plane was feeling the turbulence as Stromp threaded it through the ominous mass of thunderclouds.
When they finally cleared the worst of the storm, Dennings unbuckled himself and climbed out of his seat. As he twisted around, he could see through a port window below the tunnel leading to the waist and tail section of the plane. He could just make out a piece of the bomb suspended in its release mechanism.
The crawl tunnel had been narrowed to receive the immense weapon into the bomb bay and was a tight fit. Dennings wiggled through past the bomb bay and dropped down on the opposite end. Then he swung open the small airtight door and slipped inside.
Pulling a flashlight from a leg pocket, he made his way along a confined catwalk running the length of the two bomb bays that had been modified into one. The weapon’s huge size made for an incredibly snug fit. Its outer diameter measured less than two inches away from the longitudinal bulkheads.
Hesitantly, Dennings reached down and touched it. The steel sides felt ice cold to his fingertips. He failed to visualize the hundred thousand people it could burn to cinders within a short second, or the ghastly toll from burns and radiation. The thermonuclear temperatures or the shock wave from the Trinity test could not be sensed in a black-and-white movie film. He saw it only as a means of ending a war and saving hundreds of thousands of his countrymen’s lives.
Returning to the cockpit, he stopped and chatted with Byrnes, who was running through a schematic of the bomb’s detonation circuits. Every so often the ordnance expert glanced at a small console mounted above his lap.
“Any chance of it going off before we get there?” asked Dennings.
“Lightning strike could do it,” answered Byrnes.
Dennings looked at him in horror. “A little late with a warning, aren’t you? We’ve been flying through the middle of an electrical storm since midnight.”
Byrnes looked up and grinned. “We could have gone up just as easily on the ground. What the hell, we made it, didn’t we?”
Dennings couldn’t believe Byrnes’s matter-of-fact attitude. “Was General Morrison aware of the risk?”
“Better than anyone. He’s been on the atomic bomb project from the beginning.”
Dennings shuddered and turned away. Insane, he thought, the operation was insane. It’d be a miracle if any of them lived to tell about it.
Five hours into the flight and lighter by 2,000 gallons of expended fuel, Dennings leveled the B-29 off at 10,000 feet. The crew became more upbeat as the dawn’s orange glow tinted the eastern sky. The storm was far behind them, and they could see the rolling swells of the sea and a few scattered white clouds.
Three hundred miles from Japan’s main island of Honshu, Dennings started a slow, gradual climb to 32,000 feet, the altitude at which Stanton would release the bomb on Osaka. Navigator Arnold announced they were twenty minutes ahead of schedule. At the current rate of speed, he figured they should be landing at Okinawa in a shade under five hours.
Dennings looked at the fuel gauges. He suddenly felt cheerful. Barring a hundred-knot headwind, they should make it with four hundred gallons to spare.
Not everyone was wallowing in good cheer. Seated at his engineer’s panel, Mosely studied the temperature gauge of engine number four. He didn’t like what he read. He routinely tapped the dial with his finger.
The needle twitched and wavered into the red.
He crawled aft through the tunnel and stared through a port at the underside of the engine. The nacelle was streaked with oil and smoke was trailing from the exhaust. Mosely returned to the cockpit and knelt in the narrow aisle between Dennings and Stromp.
“Bad news, Major. We’re going to have to shut down number four.”
“You can’t prod her along for a few more hours?” asked Dennings.
“No, sir, she can swallow a valve and catch fire at any minute.”
Stromp looked over at Dennings, his face somber. “I vote we shut four down for a while and let it cool off.”
Dennings knew Stromp was right. They would have to maintain their present altitude and nurse the other three engines to keep them from overheating. Then restart number four during the ascent to 32,000 feet and the bombing run.
He hailed Arnold, who was bent over his navigator’s board tracing the flight path. “How long before Japan?”
Arnold noted the slight drop in speed and made a swift calculation. “One hour and twenty-one minutes to the mainland.”
He nodded. “Okay, we’ll shut number four until we need it.”
Even as he spoke, Stromp closed the throttle, flicked off the ignition switch, and feathered the propeller. Next he engaged the automatic pilot.
For the next half hour everyone kept a wary eye on number four engine while Mosely called out the temperature drop.
“We have a landfall,” announced Arnold. “A small island coming up about twenty miles dead ahead.”
Stromp peered at it through binoculars. “Looks like a hot dog sticking out of the water.”
“Sheer rock walls,” observed Arnold. “No sign of a beach anywhere.”
“What’s it called?” asked Dennings.
“Doesn’t even show on the map.”
“Any sign of life? The Nips could be using it as an offshore warning station.”
“Looks barren and deserted,” answered Stromp.
Dennings felt safe for the moment. No enemy ships had been sighted, and they were too far from shore to be intercepted by Japanese fighters. He settled down in his seat and stared unseeing at the sea.
The men relaxed and passed around coffee and salami sandwiches, immune to the droning engines and the tiny speck that appeared ten miles away and 7,000 feet above their port wingtip.
Unknown to the crew of
Lieutenant Junior Grade Sato Okinaga saw the brief glint from the reflected sun below him. He banked and went into a shallow dive for a closer inspection. It was an aircraft. No question. A plane from another patrol, most likely. He reached for the switch to his radio, but hesitated. In a few seconds he’d be able to make a positive identification.
A young and inexperienced pilot, Okinaga was one of the lucky ones. Out of his recently graduated class of twenty-two, who were rushed through training during Japan’s desperate days, he and three others were ordered to
