Master Sgt Red Erwin, One of Many Heroes

In coming up with a suitable blog post for Memorial Day, I had scoured my aviation library for a historical event- given that I've long been interested in military aviation history, there's no shortage of material in that department, believe me. However, I'm currently reading Barrett Tillman's outstanding book Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan 1942-1945 and came across the story of a red-headed Alabaman, Master Sgt. Henry "Red" Erwin. In April 1945, the massive arsenal of democracy that was American industry had already started the systematic destruction of the Japanese war machine the previous month as Boeing B-29 Superfortresses of the XXI Bomber Command based in the Marianas Islands under the command of General Curtis LeMay began to deliver destruction to the cities of Japan. The first fire-bombing raids had already visited untold disaster on Tokyo and other urban areas of the Home Islands. Superfortress attacks on the kamikaze bases on Kyushu had helped ensure victory on Okinawa. And by this month, the XXI Bomber Command finally had enough Superfortresses to wage a round-the-clock strategic bombing campaign on the Japanese homeland. On 12 April 1945 news reached the bases in the Marianas about the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt- for many of the fighting men in the Pacific, Roosevelt was the only leader they had known. But there was war to fight, and every bomb dropped meant getting home sooner. 

Erwin is 2nd from the right, front row, with his B-29 crewmates

On that day, 250 Superfortresses set out in three airborne task forces to attack industrial centers near Tokyo. Half of the force belonged to the 29th Bomb Group and were tasked to hit the Koriyama chemical complex north of Tokyo. Off the coast of Japan, the lead pilot of the Koriyama-bound force was Captain George Simeral flying The City of Los Angeles. His crew excelled at their jobs and earned The City of Los Angeles the lead position of the task force. His crew had been together since June 1944 and had already flown ten missions over Japan. As Simeral neared the coast. he ordered his radioman, Master Sgt. Red Erwin, to drop a phosphorous flare to mark the assembly point for his own squadron. Erwin left his station in the forward compartment, picked up the large flare canister and pulled the arming pin before dropping it as was the standard procedure- only this time the flare prematurely fired and a 1,300-degree Fahrenheit blast hit him in the face, blinding him and instantly burning off his nose and one ear. The forward compartment of the B-29 filled with white smoke and Simeral and his co-pilot quickly lost view of their instruments and the outside world. 

Erwin realized that the hot burning flare could burn through the compartment like a big blowtorch into the bomb bay and set off the bomb load. Griping around the compartment, he somehow managed to find the flare and pick it up. He stumbled his way forward, planning to throw it out the co-pilot's window but found his way obstructed by the navigator's table- the navigator at the time was in the astrodome taking a sighting when the flare fired. As the table could be unlocked and hinged downward, Erwin tucked the hot flare between one arm and his side and managed to fold the table so he could continue his way forward through the compartment. Though blinded, he somehow managed to get to the co-pilot's window, open it, and throw the burning flare overboard. He immediately collapsed on the bomber's throttle console. 

In the short time it took for Red Erwin to throw the flare overboard, the crew had lost control of the B-29 and Simeral managed to regain control with the bomber only 300 feet above the sea as the crew opened every hatch and window possible to vent the forward compartment. Everyone else did what they could to easy Erwin's suffering and Captain Simeral set course for Iwo Jima. The doctors there could do little for him and he was flown to Guam where a fleet hospital was located. General LeMay had been informed of the situation and when doctors advised him that Erwin would likely die from his burns, LeMay was determined to get him the Medal of Honor irrespective of the regulations. 

To understand what happened next, you have to realize that LeMay was already well-known in the USAAF as being very results-oriented. When he was tapped by the head of the USAAF, General Henry "Hap" Arnold, to head the XXI Bomber Command, the B-29 was not performing well as a combat machine, being constantly plagued by rushed training and poor maintenance practices. Arnold wanted results as he was one of the most staunch defenders of the B-29 program and the massive funding it required- not to mention a successful air campaign over Japan strengthened his case for an independent United States Air Force. LeMay was given his orders- and unusually for a combat command, the XXI Bomber Command was run right out of Arnold's office at the Pentagon so theater commanders couldn't appropriate the prized Superfortress for tactical missions. It was LeMay who had to deliver and the way Arnold entrusted LeMay, so did LeMay entrust his subordinates- "Get me the results I want and I won't ask questions." As a result, his subordinates became well-known in the Pacific Theater for circumventing rules and red tape to get their boss results. 

It usually took several months to get a Medal of Honor awarded as it passed via several levels of review. That didn't suit LeMay. His first act was to order an aircraft and its crew to Hawaii to get a Medal of Honor that could be presented to Erwin before he died. The crew took this task to heart and having found one in a display case, were unable to locate who had the keys to open the case. So they broke into the case and returned to Guam with the medal in hand. With the medal secured, LeMay then cabled General Arnold at the Pentagon and insisted that Erwin's award be approved immediately as he was on his deathbed. Luckily for LeMay, Arnold agreed with him and quickly got the orders and citation approved and the papers were on President Harry S Truman's desk in just days. In fact, one of Truman's first acts as President after FDR died was to sign the papers for the awarding of the Medal of Honor to Red Erwin!

Red Erwin's widow with the painting of him at Maxwell AFB

At a hastily arranged ceremony at Erwin's bedside at the fleet hospital in Guam, LeMay presented him with the Medal of Honor six days after the mission took place. The general order that announced the award took three months to be processed and formally announced! But the tough Alabaman surprised everyone by surviving his wounds. Over the next two and a half years he underwent over 40 reconstructive surgeries and managed to regain his vision. Discharged from the now-independent United States Air Force in 1947, he went to work for the Veterans' Administration hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, working closely with burn patients for the next forty years. Master Sgt. Henry "Red" Erwin passed away in 2002 at the age of eighty. 

After his death, the U.S. Air Force established the Red Erwin award for the outstanding enlisted airman of the year in the Air National Guard and Reserves. More recently, the library at the Air University at Maxwell AFB in Alabama was named the Red Erwin Library in his honor with a specially-commissioned painting of him and the B-29 Superfortress. Always the modest man, Erwin told everyone that he didn't wear the Medal of Honor for what he did on that fateful mission in 1945- he wore the medal for everyone who served.

Source: Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman. Simon and Schuster, 2010, p164-167. Photos: United States Air Force.

General Giulio Douhet, the First Air Power Visionary

Giulio Douhet, air power visionary

Those of us interested in aviation take it almost for granted the unyielding pace of technological development that has driven aviation forward through time. But even less heralded are those in aviation history who have shaped the thinking of aviation- it's easy for us to lay eyes on an aircraft or even to put our hands on one. They're very tactile and sensory experiences in aviation- to see one, hear one, feel one, even ride an aircraft. But how do you experience aviation doctrine? How do you grasp the thought processes that have shaped aeronautical progress? They're very abstract and not prone to enjoyment and appreciation by most of us. However, technological progress is a rudderless boat in chaotic waters without visionaries and thinkers to provide steering and direction. Of course we can name designers like Jack Northrop or Andrei Tupolev. Or pilots like Charles Lindbergh or Chuck Yeager. But the subject of today's blog posting is none of those- he didn't design any aircraft, he didn't even fly aircraft. But his writings on air power have left an indelible mark on aviation, if not history itself. 

Born in 1869, Giulio Douhet was a rare breed of Italian army officer who was both an infantry and artillery officer and what we might call a technocrat, having studied science and engineering as well. His earliest writings as part of the General Staff of the Italian Army covered mechanization and the incorporation of what would be come tanks in military doctrine. But with the arrival of lighter-than-air aircraft like dirigibles and the first practical biplanes prior to the First World War, Douhet quickly appreciated the advantages of aviation in war- aircraft could move in three dimensions and operate above and out of the reach of ground and naval forces with relative impunity. In 1912 when the Italians first used aircraft in combat in Libya, he wrote Rules for the Use of Airplanes in War, one of the first efforts to create a doctrine for military aviation- despite his own background as an artillery and infantry officer, Douhet felt that the current military leadership lacked an understanding of the inherent advantages of air power and an almost zealous desire to educate the establishment on air power would be Douhet's mission in his life. 

When the First World War broke out in Europe in August of 1914, Douhet was forty-five years old and no less energetic than officers half his age. With a near-insatiable appetite for the latest developments in aviation, he advocated the building of a force of 500 bombers that could bomb enemy forces from above without having to engage in prolonged combat. He worked closely with the Italian engineer Gianni Caproni in advising him on his own Caproni line of bomber aircraft. But Douhet would find the Italian military leadership incompetent as defeat after defeat was suffered by Italian forces. Convinced that aviation technology could reverse the lagging fortunes of the Italian military, Douhet wrote and spoke frequently to anyone and everyone in the military and government establishment. By 1916 his superiors had had enough when he had ordered construction of Caproni bombers without authorization. He was stripped of his rank and imprisoned on charges of "issuing false news" and "disturbing the public tranquility". It didn't stop him, though. He continued to write and refine his theories from his cell. 

In the fall of 1917, the Italian Second Army was completely routed at the Battle of Caporetto (in modern day Slovenia), suffering over 300,000 casualties. The Italian government in desperation released Douhet from prison and commissioned him as a general in charge of coordinating the nation's aviation strategy and doctrine. It would be too little too late as the entrenched Italian bureaucracy was unwilling to enact his plans and he resigned in protest in June 1918. With the Armistice in November of that year ending the First World War, Douhet's trial verdict was reversed and he was promoted, but by this point in his life he had lost faith in the Italian government and refused to return to duty. During the interwar period he traveled Europe visiting other nation's air arms, consulting with air officers and meeting with aircraft designers. In 1921 he wrote his landmark work Command of the Air which advocated an relentless air campaign of bombing an enemy's population and production centers, reducing their moral and material means of resistance. Properly conducted, he reasoned, such an air assault could force a quick decision and save millions of lives in the long run by avoiding a costly ground war. Douhet also pointed out that the efficient and proper means of carrying out such an air campaign would require an independent air arm led by an aviation-minded general staff. At the time, this was a revolutionary concept and only in Great Britain was the nascent Royal Air Force an independent air arm. For other industrialized nations of the 1920s, their air arms were subordinated to the army. 

Billy Mitchell, USAAC

Reception of Douhet's work outside of Italy was mixed. It wasn't even required reading at the RAF Staff College. But his work would find converts primarily in the United States- at the time the Air Force was part of the Army as the US Army Air Corps. One officer in particular would even meet with Douhet- Brigadier General Billy Mitchell. It was the year after Mitchell had demonstrated the vulnerability of warships to bombers by sinking several captured German warships off the Virginia coast. Mitchell had copies of Command of the Air sent to his superiors and he got banished to Hawaii and then Asia as a result. In 1925 Mitchell wrote a book of his own, Winged Defense, in which he refined Douhet's ideas of a strategic air campaign further and even declared the battleship obsolete as aviation technology matured. As a result, Mitchell was demoted in rank back to colonel. He would later be court-martialed for publicly criticizing the US military following the crash of the airship USS Shenendoah in a storm. But his six week court martial provided Mitchell the perfect forum for advocating views shaped by his mentor, Giulio Douhet. 

Sir Hugh Trenchard, RAF

Douhet died of a heart attack in 1930 and Mitchell himself would die in 1936, neither man living to see how their views of air power would come to fruition in the Second World War. While Command of the Air got little attention in the Royal Air Force, the most influential individual in the RAF at the time fortunately was a proponent of Douhet's theories- Sir Hugh Trenchard, Chief of Staff of the RAF and the man known as the "Father of the RAF". Trenchard, like Mitchell, would refine Douhet's ideas. By the time of the Second World War, Trenchard was every bit the irritant to the establishment as Douhet and Mitchell were, but had enough influence to avoid their fate. Following the disastrous loss of Norway to the Germans in 1940, Trenchard used his position in the House of Lords to criticize Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain's prosecution of the war which contributed to his replacement by Winston Churchill. Trenchard used in influence to put like minded officers in key positions in the Royal Air Force. After the war, Trenchard advised General Henry "Hap" Arnold in his own push for an independent United States Air Force.

The same year Mitchell died in 1936, contracts were issued to both Boeing and Douglas for a large four-engined bomber- while both companies' designs, the XB-15 and the XB-19, respectively, remained experimental, the engineering and design work on such a unprecedentedly large bomber would shape aviation technology throughout the Second World War. 

Source: Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman. Simon and Schuster, 2010, p9-16.

The Fairchild XNQ-1/T-31 Trainer

In USAF markings as the T-31

As the Second World War began to wind down with victory in Europe established and the end of the Pacific War on the horizon, the US Navy set out to issue specifications for a replacement for the basic and primary aircraft trainers that were used during the war (like the PT-19 or the BT-13, PT standing for "Primary Trainer" and BT standing for "Basic Trainer in the Navy lexicon) as well as the North American SNJ/T-6 Texan. These specifications were released to the industry on 26 April 1945 by the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer). Three companies entered designs- Temco entered the T-35 Buckaroo which was adapted from the Globe Swift general aviation aircraft, Beechcraft entered the T-34 Mentor which was a tandem seat adaptation of the Bonanza and Fairchild entered a custom-designed aircraft that had the Navy designation XNQ and the later USAF designation T-31. History, of course, shows that the Beech Mentor won the competition and one of it's strong points was its tricycle undercarriage layout compared to the taildragger layout of both the Buckaroo and the XNQ. For the forward thinking armed services, taildragging aircraft were obsolete. 

Fairchild's chief engineer, Armand Thiebolt, had already established a name for himself having designed a number of training aircraft during the war, from the PT-19 Cornell to the AT-21 Gunner. His work on the XNQ was based on his own experiences and what he felt was a balance between state of the art and simplicity. Registered with a civilian tail number N5726, the first XNQ, built at Fairchild's Hagerstown, Maryland, plant, made its first flight there on 10 February 1947 with Fairchild's chief test pilot, Richard Hansen, at the controls. The 20-minute maiden flight was uneventful and showed only some simple rework of the aileron tabs were necessary. After a series of company test flights, the XNQ was delivered to the US Navy at Anacostia, Washington for formal evaluation. After an initial series of flights in the Washington DC area, the flight test program continued at NAS Patuxent River after which the aircraft returned to Fairchild to prepare it for evaluation by the USAF as the T-31. 

By this point the second aircraft had been completed and both XNQs as T-31s were flown to Randolph AFB outside of San Antonio, Texas, for their formal USAF evaluation in a fly-off with both the Beech and Temco candidates. At the time the USAF also considered the De Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk as well as the British Boulton Paul Balliol, but both were quickly eliminated from consideration, leaving Fairchild, Beech, and Temco remaining in the USAF evaluation. Like the US Navy, the USAF selected the Beech T-34 Mentor, again, its tricycle landing gear layout being one of its strong points. It was the second rejection of the Fairchild design. The aircraft was passed on to the US Navy where it was flown by student test pilots at the US Navy's Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River and after a gear up landing that resulted in only minor damage in 1953, the Navy declared the unique aircraft surplus to its needs after it had only amassed just over 1,000 flight hours. 

The wing commander for the National Capital Wing of the Civil Air Patrol arranged to take ownership of the XNQ and in October 1953 the aircraft was repaired at NAS Patuxent River before being flown to a small airfield south of Alexandria, Virginia where it was stationed for the next 2 years, only clocking 12 flight hours in that time period. Part of the problem with the XNQ wasn't its performance or handling, but that its wingspan was just over a foot too wide for the standard 40-foot hangar at the airfield and it ended up spending most of its time outdoors which adversely affected its condition. In 1955 the aircraft was ferried to Rockville, Maryland, but again, was stored outdoors which resulted in further deterioration. When that small airfield was closed, the Fairchild was abandoned in situ. 

In her original US Navy markings

John St. Clair, the operations officer of the Congressional Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, trucked aircraft to his home 8 miles away to try and save it given its unique history. He later assumed formal ownership of the aircraft to keep it from going to the junkyard. Fast forward to 1978, the aircraft is still on the St. Clair farm in rural Maryland and Armand Thiebolt's son visited John St. Clair and asked about purchasing the aircraft, the deal of which fell through. Later, Robert Taylor, the founder of the Antique Airplane Association, asked St. Clair if he would done the XNQ to a museum, which he agreed to and a crew from the association trucked what was left of the aircraft to Waco, Texas with plans of restoring her to flight status. The history of the XNQ took a new turn after its arrival in Waco when general aviation pilot Don Pellegrino and his wife were weathered in at the airport and he found the XNQ in storage in a hangar and approached Taylor about purchasing the aircraft. 

While negotiations proceeded, the aircraft was moved to Oklahoma City in 1982 but still no restoration work had started. At a fly-in in Iowa, Taylor approached Pellegrino and told him "Make me an offer I can't refuse" and with that, Pellegrino become the XNQ's new owner for $800. In September that year Pellegrino trucked the aircraft to his farm in Iowa and began restoration work in earnest. After ten years of working on it in his free time, the XNQ made its second maiden flight on 1 June 1992, the first time the aircraft had flown since 1955! Pellegrino flew the 25 FAA-required hours of flight testing himself and since then he has since moved to Rhome, Texas, just outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has flown the XNQ to airshows around the country. And yes, she still has her same tail number of N5726 after all these years!

Bill Spidle has three pages of detailed photographs of a walk around of the XNQ.

Source: Air Enthusiast, No. 117, May/June 2005. "Their Loss, My Gain: Fairchild's XNQ-1- Twice Rejected for Service" by Gilles Auliard, p78-79. Photos: US Naval Test Pilot School Alumni.