NOTE: Malen passed on at age 100 and 4 days.
MY STORY
BY: MALEN POWELL, CHEYENNE, WY
Editor’s note: Malen Powell was an Aerial Gunner in the 792nd Bomb Squadron of the 468th Bomb Group. He flew on 34 combat missions, and completed a half dozen Hump trips. Among other awards, Malen also holds the Distinguished Flying Cross. This document was originally a letter written to Joanna Fenstermacher, daughter of Richard Fenstermacher, the Flight Engineer who flew with Malen. All photos were added by the Editor. The letter was rewritten into a story format for publication by the editor.
My oldest brother and I were working at the Air Base in Pueblo, Colorado in the fall of 1942. I got acquainted with, and started running around with, another kid my age (Gerald “Bud” Voris).
One evening about 5:00 pm, just before we were to go to work, we stood and watched a B-24 Liberator land on the field. Just about the time it landed, Bud turned to me and said, “Let’s go down tomorrow, join the Air Corps and fly.” The next afternoon we were in the Army Air Corps (December 12th 1942).
We went from Pueblo to Denver (Fort Logan). From there we were taken to St. Petersburg, Florida for one week, and then to Clearwater Beach, for basic training.
In March 1943, I was sent to Shepherd Field, Texas, for mechanic’s school. In August 1943, I was sent to Chanute Field, Illinois for 2 months for engine specialist’s school. In October I went back to Denver, this time to Lowry Field, where I was put into the B-29 program. I was there for yet another two months. On New Year’s Day 1944 I arrived at Clovis Air Force Base in New Mexico.
After I was at Clovis about a week, they started putting our crews together. They moved the enlisted men around into different barracks so that the crews would be together. As it turned out, my Radio Operator, Wallace Bryce Martin, and I became very good friends. He was married and had a little boy about one year old. I will tell you more about him later.
I don’t remember the first meeting with the officers, whether we met them individually or as a group. So I don’t really remember the first time I met the officers on our crew personally.
The first time we flew together as a crew, I don’t remember our Flight Engineer (Rich Fenstermacher) going up with us. We didn’t have any B-29s at the time…all I remember is that we had a Bombardier, Navigator, Pilot, Co-pilot and myself. That was also the first time I ever flew in an airplane!
It seems like it was sometime in March 1944 before we started flying B-29s. By that time, Fenstermacher had joined our crew, functioning as a Flight Engineer. The Flight Engineer was a very important cog in our operation. It was his job to start the engines, and he was in charge of all the engines’ operations, from the time we started them up until the time we shut them down. About two months later they took Lt. Keller off the crew, and gave him his own crew. Then Lt. Wayne C. Nebben came onto our crew as Co-pilot. We didn’t have a Radar Operator at the time, and would not get one until we got overseas. Lt. Nebben and I became very close, and after the war, his family and mine remained close.
About the 1st of September 1944 we were sent to Herington, Kansas. This was to be our staging base. We received our plane, and we all got our overseas shots and our gear.
About the 1st of October we left Herington for West Palm Beach, Florida. That was our departure point to leave the USA.
Somewhere around the 10th of October, we left the USA. Our first stop was supposed to be at Atkinson Field in British Guinea, South America. But after we left the shoreline about an hour or two out, Cherney knew that we were going to be flying over Puerto Rico although I will never know why. I called Fenstermacher and told him that our #4 engine was smoking pretty heavily. And he said, “How bad is it?” I told him that I thought we should land and check it out. He convinced the pilot that we should land, so we landed in Puerto Rico. The next morning the pilot made Fenstermacher, Stich and me go out to the plane and check it out. There wasn’t anything wrong with the engine, so the three of us went down to the bar and had a beer.
The next day we left for South America. We flew over the island of Trinidad. In that portion of South America, the jungle was very heavy. They had to clear the timber out to build the air field. Our barracks were built of poles, about 5 or 6 feet high. The first thing they told us after we landed was to never try to enter into the jungle. It was so thick and dark that if you wandered about fifty feet into it you might not find your way back out.
The next day we headed for Natal, Brazil. We were in Natal for a couple of days then one evening about 6:00 pm we headed for Africa. Since we were now south of the Equator, the directions seemed different. So when we headed out over the ocean, the pilot called back to the Navigator and said, “How is our heading?” Cherney said, “Correct it two degrees to the right.” I called up the pilot and said, “Captain, are we supposed to be heading for Africa?”, and he said, “That is right.” I told him he had better turn the ship around, because we were headed west instead of east.
The next day we took off again for a place called Maiduguri in Nigeria. It was about a five or six hour flight from Accra.
The next day we were headed for Kano, Nigeria. We landed about noon. One of the guards on our plane told me if we wanted, he would take us into town. At that time we had never been off base since leaving the USA. Kano was a walled city, the wall being about 20 feet high. Outside the wall was a marketplace. There were two archways in the wall – you had to go through the left archway to go in, coming out the left side. The buildings in the city were very primitive. There were also walls around the city block.
We landed at Kharagpur about the 20th of October, 1944. The first thing they did was take our plane away from us and give it to an older crew. Since they didn’t have another airplane to assign to our crew yet, they split us up, and each of us had to fly with an older crew into combat. They called it a “checkout” flight. I don’t know what crew Fenstermacher went with, but Captain Barber and Bryce Martin went with Major Parsons. All the planes went to our forward base in China at Pengshan (coded named A-7), because the target of the upcoming mission was in Japan. We had to haul our fuel, bombs and other supplies from India to China so that we could bomb Japan. We could not reach Japan from our base in India.
The 468th’s third mission of October 1944 was run on October 25th against the Omura Aircraft Assembly Plant on Kyushu Island. Eighteen aircraft participated, with 14 of them bombing the primary target, one a target of opportunity near Chinchow, and 3 failing to bomb because of mechanical failures. Aircraft 42-24504 (Gunga Din), piloted by Major Parsons, crashed approximately one minute after takeoff; all Crewmembers were killed instantly and the plane was a total loss. It exploded on impact. When I heard about it back in India, I cried. In Bryce Martin, I had just lost the best friend I ever had.
Ed Parsons had his formation lights on (on top of the wings) the night he took off for Omura. He hit trees over south end - as he pulled-up, the plane stalled-out and went straight into the ground.
The B-29 design-gross weight was 120,000 pounds, whereas Parsons’ plane weighed 130,000+. The trees were not lighted. He did not have much chance to see the trees and once he hit a tree, he had little or no chance to recover. No horizon outside, no time to assume instrument-flight conditions, or enough 3-engine power to pull him out of his predicament.
On the way back from the target, Captain Millar’s plane was attacked by a Japanese fighter. Lt. Nebben (Co-pilot) and Ernie Halco (our Tail Gunner) were flying with Millar. The fighter dropped out of the clouds and fired on their plane. A bullet went through the tail section and exploded above Halco’s head. It sprayed shrapnel into Halco’s chest and legs. (They never did get all the metal out of his chest.)
When all the crews returned, they assigned Lt. Tom Young to our crew as our Airplane Commander and John Lenau as the Radio Operator.
They gave us the oldest plane in the fleet, which was also the junk plane. (42-6389 – Party Girl) We were going to make a mission to Singapore on November 5th 1944. I believe it was in the early morning (about 10 am) on takeoff. We were about 200 feet into the air, and we hadn’t cleared our field yet, when #3 engine started smoking (this was for real!). I called up to Fenstermacher, and told him #3 was smoking and he asked, “How bad?” I told him it was smoking way too damn hard. He said, “Wait a minute and I will come back and check it out.” In order to get back where I was he had to crawl through a tunnel 30 feet long. While he was in the tunnel, #4 started smoking and burning, so I called the Pilot and said to Lt. Young, “Land this bastard while we are still alive!” He called the tower and told them he was bringing it in. They said he couldn’t because planes were taking off. He told them to clear the runway as we were coming in anyway. While we were still about 20 feet in the air, the fire truck was putting out the fire in the engines. If we would have flown two minutes more we might have blown up.
In the meantime, another crew arrived in India, and we get their new plane. We named it Mammy Yokum. They gave the newly arriving crew the plane we just about crashed.
Our first trip to China as a crew was after Capt. Barber and Martin were killed. We went with Capt. Hal Good. That mission was to haul supplies over the Hump…gas, mail and food.
Our first trip with Lt. Young was also to haul supplies. Each night after we went overseas, a crewmember had to watch the plane. That night in China, Let Young watched the plane, so that the rest of us could go into town. We found a bar, but the only things they served were wine (both white and red wines were available) and peanuts, which you ate and threw the hulls on the floor. It was about a half mile down this dirt road to town. The nights were very dark, with the heavy clouds and mist. We all got to “feeling our oats” on the wine. After a couple of hours, Fenstermacher and Nebben got up and said they were going back to camp. They locked arms and started walking to the door. Both the walls and door of the building were made of bamboo poles. They got close to the wall and Fenstermacher said, “Where in the hell is the door?” Nebben said, “Right here, and they walked through the wall. We caught them before they got back to camp. They were lost in the rice paddies.
On the night of December 6th, 1944 from our base in China, we left for Mukden, Manchuria on a daylight mission. We flew in twelve plane formations. All the planes dropped their bombs on cue from the Lead Crew. In our formation was a plane from another Group. In India, we were known as the XX Bomber Command. We were in the 58th Bomb Wing. In each Wing, they had four groups, and in each group there were four Squadrons, and in each Squadron, there were about 12 planes.
General LeMay was our Commanding Officer at this time. I was in the 468th Bomb Group. The other three Groups in our Wing were the 40th, 444th and 462nd.
Coming into the target, we were receiving ground fire. After we had dropped our bombs we got the Japanese fighters. They would attack us high and then they would swirl right down through our formation. We had attacks from both twin engine fighters and single engine fighters. This one single engine fighter dived onto our formation from high and to the right of us. He came in and rammed a B-29 on our right wing. When the B-29 started down, he went in to a spin. It started to break up about 10,000 feet. Three parachutes came out. We never did find out if there were any survivors.
On the return flight to our base in China, we flew over the Great Wall of China. It was a sight I will never forget.
On approaching our base in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, (which is surrounded by cloud-covered mountains), we were flying back with the plane that we just about crashed with on takeoff. Lt. Lyons’ and his crew, whom we had trained with back in New Mexico, were on the plane.
As we approached the base, we had to come in on radio beam, since we were in the clouds, and were starting to ice up. Lt Young came back up above the clouds, got back on the beam, and started down again. As we got lower, I saw a hole in the clouds and the valley below. I hollered over the intercom, “Drop it, it is all clear!” Down we went, and we finally landed. Lt. Lyons and his crew hit a mountain peak and they were all killed. The Chinese found them and carried them down off the mountain top.
Christmas Eve 1944, we were attending a show in India. It was an outside theater. It was called the “Bamboo Bowl”. We had an air raid and everyone had to go back to their respective barracks, get their gas masks and .45s on. About 15 or 20 minutes later, we were struck by one Japanese bomber. It did damage to one or two planes, but our night fighter with radar shot it down before it got away.
Our crew got to make several trips into Calcutta. Our first time there, our whole crew went together on the same train. It was about 60 miles from our base to Calcutta.
On one of our missions to Singapore in January, we were to fly a daylight mission in a 12 plane formation. We got to our rendezvous point and only 2 more planes showed up. We started for the target, which was the Drydocks in the Johore Strait in Singapore. About an hour from target, we ran into a storm, which we had no warning about. It was so wide and so high that we couldn’t go over or around it…we had to go through it. The storm was so severe, and the winds so strong, that our bomber shook like a kite in a windstorm. The electrical storm was so bad that our propellers looked like balls of fire.
About 15 or 20 minutes, before we reached the target, we ran out of the storm into clear weather. When we did the Japanese fighters were there. The other 2 bombers were 3 or 4,000 feet about us. The fighters would dive on the planes above us, and then come down to us. Then they would flip-flop and come back under us, then go on to the planes above us.
This one Japanese gather dived on us, like he was going to ram us. The Top Gunner was firing away at him. Just before he would have rammed us, he pulled out of the dive. Just as he pulled up, John, the Left Gunner, said to McNamara, “I think you hit him!” I saw gas flying by my blister.
As soon as we opened the bomb bay doors a bomb fell out. It had been shaken loose in the storm. But as we opened the doors the fighters stopped because they don’t want to be hit by falling bombs. Then the ground guns took over.
You have seen these cannons where the barrel is 20-25 feet long…that is what they used on us now. These gunners work to determine our altitude, so that they can set the shells to explode at our level. I don’t know which is worse, the ground fire or the fighters.
But just after we closed the bomb bay doors, we were hit by a shell. This is where Fenstermacher and our two pilots came into the picture. We lost our cabin pressure and it also hit our engines and knocked out the turbos. We lost our power and went into a dive. Both pilots had to hold the plane controls, and Fenstermacher went to work on the engines to restore the power. At 11,000 feet we pulled out of the dive.
But with the loss of power we just barely had enough air speed to stay aloft.
When we would leave on a mission of this magnitude, we would carry about 7,000 gallons of gas. We had 2 bomb bays, one bay for a fuel tank and the other for bombs.
It was Fenstermacher’s job to transfer the fuel from the bay tanks to the wing tanks. Normal flying time for a mission such as this was about 16:30 hours. But with our loss of power and slow air speed we were going to be a lot longer. While we were still out over the Indian Ocean, Fenstermacher was working like mad, to try to keep the same amount of fuel for each engine.
Both Fenstermacher and Lt. Young thought we were about to run out of gas. The pilot called back to us and told us to gather up everything that was loose and prepare to throw it overboard to lighten the load. He reminded us to wait for his order before we actually threw anything out of the plane. I was looking out my blister, and I could see the difference in the water in the ocean. I don’t know if it was shallower at this location, or if I was seeing mud from the in flowing rivers, but about that time, Lt. Young told us to not throw anything out…there was land ahead! It looked like we weren’t going to have to ditch.
Coming onto the field, we got permission from the tower to make a straight approach to the field. As we began to descend at about 1,000 feet, we lost one engine, and at 200 feet we lost the second engine. Just as we hit the runway, the third engine stopped. Before the planed stopped, the 4th engine ran out of fuel. The only way we made it back to our home base was that we had the best damn engineer in the Air Corps, and also two of the best pilots. The next morning, Lt Young was the first out to the plane and I was the second.
He came up to me and told me that we got a “souvenir” yesterday. We climbed up onto the crew chief stand between #1 and #2 engines. In about the middle of the wing was a hole in the fuel tank large enough to stick your head into. Apparently, the Japanese that dived on us dropped an aerial bomb and hit our wing. That was our gasoline that we saw flying pass our blisters! To go with that, we had over 100 flak and bullet holes in our plane. Some of the flak holes were very large.
The rest of our missions out of India were just normal combat missions. Then on May 4th, the 20th Air Force left India and went to Tinian, in the Marianas Islands.
I don’t remember the date, but sometime in January 1945, Tom Young was called home. Capt Skelley took over our crew.
As soon as we arrived on Tinian, we started bombing Japan proper. After a few daylight missions, we started bombing at night with fire bombs. When we flew at night, it would be a low level raid at about 6,000 feet. Daylight missions would be at 24,000 feet.
On one mission we were preparing to make, we would go to the plane, load the bombs in the bays and put the ammunition in the 50 caliber guns. We would have about 500 rounds for each gun. Then that afternoon we went to the mission briefing. Skelley was one of the big wheels in the Squadron, so we were to be a Lead Crew.
In the briefing, they had all of the maps and all the information that we needed. They informed us that we were to bomb Tokyo on May 26th 1945. Colonel Edmundson was our Group Commander. He went with us on some of the missions. This particular mission we had four Lead Crews. I will try to explain it in the best way that I can.
On the briefing they showed us the map of Tokyo. They showed us where the Emperor’s Palace was, and they said, “Gentlemen, don’t, under any circumstance, hit that Palace.” So they instructed the four Lead Crews where to drop their bombs.
We were the first to drop bombs. 500 B-29s were to drop bombs on Tokyo that night and they were to drop their loads in the middle of the fires started by the first four planes.
Coming in from Tokyo Bay over Yokohama, we were in search lights. It seemed as if there were 10,000 of them. It was about two in the morning and the whole sky was lit up like daylight. We were under ground attack for about 15 or 16 minutes. We were preparing to open the bomb bay doors, when I looked above and saw a B-29 with its bomb bays open, and I shouted, “Move over!” Just as we moved over the bombs came by us. We dropped our bombs, and then turned back over the ocean. At about 200 miles away from the target, I looked back and the whole island was on fire. I received the Distinguished Flying Cross that night, for saving the crew from the bombs above us.
The last hard mission we had was over Kure. It was the Naval Base in Japan. When we bombed it on a daylight mission, we received more flak from it than any mission we pulled.
After the Tokyo raids of May 26th and 28th, there was not one building left, except for the big buildings downtown. My cousin was in the Navy and he went into Tokyo after the war. He visited these buildings and told me that they were completely gutted by fire.
After the raid on Kure, we had no more fighter planes attacking us. The people must have been completely devastated. They had no will to fight on.
Then at last they promoted Capt. Skelley to Major and made him our Executive Officer and Lt. Nebben, our Co-pilot, became our Airplane Commander for the rest of the war.
Out last mission was to an arsenal close to Tokyo. We had 1,000 pound bombs that day. When these bombs would hit a big warehouse, the warehouse would just disappear from the bomb blast.
Just some footnotes. We had three islands…Saipan, Tinian and Guam. We had B-29 bases on all three islands. Tinian was home to two Bomb Wings…our 58th Wing and the 313th Wing. Our base was called West Field, while the 313th used North Field.
No one knew much about North Field. The planes there were newer, and seemingly never went on missions. My crew had a bicycle with a Maytag gas motor hooked up to it. One day I was riding around and I thought I would ride up to North Field and see why they weren’t helping us to win the war. Just as I came riding into the area, I was stopped by an MP and he wanted to know if I was assigned to North Field. I told him that I was not. I was about 50 feet from a B-29 and about that time a Lieutenant came up to me asking questions and all the time I was talking I was looking that plane over. It was completely different from ours, and just on the far side of this plane was a long, low wooden building. Finally the Lt. told me, “Son, this is a secret operation, and I would appreciate it if you would go base to your base and not say anything about what you saw.” I told him that I would comply with his request. But those different gadgets on the plane made me think that they were designed to hunt down submarines.
It wasn’t too much longer after that, that I came in one day from the plane to eat dinner. Not too far from the mess hall, I saw McNamara. He said, “Come and sit with me,” so I turned and started walking with him. And he asked me what I thought about “it”. I asked him what he was talking about. He said the President Truman just announced over the radio that they dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and one bomb destroyed a whole city. We went inside, and started eating. Over the loud speaker, the radio was blaring away, talking about the atomic bomb. And it was then that I first mentioned what I had seen up at North Field. I told Tom that I stood under the wing of the plane that dropped the bomb, and that the bomb was in the building on the far side of the plane.
On VJ day, the day McArthur signed the peace treaty on the USS Missouri, they let all the crews fly to Japan that wanted to go. I don’t know why I didn’t go. None of the planes landed…they just flew low over the city and the countryside then flew over the Missouri, as MacArthur was signing the documents.
On September 29th, the 1st Sergeant came to my hut and read off some names. Mine was one of them. They gave me just 30 minutes to pack and get ready to go home. I was the only one that left for home then. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my crew. We lost track of Fenstermacher until Nebben located his daughter in Miami. I am glad that I got to correspond with Fenstermacher a couple of times before he passed away.
I have never heard from McNamara since the war. I talked to John Stich on the phone once. I stopped at Halco’s house in Massillon, OH. One time he came to a reunion in Chicago.
John Lenau is dead, Wayne Nebben stayed in the National Guard and flew. Wayne and I were real close when we were overseas. We stayed in touch. We were going to go to the Chicago reunion on 1970, but a few days before the reunion, he was killed in a plane crash in Winterset, Iowa on 24 July 1970. He was a Colonel in the Iowa Air National Guard. He was alone in the craft on a jet training flight. I didn’t know about the crash until I got to Chicago. His family came to my house several times, and I to his.
I used to get Christmas cards from Fiedler, but I haven’t heard from him in 35 years. I talked to Cherney one time on the phone, when I came though Boston.
I didn’t know where Tom Young lived and I ran into him in Minneapolis in 1978. John Kirkland and I have stayed in touch all these years. He is a doctor in Greenwood, SC. Skelley, our 3rd pilot (Skelley) lives in Riverside, CA.