February 2018 FLYPAST 25group against the stragglers still
steaming toward the harbour. He was
first to drop, and his ordnance blew a
transport to bits while he went after a
freighter; launching three bombs that
sank it immediately.
Meanwhile, the 500th attacked an
escorting gunboat and sank it with
two direct hits. On one of the passes,
one of its B-25s was hit by ack-ack
and immediately cartwheeled into
the water; there were no survivors.
The 500th finished up that mission
by sinking two small freighters.
Captain Tatelman, leading the
499th, ran into two small boats off
Kinoshita Point between Korea and
Japan. During this attack, one of
the B-25s caught some accurate fire
and went in on a grassy slope close
to shore.
The most prized coup of the day
was the 6,845-ton Daito
Maru, which had
run aground, and the Mitchells set
it up as three 500lb bombs scored
direct hits and scuttled the ship.
Japanese records state that two
huge tankers were destroyed by Air
Apaches on that day.
Captain Blasé remembered the last
sortie flown against enemy shipping:
“In order to catch some of the larger
ships out in the open, they had to
leave about 2:45am. This mission was
flown on August 10, 1945 – the day
after the second atomic bomb was
dropped on Japan.
“The purpose was to search for and
destroy any Japanese shipping in the
Sea of Japan and the Tsushima Straits.
We took off early to get to the island
of Tsushima and got into that area
around 6am hoping to engage more
ships in the open sea. They would be
trying to get to the cover of the island
before mid-morning.
“We took off at one-minute
intervals, so we could join up at a spot
close to the island. It was a very dark
night and over the ocean there was
no visible horizon, so we had to fly by
instruments.
“About an hour out, my tail gunner
called to say he had seen a flare come
up from the ocean and I asked my
navigator to put an ‘x’ on the map
where he thought we were. We were
navigating by dead reckoning-compass
direction, speed, wind and drift.
“Upon reaching our designated area
and being the flight leader and first to
arrive, I began circling with my wheels
and flaps down, awaiting the arrival
of the others. One by one, they began
to arrive and joined up in formation.
After a half-hour, all but two had
shown up, so we took off in search of
enemy shipping.“We found one, a large
freighter trying to make it to
Tsushima and the safety of the
coast. We made passes with two
Mitchells at a time – leader and
wingman. We strafed the decks with
machine-gun fire and dropped our
500lb bombs. The bow of a heavy
freighter [the Chichibu Maru] was
blown off and it became a burning
inferno from six hits.
“Two of our aircraft were given
credit for the sinking. A short while
later, we sunk two other, smaller,
ships.
“En route back to our base, I was
catching some sleep and the co-pilot
was flying the aircraft when a bright
flash appeared in the cockpit. We
were probably about 400 feet above
the water. The flash had come from a
signal mirror.
“We looked out and spotted a
one-man raft with one occupant, so
I sent the rest of the squadron back
and began to circle the raft while I
radioed for a rescue seaplane. We
were about an hour from our base,
so this must have been the same guy
that had shot a flare at us on the way
in. The ocean was rough, but a large
PBM [Martin Mariner flying boat]
came in and made the rescue. It was
a fighter pilot that had developed an
engine problem.”
During the 26 months that
the 345th was in combat, it was
credited with sinking 260 enemy
vessels and damaging 275 others.
They destroyed 260 aircraft on
the ground and another 107 in
aerial combat. Its squadrons won
four Distinguished Unit Citations
making it one of the most decorated
bomb groups of the war.Below
A dramatic view of a B-25
bombing enemy vessels at
low level. JOHN BRONSON