On 2 April 1944, seventy years ago today, the first B-29 Superfortress bomber of the U.S. 20th Air Forces 58th Bombardment Wing landed at Chakulia, near Calcutta, India, to start working up for a new strategic bomber force equipped with B-29 bombers with advance bases in China from which targets in Manchuria and on the home island of Kyushu, Japan, could be attacked. The 58th Bombardment Operational Training Wing Wing (Heavy) was constituted on 22 April and activated on 1 May 1943 in Kansas to train the first B-29 aircrews and help prepare the new aircraft for operational combat duty. By July, the USAAF had accepted seven YB-29s and had assigned them to the 58th to equip new training squadrons of the 472d Bombardment Group, the Wings first operational group. In August 1943, the USAAFs high command decided that 58th Bombardment Wing would be stationed in the CBI Theater (China-Burma-India) by the end of 1943 and would begin attacking Japanese home island targets from bases in China. Delays in the program to ready the bombers slipped the date. As planes came off the Boeing assembly lines, they went to USAAF modification centers located near the assembly plants in Marietta, Georgia, and Omaha, Nebraska, to be refitted with modifications and improvements the need for which had been learned from air combat in Europe. Finally, in April 1944, the planes — and their crews, who had to undergo an unusually long and arduous training program because of the aircrafts complexity — were considered combat ready and were delivered. The first B-29 bombing raid took place on 5 June 1944, when 98 B-29s took off from bases in eastern India to attack the Makasan railroad yards at Bangkok, Thailand. Because the Japanese still had command of the seas in the area, all fuel, bombs, spares, and other supplies for the bases in China had to be flown in from India over the Hump. This was a serious logistical problem, especially because the B-29s Wasp R-3350-23 engine had been rushed into production and was singularly unreliable. The aircraft ate engines at a rate that simply could not be sustained with bases in China, and in December 1944 the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to move the 58th Bombardment wing to bases in the newly captured Marianas Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. The 58th Bomb Wing flew its last missions in the CBI Theater on 8 February 1945.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 12:31:44 +0000
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