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“I’d been at war for nearly two years by then, and I knew the Japanese were tenacious fighters who had no problem pulling dirty tricks on their enemies,” Wells said. He told me in 1998 that, despite the absence of Japanese activity the day before, he was “uneasy” about the August 17 mission. Although just 25 at the time, Wells was a seasoned commander who had flown more than a dozen combat missions aboard a Douglas A-20 Havoc. Things didn’t go as well the next day, however, when Lieutenant Colonel Selmon Wells, flying Hobo Queen II, led three other B-32s to the Japanese capital. Hobo Queen II pushed on and, though it was “painted” by Japanese early-warning radars while approaching and leaving the Tokyo area, its crew photographed the airfields at Katori and Konoiko, east of Tokyo, without interference. A B-32 named Hobo Queen II and a second aircraft were dispatched to the Tokyo area the second Dominator had to turn back when it developed engine trouble. The first Dominator mission to include 20th personnel flew on August 16. “Marchione, Nudo, and I had been tent mates since the Philippines, and I think it bothered all of us that Tony was in the pool.” “We called them ‘bastard crews,’ because guys were taken out of their regular crews and had to fly with people they might not ever have met before,” he said. The pool system was not popular, Frank Pallone told me. Among the 20th Recon Squadron members assigned to the pool were Marchione and his F-7 navigator, Second Lieutenant Kurt Rupke. For photo-recon sorties, mission planners enlisted crews from a pool of 20th Reconnaissance Squadron photographers, gunners trained as photo assistants, and commissioned navigators who would “steer” the aircraft during the photo run by using the B-32’s Norden bombsight. While the B-32’s design included a belly camera just aft of its retractable ball turret, the 386th’s Dominator crews did not include aerial photographers. commanders wanted to be assured that the Japanese would not employ their still-robust air defense system, with early-warning radar stations, air raid sirens, and a fleet of fast fighter aircraft with experienced pilots ready to scramble to protect their homeland. If they actually could, that would mean the Japanese weren’t planning any nasty surprises for the occupation forces.” U.S. “According to the terms of the cease-fire, our planes were supposed to be able to fly freely over Tokyo. Besides gathering information on such things as the route that Allied occupation forces could follow into Tokyo, “the photo-recon missions were also intended to test the fidelity of the Japanese,” Pugliese told me in 1997. But Japan’s surrender in mid-August abruptly changed the squadron’s duties crews now were to fly daytime photo-reconnaissance missions to monitor Tokyo’s compliance with the cease-fire.īut there was another, more furtive reason for the flights, according to Rudolph Pugliese, who as a young lieutenant was the 386th’s assistant intelligence officer.
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The B-32s at Yontan were part of the 386th Bombardment Squadron, which conducted anti-shipping sweeps of the South China Sea and, if needed, could fly combat missions against the Japanese mainland. It was there, at Yontan Airfield, that Marchione first saw a Consolidated B-32 Dominator. By August 1945, their unit, the 20th Reconnaissance Squadron, had moved to Okinawa, which had been captured by U.S. While pilots Robert Essig and John Ziegler learned the intricacies of flying the F-7, the reconnaissance version of the B-24, Marchione and fellow gunners Rudolph Nudo, Frank Pallone, and Raymond Zech went through a course to become photographer’s assistants. In November 1944, at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field in Arizona, he joined a Consolidated B-24 Liberator crew that was being transferred to Will Rogers Army Air Force Base in Oklahoma City for training in photo-reconnaissance. Marchione wanted to be a pilot, but the Army had other plans it trained him to be an aerial gunner. “I was still in high school when he went into the service, and with all the at the time, my sister Geraldine and I thought it was neat that he was going.” “He chose the Air Corps because he’d just always wanted to fly,” she recalled in a 1997 interview. Theresa Sell, that he had enlisted because he had expected to get drafted. The oldest of three children of Italian immigrants, he was a good-looking kid, five foot six and 125 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Army Air Forces less than two years earlier, in November 1943. I learned Marchione’s story in the late 1990s while working on a book about the Consolidated B-32 bomber, the aircraft Marchione was flying in when he died.