Tom Semans;34th Squadron

When I first read "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" I was not a pilot. Years later I reread it and winced at the author relating how he forgot to lower his flaps to the take-off setting and took off no-flaps from the Hornet. Months of intensive training in short-field techniques and he forgot flaps. Jimmie Doolittle must have cried when he read that. I wondered how he could be so stupid and then put it in writing to boot!

I was not going to submit this story, but typing up some of the other tales kind of worked me up. It's something like hearing a few jokes and then finding that you have a few to tell. So, here it is.

It was a dark and stormy night, and the typhoon circulation had brought torrential rains all day, turning Pusan East (K-9) into a big mud puddle. Projecting out of the muddy lakes were the buildings and hootches of the 34th Bomb Squadron. I sat in the hootch we called home with some other crews, waiting for them to call off the night's missions.

After the 1300 hours briefing, I had performed a walk-around preflight on my bird and the water on the pierced-steel-planking apron was over my GI shoes. The time was now coming up when I must take my navigator and gunner down to the flight line, check for changes, and prepare to blast off on a night intruder mission.

We were finally put on hold, or indefinite delay, and relaxed a bit.

Some of the navigators started to nip on the cooking sherry, but not the pilots. An hour or so later we were canceled for the night. It seems that the last pilot who tried to take off could not even see the runway lights because the water was so deep on the PSP that the props were throwing it all over his windshield. Party time had arrived!

I don't recall too much about the party except it terminated in a grand knee-deep mud-wrestling match. At 0600 I was rudely roused with the news that I had an 0700 briefing for daylight formation mission. I responded that I wasn't even a member of the daylight formation team, and was told that I had just made the team!

Daylight formation had recently been pushed on us from above over the protests of the local commanders who rightfully claimed that we could find anything at night with flares and a pathfinder without the risks of daylight exposure to ground fire and fighters. A pool of crews was selected to practice and I was not among them. I did not feel slighted. I told one of my hootch mates, who flaunted his membership on the elite team, that he would probably rue the day he had heard of daylight formation missions.

I quickly shaved, brushed the taste of two divisions of barefoot North Korean infantry from my mouth, grabbed a bite, and made it to briefing. It turned out that I was runway stand by for the flight. Not so bad after all. I would perform all preparations to go, then sit out on the runup pad sucking on 100% oxygen for my hangover until the formation took off, then back to the sack where I belonged I was listening while the formation checked in to taxi and much to my delight, they all made it. Just then something happened, and this was totally unique in Douglas A-26 history, - one taxiing plane had a wheel fall off! I fired up and blasted off with the formation.

It was a beautiful day, as the typhoon had veered and we were in the clear conditions that followed This also made it a good day for optical-sighted ground artillery. We bombed a bridge from 10,000 feet with synchronous Norden. We were just turning off target on our first dry run, when the F-80's on flak suppression reported flak at six o'clock low. This is where I was in #4 slot and I heard a loud sharp clang such as hot lead makes on stressed aluminum aircraft skin. I heard it again thirteen years later in 'Nam and recognized it instantly. It's not something you forget.

I had just flipped my bomb-bay switch and immediately noted a loss of hydraulic pressure. I notified lead and he said to start opening my bomb doors with the emergency pump. When I started this, the pump went limp and all three red dots on the emergency reservoir disappeared. The bomb doors remained closed although my bomb door spoilers (three fork-lift tines forward of the bomb bay) were down. I continued and dropped my wing bombs with the formation.

On the way back to K-9 I considered my situation. My emergency hydraulic fluid for the landing gear had evidently gone out with the bomb door fluid. This still left with me with the straight manual release and free-fall method on the foolproof Douglas A-26 Invader.

Over K-9 I performed my pre-landing check, slowed down, lowered a quarter flaps. and proceeded to pull the manual release cables for the gear. The nose gear cracked and came partially down, but the mains wouldn't budge. I had my gunner (in the right seat) try it and he couldn't get them to release. I informed lead (my Group Commander) of my situation and announced that I would try negative G's. I pulled up toward a stall and dumped the nose while my highly motivated gunner pulled on the cables with negative results.

The Group Commander called me and told me not to use negative G's anymore as it might dislodge the internal bombs, but to take it over to Miho, Japan and belly it in. Miho was our rear echelon maintenance base about one hour away just across the Korean Straits.

I made the necessary calls and headed East. I wanted to climb to 7000 feet but I ran into another problem. Old 437 wasn't going along with it. We had stayed with the formation clear back to K-9, but now it couldn't get up enough airspeed for a climb. I knew that the spoilers were still down and that the nose gear had broken loose and was partially down, but that didn't account for much drag. I kept nursing and cursing in a slow climb. At the coast, I had the navigator figure our fuel condition to Miho, using the new slow airspeed, and he came up with not much fuel left. I decided to play my trump card and use my brain on this.

Let's see now. I would plan my approach for a straight in and hold off on the flaps until damn!!! FLAPS! I reached down and flipped the flap switch up and the quarter flaps that I had been carrying during the slow climb retracted and 437 got up to speed. I had my navigator re-compute our fuel and it came up roses. I didn't burden my crew with the flap thing. They had enough to worry them.

My navigator was a recallee who wanted nothing more than to get back to his bride and insurance adjuster job in Ohio with every thing that he had brought over. He had a civilian pilot's license and would frequently entertain me with his big fantasy. I would get clobbered and he would cut me out of the pilot's seat and bring the plane back and make hero.

He was a devout coward on the ground, but would coolly give me ½ degree heading corrections on a bomb run through the night flak. My gunner was also a one termer who just wanted to get back to the golf course. He rode right seat on most missions as on this one. The navigator was in the nose but I moved the gunner into the jump seat and brought the navigator up the crawl way into the right seat as we crossed the straits.

I tried to keep up spirits (my own as well as the crew's) as we bore Eastward. We could hear another A-26 call Miho tower with an unsafe gear light and I told the crew to just wait until we called in and we all got a big laugh.

I finally got close enough to contact Miho tower. My transmission went something like this, "This is Richman 74. I have no hydraulic pressure, my landing gear will not release, my bomb bay will not open, I have six internal 500 pound GP bombs, and I'm going to crash land on your field." They replied. "Stand by one."

A new voice came on the air. This was one of the pilots who had completed a combat tour and was now at Miho for maintenance test work. He wanted to know if I was going to blow up on the runway which he felt I was sure to do if I bellied in with a load of Tritonal bombs. I told him that I was open to suggestion.

His suggestion was that we stay at altitude while he got the crash boats out and then bail out. Miho was on a very narrow isthmus, and the chance of hitting land on bailout was minimal. I decided to go with it, as he seemed to know his material.

The A-26 did not have a good bail out history, The spoilers precluded the other crew members from dropping out of the nose. We would all have to go out the top. This consisted of diving toward the wing fuel cap and rolling in a desperate attempt to miss the tail. I remembered that I had brought my movie camera and the navigator had used it up in the nose. Besides not wanting to lose the camera, I figured that I could stuff it under my flying suit and, if it didn't rip out on chute opening, take some hot movies while floating down to Miho Bay. I asked my navigator about my camera and he got a funny look on his face and pointed forward. I told him to go get it. He said no way and offered himself up to any kind of courts-martial I had in mind. In fairness to him, he would have had to crawl back through the tunnel to get it and our fuel quantity indicator needles were both bumping against the empty mark.

Before a serious military discipline situation blossomed, another voice called from the tower. The expert had evidently been retired. My Group Commander had, immediately upon landing, conferred with maintenance and armament and confirmed that his decision on a belly landing was the best bet and was smart enough to figure that I might have been talked out of it and so sent me his suggestion to take it on in. This is probably why he retired as a Major General.

Since I feared the Group commander above all else, I agreed, gave my crew the option of bailing out (rejected) and let down for the landing. As I turned on base leg the tower told me to extend my base leg as they wanted to evacuate the GCA shack, but I told them that I was on the fumes so we all had to take our chances.

I was glad to have the decision-making behind me. The bombs were supposed to be safe for a four foot free fall, the arming wires were in them, and if it was a bad enough landing to set them off, it wasn't going to be much fun anyhow. I also agreed with the tower to land on the sod alongside the strip, although I wouldn't have done that with other aircraft.

My navigator kept bugging me down final to let him jettison the canopy but I held him off to just short of round out. It dinged him on the head when it dished but I was short enough to miss out on that. As we came across the field boundary, I cut the mixtures and eased back.

I was soon aware of the tail skid dragging. Then the belly and rear of the nacelles touched down with some deceleration. Then the free rotating props started hitting, the plane settled forward on the nacelles, and we had much more deceleration. About that time the right prop stopped straight down and started shooting up a geyser of dirt that came right down my neck. It felt mighty good! Just before stopping, the plane made an almost 90 degree turn and my crew shot out like partridges.

One of the Japanese firemen handed out my movie camera and my navigator started muttering. I told him that the government would give me another navigator but not another camera.
 The Base Commander sent down word that we had a free steak dinner at the club and we took him up on it.

That night we were guzzling Sapporo beer at the Golden Bear dance hall and my crew was living it up. I couldn't get too happy because I kept thinking about an alternate scenario. We are out of gas fifty miles short of Miho, I'm getting ready to bail out the crew and reach down to lower flaps when I discover the quarter flap setting!  This was a very sobering consideration that no amount of Sapporo beer could dispel.

I don't know the full cause of my problems. The emergency fluid should have stayed in the baffled reservoir, but it could have siphoned out because a 40mm hit had mangled the bomb door cylinder and exited through the vacant rear gunner's compartment. The gear uplocks released by cable in the hanger. There was no sudden stoppage on the engine, so they made a run out check on the prop shaft, replaced the props, and flew 437 gear-down to Kisarazu, a depot across Tokyo Bay from Yokohama.

In 1958 1 saw a bunch Of A-26's on the apron at Tachikawa in flyable storage, and there was a 437 out there with a hard nose. It was probably the same plane.

I can still say (unlike George Bush) that my crew members always made it back without a scratch. I am more thankful than boastful about it because deep down in my heart I still remember those flaps.