JIM WRIDE
As told to Don Wride
The Japanese military machine launched its sneak attack on Hawaii on December 7, 1941, bringing the USA into World War II. I was a junior student in Chemical Engineering at Washington State College, Pullman at the time. Along with many other twenty-year olds, I soon discovered it was my privilege to register for the draft. It wasn't long before I received a notice from the Selective Service System saying I had been classified as 2-A. I was fairly well advanced toward a degree in a technical category considered essential to the U.S. war effort, so, in theory, that 2-A classification was supposed to confer upon me deferment until after I graduated.
By mid-1942, various events seemed to indicate 2-A deferments didn't always work out as they should. Rather than risk being drafted into some military job where my training might not be used to best advantage, I chose to volunteer for the Aviation Cadet program of the U.S. Army Air Force Enlisted Reserve. I was expected to report for active duty for officer training in aircraft maintenance engineering after I earned my degree in Chemical Engineering.
While aircraft maintenance engineering is more closely related to mechanical engineering than it is to chemical engineering, I had acquired a substantial amount of mechanical background growing up on the farm, working with all sorts of farm machinery. In February I received greetings from the Air Force with a request to leave for active duty about a month later. Then I received a second notice delaying my reporting date for another month. I finally did report for duty to Boca Raton, Florida.
In 1943 people going long distances still traveled by train. I worked out a travel schedule to get to Boca Raton with about a half day to spare, then boarded a train in Spokane and headed east. About halfway across Montana the train came to a stop in the middle of nowhere. After two or three hours we learned floods had washed out the track. We sat there, miles from the nearest town, for twenty-four hours. I managed to get word to my CO (Commanding Officer) by telegraph so I would not be A.W.O.L. (Absent With Out Leave) before starting my Air Force career.
Our quarters at the Boca Raton Country Club had been a playground for the very rich. When we got there it was stripped to bare walls and concrete floors and furnished with army bunks serving six to eight cadets per room. The golf course was a place to learn to march and hold parades, and the swimming pool a place to teach cadets to swim GI style. Our days were filled with lectures and demonstrations. We had rigorous physical training, and learned about military organizations, legal procedures, plus how to camp out and live under very primitive conditions. We went on bivouac in the Florida Everglades with only the basic equipment we could carry on our backs. All cadets were subjected to a lot of hazing from upperclassmen, supposedly to teach recruits how to unquestioningly obey orders from superiors no matter if they seemed to make sense or not.
Those of us who survived three months of basic training were deemed ready to learn how an aircraft was put together and how to put it back together if it had been mutilated by enemy fire. We were loaded onto a troop train and bundled off to the maintenance engineering school at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut in June 1943.
Each week we covered a different segment, section, or system of an airplane and were tested on our knowledge of each. The classrooms and labs were well equipped with mock-ups of typical mechanical devices, electrical, hydraulic, and control systems. Yale confined instructions to systems common to most types of U.S. military aircraft. Specialized instruction would come later. Our final two weeks at Yale were spent at a nearby airport where we worked on actual airplanes.
I expressed a preference to work on bombers and was assigned to Boeing Field, near Seattle, to train on the B-29, the biggest bomber at the time. All our studies were specific to that plane. Special activities included taking a detailed tour of the new Boeing plant at Renton where B-29s were being mass produced.
After eleven months in the Air Force, our training finally involved work with actual airplanes. We were allowed to get into them and even got off the ground. Our flight engineering training was done in B-24s and B-17s, because there were not yet enough B-29s completed to assign any to our school. In April 1944 graduating members of my class were certified as B-29 Flight Engineers, even though none of us had set foot inside a B-29.
I was next sent to Walker Air Base near Hays, Kansas where I was assigned to a crew with First Lieutenant Ray Clinkscales as my pilot. When we went to the flight line at Walker we were surprised to see we still did not have a B-29. We were told they were on their way. Finally enough came so we could begin sharing them between two or more crews.
At the end of October, 1944, our whole group was declared combat-ready and we shipped off to Lincoln, Nebraska to wait until our B-29 was ready for us to fly overseas. On my birthday, December 3, I got the most expensive birthday present I ever received, one worth about $350,000. That was the day our crew signed on and took responsibility for a B-29. We were soon on our way to Saipan in the Marianas in the Western Pacific Ocean on a plane named 20th Century Sweetheart.
We had not been on Saipan more than an hour or two when we learned that one of the first missions flown by our group, just a few days before we arrived, had been shot down over Japan. Our group commander and the lead crew were on that plane, as was Lieutenant Colonel Robert Goldsworthy of Rosalia. He was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese for the duration of the war.
We had not been on Saipan many days when we were rudely awakened by air raid sirens which told us Japanese planes had been spotted in the area. I don't recall any bombs landing in our living area, but bombs did do damage to planes on the flight line. There were still a fair number of pockets of Japanese soldiers hiding out in the hills in caves that the Marines had not yet cleaned out. They would occasionally be seen as they foraged for food or other supplies.
Our first mission came on December 20, 1944. The plane performed well on a trip that was uneventful trip except for while we were on the final approach to our bombing target. A searchlight caught us and kept us lit up. Fortunately the anti-aircraft gunners and the Japanese fighters could not find us in their sights, so we returned unharmed. Because of the 3,000 mile distance from Saipan to Tokyo, fighters were unable to accompany our early bombing missions to Japan. Not until April 1945, when the Marines had secured Iwo Jima, was there a ground base close enough to allow fighter support. Meanwhile, the Navy placed vessels along our usual flight path to Japan to attempt a pickup of any crews forced to bail out or ditch at sea on their return to Saipan. Later normal procedure was to have specially equipped B-29s with extra fuel accompany each mission as spotter planes to aid bailed-out crews.
I finished my tour of thirty combat missions on June 28, 1945 and left for home July 13, 1945. After seeing the sun rise over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay, we landed at Fairfield Air Force Base, had a quick debriefing, and were sent home for a thirty-day rest and rehabilitation leave prior to reassignment. During that rest, I joined the family for harvest. We Wride men were on the back 80 combining wheat when my sister and mother came to the field and told us Japan had surrendered.
My younger brother, Don, had just completed his combat training in the infantry and was about to be shipped out for the Pacific. Instead he went to Japan for duty as part of the Army of Occupation under General Douglas MacArthur.
I reported to Santa Ana, California as previously ordered, and in November of 1945 I went to Fort Lewis for separation processing and release. I switched to civvies and have been in them ever since.