Outskirts Press, INC.

Inside the cabin of a B-29 on a 3,000 mile trip to bomb Japan!

Larry Nelson, a farm boy from South Dakota, enlisted in the Army Air Corps to fulfull a romantic dream to become a pilot. Romance turned to harsh reality when he failed an eye exam and became a navigator instead. Harsh reality became terror inside the cabin of a B-29. When high altitude bombing raids on Japan failed, they turned to devastating night fire raids on Japanese cities. These raids resulted in the near total destruction of Tokyo-Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka and other smaller cities.

Takeoff was to be early the next morning. But who could rest after that kind of news? The suspense of waiting was almost unbearable. Once again we knew fear. It was partly fear of the known. This was to be a long over-water flight — better than 3,000 miles roundtrip — and there were no places to stop along the way. But it was, also, fear of the unknown. We really didn’t know what to expect when we got over Japan. We were told in the briefing that there would be anti-aircraft fire, but no one knew how much and how accurate it would be. We didn’t know about fighter opposition.