RETURN TO RED ROCKS

By Jan Biles

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

EMPORIA - The red sandstone first-floor exterior and the large wooden cases filled with books in the second-floor office seemed familiar. But it had been 62 years since the three B-29 bomber crewmen first gathered at Red Rocks, the home of famed Emporia Gazette publisher William Allen White.

The men - Jim Meeks, Karl Samuels and Gin Wong - had come to Emporia on April 27, 1945, with the other eight members of their 9th Bombardment Group squadron to visit White's widow, Sallie, before flying a B-29 Superfortress named after her late husband from Kansas to the Pacific theater of World War II.

While in Emporia, the servicemen attended a war bond rally and a banquet in their honor.

"The citizens of Emporia raised the money for the plane with war bonds and named the plane after William Allen White. In 1945, I remember we had a grand visit of Mr. White's home before we picked up the plane and flew overseas," Wong, 85, of Los Angeles, wrote to Roger Heineken, of the William Allen White Community Partnership, prior to their visit in late September.

"We were very fortunate in our combat missions over Japan that we were never hurt and came safely back to the USA in one piece. The crew flew nine successful missions over the Empire without mishap, and I guess Mr. White and God were looking after us."

During their return visit, the veterans met Chris Walker, White's great-grandson and editor and publisher of the Emporia Gazette, and Wong presented Heineken with a book from his own library, "9th Bombardment Group History," which he, Meeks and Samuels autographed.

Two other surviving members of their crew - Chester Brannon, of Spiro, Okla., and Vincent Scro, of Burke, Va. - weren't able to make the return trip to Emporia.

Bombing missions

Meeks, 82, of Valrico, Fla., said he was a senior in high school when he was drafted to serve in World War II. Samuels, 81, of Slidell, La., was a freshman at Louisiana State University and Wong was an engineering student at the University of Southern California before they entered the military.

"We first met (at the air base) in Clovis, N.M., in late January or February 1945," Wong said.

After a few weeks of training, they retrieved the B-29 Superfortress and headed to the South Pacific to carry out their bombing missions over Japan in May 1945.

"We wound up on the island of Tinian," Meeks, who served as a radio operator mechanic, said.

To conserve energy, the bomber was flown at a low altitude and then climbed to bombing height about an hour before the attack.

"In the beginning, we flew at high altitudes and later at lower altitudes because at the high altitude we couldn't hit anything on the ground," Wong, a radar operator during the war, said. "The altitude when bombing was 5,000 to 12,000 feet. We also had difficult winds to deal with."

"It was the first time anyone knew about the jet stream,"Meeks added.

Their first missions were carried out in daylight hours, but eventually they were flying nighttime raids.

"Night mission was a zoo," Wong said, explaining there would be 300 airplanes buzzing around in the air during an attack.

"One time I saw a black wing on top of (the plane)," Samuels, who was a central fire control gunner, said. "(After it went by,) I looked back to make sure it didn't take off the tail."

Wong said they would drop 2,000-pound mines that were attached to parachutes from the Superfortress. Sometimes, the mines would blow up as they floated toward ground.

"We lost two crews out of our barracks because of these mines," he said. "It's a guessing game, not a perfect science."

Wong said the squadron flew 16-hour missions and had no place to refuel. So to save gasoline, the crew would take short cuts back to the base. Sometimes, they got lost. Once, two engines on the plane went out and they had to taxi to land.

The William Allen White took its share of flak.

"The engine cover was hit twice," Samuels said.

Wong said they were lucky the plane didn't take a serious hit.

"They didn't have a bullet with my name of it," Meeks said.

Life after the war

Meeks, Samuels and Wong's squadron was sent back to the States in the summer of 1945 to complete pathfinder training at Muroc Army Air Field in California.

"The last mission we were on was on the 4th of July 1945," Meeks wrote on his Web site. "We could still see Japan burning when we were 100 miles out to sea. That was a sight to behold."

One day, Samuels said, a sergeant had the squadron come to their barracks, where he told them about the planned atomic bomb attacks on Japan. The men had difficulty believing the atomic bomb was about 10 times bigger than the ones they had just dropped. They didn't realize "bigger" really meant "stronger."

"We thought 10 times the size, and there was no way it would fit into the B-29," he said.

The second crew to serve on the William Allen White accompanied the atomic bomb drops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended the war.