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pg.57

unaware that his wheels are still retracted. If those people in the tower sees it in time they will tell the pilot to pull up and go around. Sometimes however the traffic is pretty heavy and those in the control tower have their hands full and will not notice it. In that case the plane comes [[?]] in for its usual landing, slide along on its belly tear ruts in the runway and finally stop in a cloud of dust while the pilot climbs out of his cockpit looking very surprised, very foolish and undoubtedly in for a pretty thorough chewing out. On accidents such as these, the pilot is sometimes injured, seldom killed.

I have many crack-ups here on Iwo but for the most part the pilot, and crew - if a bomber - have escaped with miraculously few injuries. One of the first planes to land on the island, a Navy fighter bomber, in landing flipped over on its back and burst into flames. The pilot got out o.k. You have already been told about that P-51. Another time I saw a B-29 land, spin around, turn over and [[strikethrough]]burstinto[[/strikethrough]] burst into flames. It burned for several hours sending up such a black pall of smoke as to cause the airstrip [[strikethrough]]to further traffic[[/strikethrough]] to be closed to further traffic. Yet none of the crew was hurt.

The fighters came back from the strike about two p.m. and landed in short order. About two hours later I stepped out of my tent on my way to supper. I glanced up to see how many B-29's there were in the air. I was astounded. There directly before my eyes, were nine white