Viewing page 48 of 140

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

pg.47
it to clear up for some time. What we had feared most would probably happen. 500 B-29's coming back and the island was socked in and about 10% would be forced to land at Iwo. We had never handled more than four planes at one time. At 8 a.m. crew #1 was due on and they were working with the last PBJ trying to land it. I snatched two hours of sleep and then phoned down to the unit. R.J. Walker informed me the PBJ had been landed successfully. The first B-29 to reach Iwo from Japan had two of its four engines out and the third one was sputtering. Lt. Col. Frennel of the 21st Bomber Command decided it was too dangerous to try to land a plane in that condition so it was vectored over the island, the pilot told to set it on the automatic pilot and the crew was directed to bail out. Crew #2, my crew, took over at 12 o'clock and we really got the business. We had so many plans trying to land that Agate Base had to stack them for us at 500 foot intervals up to 8000 or 90000 feet over the island. As is usually the case now, all the big brass were gathered around the trailer.
                   Ceiling: Zero; Visibility: 1/2 mile.
            First priority was given to Ming Toy Twelve,
which had two engines out, running low on gas and had wounded aboard. Ming Toy Twelve was landed. Then it came faster than we could count. (To add to the difficulties, one half of the strip running lengthwise down down the middle was under reconstruction - it was being macadamized. Therefore we had less than the wingspread 

Transcription Notes:
"90,000 feet" probably a typo: "9,000?"