Ford (as he prefers to be called) was a member of
the 313th Bomb Wing, 505th Bombardment Group, 482nd Bomb Squadron.
Participated in 22 combat missions. He was a 1st Lt and pilot of the
B-29 named in honor of William Allen White who was the editor of the
Emporia Gazette, Emporia, KS.
The above photo from the Pyote Army
Air Field shows the William Allen White in the lower left of the
picture. There must have been some tail damage repaired as the
designator seen is the letter "Z" rather then the "Circle W" as seen
in the previous photo. Pyote AAF was just one of the few 'Bone
Yards' that many of the warbirds ended up in. (Photos provided by
Ford Tolbert)
Via email
contact with Mr. Ford, we are enjoying his answers to our questions
and have one posted here regarding his missions.
You mentioned that you flew most of your missions
with the WAW, were you assigned to any other planes?
Yes we flew "dogs" for several missions, this was standard practice
and we never knew how we came to fly WAW most of our missions. We
were not the only crew flying it, as one crew could only fly a plane
one day out of three due to the time it took to complete a mission.
Most were about fifteen hours long and you can't wedge many fifteen
hour periods into a 24 hour day. The routine was take off late in
the afternoon, fly all night and return home the next day, get
debriefed, rest that day, sleep that night and take off late the
next day. I got in 22 missions between May 5th and Aug. 9th, 1945.
There were two aborts in that period so we made 24 take offs to
begin a mission. Click Here to view his
Mission Record (PDF Document)
I have a few more pictures of WAW as she was photographed in Wichita
by the crew who flew her to Tinian from Wichita.
We also flew a new plane to Tinian and that was the last we ever saw
of her. It was the pits to be assigned the "dog" planes as they were
battle weary and flew much slower than the fuel injected (new
planes).
Take off was pucker up time and we soon learned that if we
approached the runway at 90 degrees and applied almost full power as
we made the turn, we could get off with a lot more runway left than
we did if we lined up with the runway and applied power then.
We had one mission where the crew chief was supposed to off load 600
gallons of fuel but did not get it done but we discussed it and made
the decision to go anyway. We got almost to the end of the runway
and the A/C yelled "gear up" and I flipped the switch and the gear
came up
just as we crossed the end of the runway and we flew level for about
a mile then started a slow climb. No problems from then on but we
set a speed record on the way home as we had 600 gallons of extra
fuel.
