Page 3 of Daikon

Houseman turned to look at his flight engineer, Ralph Hicks, seated behind him. Hickey’s eyes were on the cylinder head temperature gauges, his finger tapping on the glass. Then he was hitting the fire extinguisher switch and pumping fuel out of the Number Two tank.

“We got a fire in Number Two,” he said. “I think she swallowed a valve.”

“Can we still make it?” It was Commander Filson, crouched over his row of red lights. He was plugged into the interphone and had heard the exchange.

Houseman didn’t reply for a moment. He had experienced an engine fire before in a B-29, but never so deep in hostile airspace.

His hand went to his throat mike. “If we can get the fire out, yes. How’s it looking, Hickey?”

Hickey flicked the engine fire extinguisher switch again. No good. The cylinder head temperature needle remained stuck at 350 degrees. That meant in all likelihood that the fire was burning inside the cowling, where the fire retardant couldn’t reach.

“It’s still burning,” he said.

Houseman’s grip on the yoke tightened, his mind racing.

The engines of the recently developed B-29 were not only prone to burst into flames, their crankcases were fabricated from a high-magnesium alloy to save weight—magnesium that, if it caught on fire, burned so hot that it could melt off the wing.

And in the meantime it was producing a trail of black smoke that would be glaringly visible from the ground.

The Japanese rarely attacked high-flying B-29s approaching singly or in small groups.

They were too hard to bring down. But a B-29 trailing black smoke and clearly injured would be hard to resist. It was a target of opportunity, a real chance for a kill.

But they were so close. Less than thirty minutes and they would be over the target.

Houseman’s eyes swept over the gauges. Airspeed barely holding at 189.

Altitude: 28,000 feet and dropping. The Intent , running slower on three engines, was drifting lower, seeking denser air for support.

To continue the mission would mean dropping the bomb from much lower than the 31,000 feet they had trained for.

And they’d be too close when it detonated. They’d be knocked out of the sky.

He spoke to the crew: “That’s it. It’s an abort.”

Filson reentered the bomb bay to replace the red plugs with the green, returning the weapon to safe mode.

Back in the cockpit, Houseman was digging out a binder from beside his seat and flipping through to the page listing the codes for twenty-eight possible mission outcomes for transmission back to base.

He ran his finger down the list to the one that he wanted, then spoke to his radio operator, Don Wood.

“Okay, Don. Send 25.”

Number 25 meant Returning with unit due to damage to aircraft.

Houseman made the course correction, putting the bomber into a 180-degree turn. Down below, the dark green of Honshu, looking like crumpled tissue paper, began to rotate.

Wicked Intent came out of its turn, heading back south, altitude now holding steady at 25,000 feet. Number Two engine fuel tank was pumped dry and things were holding together. If the fire went out, they stood a chance of getting back to Iwo. If not, they were going down.

Major Houseman took out the pillbox he had been fingering in his vest pocket.

He didn’t want to hand out the capsules, but to do otherwise wouldn’t be fair to the crew.

They all knew how the Japanese treated downed airmen, going back to the Doolittle Raid and those eight guys who were starved and tortured and killed.

He leaned forward to the bombardier’s seat and placed his hand on Cy’s shoulder. “You might want to hang on to this,” he said, holding out a capsule.

With Wicked Intent on autopilot, Houseman got up and began working his way through the plane, distributing a capsule to each man. He was on his way back to the cockpit when John Morris called from his copilot’s seat, “We got company, chief!”

Houseman returned to his seat and snapped himself into his harness. “Okay, let’s have it,” he said.

“I count five fighters.” It was Pappy on the interphone with his unimpeded view at the tail guns pointing back. “They look like Franks. Six o’clock. About six thousand feet down.”

Houseman craned around, peering out his left side window, but couldn’t see them.

There. He could see them now. They were definitely Nakajima Ki-84s. “Franks.” They would be struggling on the edge of their maximum altitude. They wouldn’t get much higher.

A series of blinks from the lead fighter. It was firing from too far out, a desperate move. No return fire from Pappy. He would be waiting until they were within a few hundred yards—if they made it that close.

Movement off to the left. Houseman raised his gaze to see a Tony, a Kawasaki Ki-61, no more than fifteen hundred feet out and just a few hundred feet down. It had broken away from the others for a separate approach.

“Nine o’clock low, Pappy!” he shouted. “He’s coming right at us!”

The sound of Pappy’s 50-cals. Houseman watched the first bursts of streaking bullets go wide.

The Tony kept coming, right into the face of Pappy’s fire.

Half the distance gone now. Still no fire from the Tony. It just kept coming. Why wasn’t he firing? Were his guns jammed?

A puff on the wing as the Tony was hit. Still no return fire.

Pappy must have got him!

The Tony wobbled but kept coming—so close now that Houseman could see the goggles, the oxygen mask, the tanned leather helmet of the Japanese pilot. That’s when the realization hit him:

He’s going to ram us .

The impact threw Houseman against the side of the cockpit, his head bouncing off the glass so hard that it left him momentarily stunned.

As he regained his senses, he saw the horizon rising, up and up until the earth filled his field of vision.

He stared, disoriented, as the mottled terrain began to rotate, wondering why the aircraft was pointing straight down.

A silvery mass entered his field of vision. It had a toppled-over “A” painted on it. It took a moment for him to process that it was the tail section. Wicked Intent had broken in two.

He fought with the controls, trying to level out using only the flaps. The mortally wounded aircraft slowly responded. The uncontrolled dive turned into a gentler downward spiral. But no amount of skill could arrest it.

In his final moments, with trees and rice fields coming at him, Houseman thought of Marion and Charlie and the house they were going to live in.

Then he saw a bright light.