Joe Zainey
Emma Zainey: Grandpa, where were you stationed and what did you do during WWII?
Joe Zainey: In WWII, for the overseas portion I was in the South Pacific on the Island of Guam, the Mariana’s Islands. It was where our heavy bombers would stop over. Guam was the biggest Island in the Marianas. The big bombers would stop for refueling. They had a wing there called the 20th Bomber Orient. We would fly out of there on our missions to bomb Japan, the cities and the coastline of Japan.
EZ: How long were you there?
JZ: I was there for 11 months.
EZ: What did your missions entail?
JZ: I was what they called a navigator bombardier, and we were the heaviest bomber aircraft in the world and the fastest at the time.
EZ: What aircraft did you fly on?
JZ: The B-29 Super Fortress made by Boeing. I was called into active service for the war from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bear Field, it’s where I enlisted as an aviation cadet. It took almost 2 years to train for everything.
EZ: What was bombardier school like?
JZ: Well, first of all, some of us were navigators and received small bombing education. Japan got smart and bombed Pearl Harbor. Japan had faster aircraft. But to answer your question deeper, Germany declared war on us first. The fastest aircraft we had was the Billy Mitchell Bomber; it was a B-25. We specialized in the B-17 bomber, and we were already using them when Germany declared war on us. Many of the boys in the draft entered bomber training. We had a terrible rate of fatalities. On the first bombing of Berlin, we lost 25% of the men. Little by little, it seems like the Americans have always been able to edge out the difference between what’s highly educated training and what’s routine. They turned the fatality rate around and made Japan and the European countries the ones who were shot down.
EZ: Well, what did you do since you weren’t in Europe?
JZ: Well, that’s kind of funny, kind of interesting in a way. When I was called up, I had my draft papers like everybody else who was of primary age to join or else you went to jail. But I wanted to be in the Air Force. At that time I was in college at Butler University. The University had an Air Force ROTC program that was for reserve officer training. If you had at least 2 years and were physically qualified, you could go into the Air Force into training right away with the objective of being a member of a bombardment crew. That’s the route I took because it was the quickest, and when you graduated, you became an officer. So I thought that’d be nice. First I went to navigation training in the Southeast in the states like Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. They all had airbases scattered around that part of the country. They trained hundred of fellas to be bombardiers, navigators, or pilots. Of course the pilots were the number one demand. And you had to qualify physically and mentally. To go back to my personal life, at the time I was also in a band. It was a paperboys’ band. If you delivered the paper, you could be in the band. So, me and a couple shorty guys like me, about 5’5”, just barely qualified on the physical. And we also just got our draft notice “Dear friends, see you in 2 weeks for basic training.” We hitchhiked to Purdue University and took the physical exam and the mental exam, and this doctor there, one of the instructors, called us out of the front line. He told us were disqualified because we had flat feet. I said they were flat, but they were born flat. He said we had fallen arches, but we said we only had flat feet. We went over to the desk sergeant. He told us to take this envelope and go over to Bear Field in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He said we were both qualified to go to bombardier, navigator, or pilot school. On one of our days off, we hitchhiked to Bear Field. The sergeant laughed and said hold up your hand. He swore me into the Air Force. He told my I didn’t have fallen arches; I just had flat feet I was born with. He said go on back to school, continue to study, and he’d call us back when he needed us. That’s how I got into the Air Force.
EZ: Why did you choose to be a bombardier?
JZ: Well, we went to basic training in Miami Beach, Florida. It’s a funny thing. The training was very intense because they needed people right away. Man, you talk about flat feet. If you had flat feet, it was hard enough. If you were somebody with a last name way up in the alphabet, you would be on a roster the training officers had. If they needed so many people for KP, they would go down the list and the rest of us would just sit there. I guess we were supposed to go out and train on our own. A lot of times when they needed guards or kitchen police [KP] we would go and dig ditches or something. They would get down to someone with the last name of a T of V. There would be about 7 or 8 of us left. Some of us would sit under the shade of a palm tree and take a nap. Some of us would march and get blisters on our flat feet. In my case, I got blisters on my feet and the flight surgeon grounded me for a few days. It was all in desire to be a good soldier. During one of those times, they needed some pilots because all the B-17s had been shot down in Europe. The pilots became critical. One day after roster call the sergeant needed volunteers for pilot training. He said we could all volunteer but they primarily needed bombardiers and navigators. They called names and got to around a W name. There were several of us, when they called our names, who couldn’t go to pilot school anymore, what we were destined for. There were about three of us who when he called our name we asked which one [bombardier school or navigation school] was easier. He said navigation is a little harder than bombing, the training is more intense. So we took bombardier. They sent us to bombardier school over in Georgia. We all went together. They split us up there, I think, because we goofed off. We studied at a flight-training center. We all went to school for another 7 or 8 months. Then we were crewed up with B-17 or B-24 bombers. They were still being shot down like crazy. Japan had too many zeroes. That was the end of how we became flight crewmembers. Some of them went to the B-17 bomber school, while others went to the Marianas Islands in the Pacific. There were two wings that were made to be super bomber crewmembers. They gave us about 30 B-29 super bombers. We were sent to the Marianas Islands to train to bomb Japan, using Guam as the primary refueling zone. All this time, to sum that part up, we, for some reason, if we were short or stubby or became goof offs, we were held back behind one of the squadrons in the wing. That squadron was Colonel Tibetts’ crew who trained to drop the atomic bomb. That was in August of 1945. I was in the 21st squadron.
EZ: How important were air attacks in winning the war in the Pacific?
JZ: Well, the B-29s that bombed Japan wiped out the oil refineries and the major cities in Japan. Our unit flew 13 missions before they [Japan] surrendered. I was on 7 or 8 [of the missions]. The atomic bombe saved millions of lives. If we would have had to invade Japan, which we were ready to do- we had hundreds of fighter planes lined up all along the coast of the Marianas Islands, we would have lost a lot more men.
EZ: Grandpa, did you ever do nighttime bombings?
JZ: Oh, yes we did nighttime bombings.
EZ: And what was that like?
JZ: I sort of enjoyed it. It was about an 8 hour flight round trip from the Marianas Islands to Tokyo nonstop. We would rotate. Every third day we would fly a mission, each crew. I used to sit there and look up at the stars as we were flying the mission. I would curl up around my bombsight and go to sleep. We had our targets to go to. It was a shuttle. The crews that were heading north to Japan could see the other crews coming home flying South across the horizon. It was something you’d never forget. They turned the aircraft carriers into passenger buses to take everyone home [at the end of the war] because everybody wanted to go home because the war was over. I think it took 14 days on an aircraft carrier to be delivered back to the west coast. It was right after Japan surrendered. I don’t know now where I came in maybe it was Johnson Field. I’m not sure of the name. You turned in all of your stuff, and you could go home anyway you wanted to. The Air Force paid for it. They went all directions: some of them went back to school right away; some of them went home and picked up their normal lives.
EZ: Grandpa, can you tell me the story about when you wanted to talk to the priest before you took off for a mission?
JZ: I knew the chaplain pretty well, and I would do the readings on Sundays. Guam was primarily Catholic. Toward the end of the war when we had B-29 units, we would line up for a couple of blocks. This one particular week I missed Father Dorney, and we were sitting there for 20 minutes lined up. We had another 10 [minutes] before we left when the flight commander said, “Joe there’s somebody down here in a robe, a member of the clergy, who wants to talk to you.” I jumped out and he [Father Dorney] says, “Joe, did you want to see me? What did you want to see me for?” He said he heard I was asking for him. I told him I just wanted to tell him I was leaving. It was so funny because all the planes in the line up had their radios on and their speakers. Oh they ripped me along time about that. Some of them would say, “Oh yeah, he’s got a special chair with the pope.”
EZ: Grandpa, on your mission, what were your targets?
JZ: Oh, some of them were the oil refineries and a ball bearing factory that manufactured the bearings they [Japanese] had to have. The Maruza (not sure of spelling) was where all the big oil refineries were. Before that, on the way over there, if you light a match in Japan and throw it with a bomb at the paper houses they have, you could burn out a whole line of homes at a time. When you come over, you see the coastline from a distance, you could see miles of scarred, burned out wasteland as a result of all the firebombing. We didn’t use a single B-29 to enemy gunfire or retaliation. B-29 was the first pressurized aircraft bomber.
EZ: Grandpa, did you ever use a Norden bombsight?
JZ: The Norden bombsight? Well that’s interesting. The Norden bombsight was one of the tools used to do the hairline bombing. It was very precise. I remember on the way over we stopped at Hawaii. They took mine [bombsight] to clean it up. You know, like an oil change. When we left that day after we spend several days of rest and recreation, we got halfway to Johnson Island and I took the cover off the sight and my bombsight wasn’t the same one. It was an older model [than mine]. I told the captain they took my bombsight, so we went back and got it. We went to Hawaii and picked up that darn bombsight. That was an interesting thing.
Additional Information on
Lieutenant Joseph E. Zainey
World War II
Bombardier
Joe’s crew flew a total of 13 missions with the 321st bomb wing. These missions were flown from the Island of Guam, which is part of the Mariana’s Islands. Joe’s squadron was the last squadron to report to the Pacific Theater of operations before the war’s end. No B-29’s were lost from his squadron.
The targets of the bombing missions were primarily oil refineries in northern Japan. Five hundred to one thousand pound bombs were used in these missions. The bombing missions were flown in a new aircraft, the Boeing B-29 Super Fortress. Testing and improvements on the aircraft continued as the missions were flown.
Joe and his fellow airmen lived in tents while stationed in Guam. The bombing missions from Guam were incessant. “Our bombing missions were scheduled right up to the time the Japanese surrendered. This came about after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.”
Within twelve hours after Japan surrendered Joe’s crew flew humanitarian missions. The bomb racks were removed and reloaded with supplies. These missions air-dropped food, clothing, and medical supplies to the POW’s being held by the Japanese on the Islands of Japan. “We sometimes flew at altitudes as low as 500 feet and could see people running and swimming toward us to get to the supplies” Joe has said.
The Norden bombsight used in the B-29 was manufactured at Naval Avionics (Raytheon) here in Indianapolis at 21st Street and Arlington Avenue.
Joe’s religious nature found him in line ready to take off on a mission when the silence in the aircraft was broken. Over the radio, the pilot called out and said that Father Dorney was on the flight line. Father was there to give Joe communion before the mission.
War did not consume the entirety of Joe’s life. Joe had rest and relaxation, as well. He made trips with his squadron to Hawaii, where he met his brother George, who was in the Navy band.
Joe made a career in the Air Force and flew in the country’s first Jet Powered bomber. He finished his career in 1967 as a public relations officer for the Air Force.