Mukden Incident, New Style

The morning sun was lacquering the China sky a brilliant red when the B-29 Superfortress Monsoon roared down the long runway. It seemed she would never get off. When the heavy-laden monster finally rose, the crew opened the hatch, only to see the ground still hugging them. Said a crewman, closing the hatch: "Maybe if we don't look it'll go away."

The heavy-laden Monsoon slashed through a treetop, dented a belly blister before she began to climb. This mishap did not interfere with her flight to Manchuria. Neither did an instrument panel fire en route, nor the discovery that three vital instruments (altimeter, rate of climb gauge and airspeed indicator) were knocked out, probably by the treetop. Duplicate instruments did the job.

All morning the Monsoon and dozens of her sister ships flew to the northeast, half the time over Jap-occupied areas of China. Over the Gulf of Chihli, in hazy weather, she lost her formation. But at 11:11 a.m. the target was in sight. Other squadrons had marked it with two great fires, one in the midst of the factory district.

The bombardier took control of the plane for the bombing run. It lasted 45 seconds. The pilot, Major William C. Kingsbury, took over again with the standard admonition "Let's get the hell out of here," as one of the gunners reported some of the bombs hitting where they should.

Boom in Boomtown. The target was a group of war factories in the Jap boomtown of Anshan, 53 miles south-southwest of Mukden, where the Japs began their conquest of China 13 years ago. Dominating the forest of chimneys which rose from the Manchurian plain were the stacks of the Showa Steel Works, largest in the conquered provinces, Japan's No. 2 producer of pig iron, No. 3 producer of rolled steel and steel ingots.

As the Superfortresses droned over the cluster of factories in their first daylight operation, flames from the bombed plants billowed up to 6,000 feet, smoke to 26,000. But the B-29s were above these, above the ack-ack, and above the effective fighting ceiling of Jap Zeroes. The first high-level operation of the kind for which B-29s were designed (as distinct from medium-altitude night bombing such as the two previous attacks on Yawata and Sasebo) was a success. Only two planes were lost. Total for three raids: six.

Half a Load. The major secondary target for planes which for any reason had to pass up Anshan was Tangku, the port of Tientsin in northernmost China. The Monsoon was past Tangku on the way home when it was discovered that half her bomb load had stuck in the bay. A target of last resort had been specified: the airfield at Chenghsien. The nearby railway junction had already been bombed by a diversionary force of B-29s. The Monsoon knocked out the airfield control tower with its leftovers and breezed back to base.

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