World War II veteran shares war stories

Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Gloria Austin
MEETING — Donald Smith, left, a resident at Madigan Estates Nursing Facility speaks with  Bernie McMann during a Veterans Day event at the nursing home.
By Gloria Austin
Staff Writer
    HOULTON — As top gunner, Donald Smith saw action in the Pacific during World War II and Korea — all from the front turret of a B-29 bomber— the Superfortress of its time.
    “I was constantly rotating my gun sight to make sure the area was clear,” said Smith sitting comfortably in a chair at Madigan Estates Nursing Facility in Houlton. “I was constantly communicating with other gunners.”
    The B-29 was designed as a high-altitude daytime bomber, but it was used extensively in low-altitude night-time incendiary bombing missions. It was the primary aircraft used in the American firebombing campaign against the Empire of Japan in the final months of World War II and was used to carry out the atomic bombings that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    The first mission of the newly molded 11-man crew, which Smith was a part of while finishing their training in New Mexico, and was to engage in the Pacific theater …  Saipan to be exact.
    At 18 years of age, Smith was part of the draft, or as he calls it a “hand-cuffed volunteer” of the United States Army Air Force.
    “I had worked on engine systems before being drafted,” he said. Smith met with the personnel supervisor  who attempted to match his skills to a military job.
    “She looked in her book, which was about this thick,” as he held his hands apart. “It had all the job descriptions in the world.”
    However, the female  lieutenant could not find Smith a job that would compare to the one in his civilian life. So, Smith was named an instrument technician, non-electrical.
    “The first thing they did was send me to an electrical course and then [into] electronics,” he said.
    To learn the gunnery system of the B-29,  Smith was assigned to Alamogordo, N.M.
    “Hell, I didn’t even know where New Mexico was at that time,” he added. He went there to work on aircraft maintenance. After a couple of months, Smith was asked if he’d like to train to be a gunner.
    “In those days for an enlisted man, the gunner was the tops,”  explained Smith. “So, I said, ‘Oh, yes. I’d like to be.’”
    After Saipan, the bomber crew helped to take other islands, including Guam. Smith was stationed in Northfield, even though the crew moved around.
    Smith’s crew was part of a Pathfinder squadron, which meant, they were spotters.
    “We would drop a million candle power to light up the target,” he said. “It was unbelievable. It could pinpoint the target. Then, other units would come in and drop. We would go back and try to get photographic evidence of the damage.”
    Life in a B-29 bomber, was at times, risky.
    “Well, the Japanese didn’t care for us coming in,” said Smith. “And, they sure as hell didn’t want us sticking around. So, sometimes it would get a little sticky.”
    Smith recounted fire bombing every major city in the Japanese Archipelago.
    “People don’t realize Japan is made up of over 9,000 islands; most of them mountainous, which is of no military value,” he said. “But, the ones that were, we fire bombed to death.”
    Smith said the plane would drop to around 5,000 feet and streak across dropping a string of alternating general purpose bombs and incendiaries,
    “There would be a delay put on the general purpose bomb so when the fire got going a little bit, the explosion would spread it around,” explained Smith. “The Japanese, in some cases, were beheading crews when they caught them. They didn’t catch too many.”
    Smith noted casualties usually occurred during a stretch of 1,200 miles going in or 1,200 miles coming out.
    On one particular combat mission, Smith and his crew flew their airplane dubbed, “Wild Hog,” into a secret location — which he still didn’t want to mention even today — sustaining damage to two of the aircraft’s engines on the same side when they were told to eliminate a fuel dump, which hadn’t been destroyed effectively.
    “We were coming out,” recalled Smith. “It took the pilot and co-pilot both to keep the aircraft level.”
    As a flight engineer at the  time, Smith was busy transferring fuel from the ruptured engines.
    “One had gone completely off the wing,” he said. “The other was still there, but it wasn’t working. I kept transferring fuel to the good side, which made it that much harder to level the aircraft. We finally ended going down in the drink.”
    Smith noted the pilots did a very good job landing.
    “Any time you hit a solid surface [like water] at 100 and some miles an hour, you get some bruises,” Smith said with a smile. “Everyone got out of the airplane, with no major injuries to speak of.”
    The crew took their two major seven-man life rafts, according to Smith, and inflated them and tied them together. Every man took his individual life raft and inflated it. The life preservers were tied together to form a perimeter.
    “We had an emergency radio, but it took four days before the Navy came  to pick us up,” Smith added.
    The crew was shipped to the nearest military hospital for evaluation.
    “They figured we were in good shape,” Smith said. With a chuckle, he added, “I had a broken back, but everyone else came out in pretty good shape.”
    Smith’s crew stayed in the hospital for three days, while he remained on a backboard for six weeks.
    “The crew was sent back to duty, flying missions, within three days of being released from the hospital and it was eight weeks before they turned me loose,” he said. “We flew together until the war ended.”
    All of the crew, except for Smith, has died.
    At the time of the Korean War, Smith was in Pusan working on P-51 aircraft.
    “The front line was probably 10 miles up above us,” he recounted. “We were backed up to the water, damned near wading. They [the Eighth Army] managed to hold. We lost so many Marines coming across the frozen reservoir … they managed to recover. Of course, we went into the negotiation program and it was 1953 before it was called an Armistice … never a peace … still not, just an armistice.”
    In 1967, Smith ran a branch to support the B-52 bombers. There was no way to safeguard the B-52 in Vietnam — since the Ho Chi Minh Trail was so infiltrated — it wasn’t safe to put that “big bird” there, explained Smith.
    “The military built a special base in Kilasip Thailand called U-Tapao,” he explained. “It was built for tankers, aerial refuelers and our bombers. It was a Tai Navy base built by Americans. We used it until the hostilities were over. The political climate changed and we were asked to leave.”
    Smith served his country from 1944 to Jan. 1, 1971.
    “I stayed because I liked working on aircraft,” he said. “I had the opportunity in my career to work on gunnery and bombing systems; airborne radar systems; engine systems , but the only thing I never did was change a tire on a bomber. I liked working on aircraft and the military was good to me.
    Smith was never bitter about the fact that he was drafted.
    “I have no resentment about my friends and neighbors sending me that nice letter,” he chuckled. “I had a 1-A draft card and letter from my friends and neighbors. I wish I had kept them for historical purposes.”
    Smith and his son-in-law, who was a B-52 gunner, both submitted letters to the Department of the Air Force requesting to be recalled during Desert Storm.
    “I felt I could still do a good job,” said Smith, who was around 57 at the time of the Kuwait incident.
    Smith, who was born in Plattsburg, N.Y. and lived in Merced, Calif. and Connecticut, moved to Littleton three years ago.
    “I am a chief master sargeant by rank and a retired maintenance superintendent of the 93rd Avionics Maintenance Squadron,” he said proudly.
    Even when flying a combat mission is sketchy at times, Smith said there was always a function to carry out.
    “After takeoff, it might be 10 hours or better before you got in a threat zone, so you tried to relax as much as possible. You don’t do this — laying his head back like he was napping,” he said.
    “Fire bombing would come over a target en mass,” said Smith. “One airplane would single the drop. We had a radio code just for that. Everyone would drop their weapon at the same time.”
    Smith said planes were loaded with 500s, incendiaries, 750s and 1,000 pounders.
    “If you wanted to bust up someone’s house pretty bad, you dropped a 1,000 pounder,” he said. “That is the way it worked.”
    There was always a function for each crew member during a combat mission.
    “I thought and still think, everyone who is physically able, male and female, should spend time supporting their country whether it be military, Peace Corps or whatever,” said Smith. “I think we all owe this country that much. That’s the way I felt then and the way I feel now.”
    With a slight laugh and shake of his head, he said, “A couple of times it wasn’t too friendly. But, we used to have a motto that went something like this: ‘Lord if you get me out of this one. I will be good forever.’”
    With a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, Smith said, “We lied.”