Aboard the Superfortress

Bill Schmitt had a feeling.

No, it was stronger than that.

His first sighting of a B-29 Superfortress bomber at the Kansas air base during training made him certain about the outcome of the task facing him and the millions of other Americans in the final push for victory against the Axis powers in World War II.

"When I saw that first B-29 come down the runway, I knew we are going to win this war," Schmitt, 85, of Yakima now recalls.

The Superfortress was the most sophisticated and advanced aircraft of the war, and it was an imposing sight.

With a wingspan of 141 feet and a height of almost 28 feet at its tail, the B-29s on which Schmitt flew as a tail gunner and mechanic would carry 20,000 pounds of bombs. The plane was outfitted with 10 .50-caliber machine guns and one 20 mm cannon.

Schmitt's squadron flew their B-29s to a base near Calcutta, India, to get into the fighting.

By the time it was over, Schmitt had flown about 30 missions "over the hump," as the route across the Himalayas was known; participated in bombing targets in Japan and elsewhere in the China-Burma theater; and shot down three Japanese fighter planes as a tail gunner.

The missions were long, sometimes approaching 14 hours.

Despite the long hours in the air, Schmitt said, the planes were comfortable. The B-29 had pressurized cabins, which meant the 11-man crews weren't exposed to the bitter cold during flight.

His first B-29 was something of a special craft and would be involved in some intrigue late in the war after he was assigned to a different plane.

His first plane, called the H.H. Arnold Special, was seized by the Russians after a forced landing in the Soviet Union. It and two other B-29s were seized, taken apart piece by piece and copied. The Soviets displayed the copies for the first time in 1947 as the Tupelov TU-4.

The H.H. Arnold Special was named after Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, commanding officer of the Army Air Forces. Arnold pushed hard to get the B-29s built for the war effort. While pushing Boeing to escalate production, Arnold visited the assembly plant and signed his name to the plane on which Schmitt would later serve.

By the time of Schmitt's first mission in mid-1944, he had already served more than three years.

He and his brother enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor. His training would lead him on a journey that wound through Yakima and into the heart of one Emma Lou Roberts, a local girl whose family were major sheep producers in those years. She said her father owned much of the land that is now Snipes Mountain between Sunnyside and Granger, where the lambing camp was located.

Her grandfather, Harry Roberts, built the first Tampico store in 1882.

Young Emma Lou was visiting a friend who lived on 24th Avenue one day when they rode their bikes to J.M. Perry Institute to visit soldiers who had eaten dinner at her friends' house after attending church.

The soldiers, camped out at what is now the Ahtanum Youth Park on Ahtanum Road, were training to work with metals at Perry.

It was across the fence Emma Lou first laid eyes on the guy everyone called Schmitty.

Another soldier later invited her friend on a date to the movies. Emma Lou agreed to go along if Schmitty would be there, too.

"After that, he came to the house and visited," she recalled. "He had Wednesdays and Saturdays off. We had dates at those times."

After three months, Schmitt was through the training and, because of an allergy to aluminum, was transferred to a new task as a mechanic and general maintenance crew member.

The pair didn't see each other for two years. They corresponded, and that led to a marriage proposal.

Emma Lou went to Salina, Kan., where Schmitt was stationed. It had been something of a homecoming for Schmitt, a Kansas native whose family later moved to Michigan to work in the automobile assembly plants.

During a five-day pass that included meeting his parents, the couple were wed in February 1944.

By then, Schmitt had attended gunnery school, where he learned to tear down and put back together the .50-caliber machine gun and other weapons blindfolded.

Emma Lou returned to Yakima when her new husband headed off to India in April of that year.

Schmitt was assigned to the 20th Air Forces to which the B-29s were assigned.

Initially, the crews had to ferry bombs and other equipment over the hump and then return for fuel. Later, the Indian air force took over those duties.

The long missions to drop bombs on transportation and assembly facilities in Nagasaki, Japan; Formosa (the old name for Taiwan); and the Bay of Bengal were long. But they weren't boring. Over enemy territory, Schmitt had to be on constant alert for enemy aircraft.

"I was quite excited on every trip," Schmitt recalled. "There was something thrilling about it. We were younger then and never gave it much thought. I did think about getting shot down."

He never had to face that prospect. None of the three planes on which he served was ever hit by enemy fire.

Schmitt reached his mission limit and returned to the United States in November 1944. He was discharged in September 1945, having served almost four years.

He was reunited with Emma Lou and the couple later settled in Yakima, where they raised seven children. They have been married 64 years.

Schmitt worked in the auto body repair business in Yakima and operated a small apple orchard. He retired in 1981.

The couple still have photos and mementos from the war years. He kept a diary that outlined the missions on which he flew.

It is an experience Schmitt would do again if he had the chance.

"It was a great experience," he said. "If I went in again, I'd go back in the Air Force."