Splash one dreamboat

Flight Journal, Oct 2001 by Shulenberger, Arvid

A Black Widow shoots down a Superfortress

"You know me, Al; they kicked the game away behind me." Thus began Maj. Arthur C. Shpherd's letter-the first one he had sent in the 13 years since we were two-thirds of a night-fighter team off Iwo Jima and Ie Shima in '45. Shep was in Saigon to train the Vietnamese in fighter tactics. Thirteen years ago, my name was Al, and I was a lieutenant and a radar observer on a P-61 Black Widow.

Shep got hold of my address somewhere and wrote to me; it was a good letter. Its opening gag line was from the book that had been Shep's favorite on Iwo: Ring Lardner Sr.'s, "You Know Me Al." There was only one disturbing line of news in his letter: "There was a printed story, Al, about shooting down the B-29, in True magazine. All fouled up. They got the names wrong. Somebody sent in a correction, and they got the names wrong again." It was teh first I had heard of the printed story.

Shep and I shot down that Superfortress-nobody else. I found it, and he shot it down. We got our names in the papers and on the air, and ther was a syndicated feature story about the incident. It didn't mean a thing, but it was our only contact with public relations and fame during WW II. Besides, it was a funny thing; it's the only instance I know of in which a B-29 was shot down from the air by friendly fire. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Yesterday was June 9, 1945. Our unit, the 548th Night Fighter Squadron, had been on Iwo Jima for about two months. Iwo Jima (translated, it means "sulfur island") is a wind-bitten, eight-square-mile stretch of rock and ashes 700 miles southeast of Tokyo. The beaches are black sand, and you couldn't stand too long in one spot because the fire underneath would burn your feet.

Earlier that spring, one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific had been fought on Iwo Jima. During the battle, more than 23,000 of the 70,000 invading Marines had been killed or wounded, or suffered later battle fatigue. Some 20,000-plus Japanese defenders were also killed.

It was a beautiful day-blue sky, bright sun. The night before had been our night off-duty; we hadn't flown night patrol, so we were awake that day to enjoy the weather. At 3 a.m., we had heard the Superforts flying overhead, heading north for an Empire strike-target: Tokyo. Hour after hour it seemed, the 29s droned overhead. Hundreds of them were coming from Saipan and Tinian. "Dreamboats," they were called in the fighter code. We knew that they were winning the War for us, as they came in endless echelons-not bunched and high-but in a steady stream at 10,000 feet (or "Angels Ten").. This was the way our new general, Curtis LeMay, was firing them at the Japanese.

Every afternoon, we night fighters checked our ships and radar with a short flight to ensure that everything was OK for the night operation. These daylight flights were called "squint hops." ("Squint" was any error in radar calibration; it could be corrected in daylight by a visual check on our readings.) During those flights, we would be put on air/sea rescue patrol. Sometimes, our squint hops turned into something bigger.

That's what happened on this day. The Dreamboats were now coming back by the hundreds-a steady stream overhead on their way back to Saipan. A few were crippled, and a few were going down; some of them would have to stop on Iwo Jima, if they were lucky enough to get back that far. Some of them were shot up so badly that they couldn't land, and they would be abandoned close to Iwo after their crews bailed out. By mid-afternoon on this sunny spring day, there might be as many as 30 parachutes coming down around the island at once. They looked pretty against the blue sky, drifting like dandelion seeds down over the calm ocean.

Shep and I were up in the air for a squint hop/air-sea rescue patrol. The airstrip was hot, and whenever we flew in the afternoon under that Pacific sun, the inside of the airplane was hotter. I was sweating in the radar cockpit. Once we were airborne, the intercom clicked: "Warm enough back there?" Shep asked.

"Hotter'n Dutch love," I said. The dialogue was standard operating procedure.

"OK," I said. "Generators off."

"Generators off," he echoed.

I switched on the radar. "Generators on," I said. The set warmed up; a dot appeared on the A 720 scope, which had ranges of two, 10 and 100 miles on it. I switched the nose spinner on, and the dot became a streak across the scope, then a dance of "snow" to be tuned down and tuned out so that targets would register.

"Weapon flashing?" Shep asked.

"Flashing," I said.

We were vectored out on a heading a little west of north-- three-four-zero. At 150 miles out, we would pick up a destroyer that was on rescue patrol-a "Bird Dog"-and be directed by it for the remainder of our patrol. Meanwhile, we could check our radar set for squint using the Dreamboats flying overhead, going south. They were still at Angels Ten, while we patrolled at 6,000 feet-- Angels Six.

Half an hour later and 100-odd miles out, we ran into a towering squall line and flew straight through it. That was a mistake. The rain streaked across the Plexiglas, and we were then nice and cool. It sprayed into the tiny air vent, and that reminded me to close it. At 15-miles range, a bright blip marking a Dreamboat moved cleanly across the darkened scope and registered cleanly a few degrees above us on the B, or elevation, scope. No squint, we guessed.