The Reality of Flying Combat
We met our crew chief, Sergeant Snyder, early on when we found out our airplane was "Trouble Brewer". The crew chief took care of all the maintenance of the aircraft and made sure all four engines were in top condition. Needless to say, this was a vital part of flying any mission. We soon found that Sergeant Snyder was one of the best crew chiefs and gave our crew a lot of confidence in the reliability of our aircraft when we were flying a mission.
As a crew we went out to the flight line and watched crews take off for their missions to North Korea. Before we flew a combat mission, we could tell that takeoff was going to be a frightening experience. As we watched other crews leave, we could see that they were using almost every foot of the 7000 foot runway. The reason for concern about takeoff was because each B-29 had ten tons of bombs on board plus 6,5000 gallons of high Octane fuel and twelve fifty caliber machine guns with 500 rounds per gun. If you add all this up plus the weight of the airplane, you're asking seventy tons to start flying after a 7000-foot run. Standing on the sidelines watching this take place made us wonder if we really wanted to be a part of this kind of danger. We knew our turn was coming very soon.
Take Off
No comments:
Post a Comment