Word: superfort
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...story of his, or any newsman's life-but he couldn't write it. There he was, sitting in a Superfort, with arc-welder's glasses to protect his eyes from the glare, watching the atomic bomb bore down on Nagasaki. But able, sad-faced William L. Laurence's lips were sealed. He was the Army's guest...
Improved Model. Three days later, the Superfort Great Artiste was out on a similar mission. Major Charles W. Sweeney had a rough trip to Japan in bad weather; his primary target was socked in. Over the second-choice target, Nagasaki, he had just enough gas left for one run. It was begun on instruments, and then there was a hole in the clouds so that the bombardier, Captain Kermit K. Beahan, was able to bomb visually...
Then, as the new week began, Major General Curtis LeMay wound up and pitched the biggest Superfort strike yet. Nearly 600 planes dropped 4,000 tons of fire bombs on four new targets in Kyushu and the toe of Honshu. The Japs could begin counting off Kure, greatest naval base on the Inland Sea; Ube, coal and magnesium center; Shimonoseki, seaport; Kumamoto, military and industrial city...
Enemy opposition to the Superfort attacks, while still stout, has begun to show signs of weakening. Flak remains heavy, but not uniformly so; fighter opposition on most recent assaults has been light. But in the drive to knock out Japan's industry, the B-29s will now face a new enemy: weather. Between June and September, eastern Japan's rainiest season, the air will be warm, moist and thick with clouds. Inevitably, more bombing will have to be done by instruments and will be correspondingly less accurate, but there will be no lightening of the bomb loads...
...feet, high above the Navy planes, a lone B-29 droned around. It carried no bombs: its job was to photograph the results of the carrier planes' bombing. Aboard the Superfort was a Navy observer, Lieut, (j.g.) David C. McMillin, listening to the carrier air group commanders and pilots over the inter-plane circuit. He heard...