Earl Jarrett Woolever, Jr.

(born May 14, 1924)

In 1943 I was attending the University of Iowa engineering school, paying $60 per semester for tuition, $1 per day for room and board, and running out of money. So I enlisted in the Army Combat Engineers Corps and was sent to Fort Leonard Woods for basic training. Soon after that, the government sent some of us to the University of Nebraska for more college training in the newly-established Army Specialized Training Program. That program was canceled after about six months and I was sent to Scott Field airbase near St. Louis, Missouri, for training in aircraft radio operation and maintenance. On the weekends I played golf at Forest Park in St. Louis. About a month later I was sent to Pyute, Texas, for in-flight training with our assigned B-29 Bomber Combat crew. We flew every other day for several months, and I was airsick every other day for several months.

Finally we left the United States for the Pacific Ocean and landed on the Island of Tinian, which was our main base of operation for the war against Japan. Our crew consisted of a captain (pilot), copilot, navigator, bombardier, radar operator, radio operator (me), four machine gunners, and a maintenance engineer. We flew to Japan and dropped heavy loads of bombs on various assigned targets and hopefully returned to base. I was so scared on our first combat missions that I forgot about being airsick and have never been airsick again.

The trip took about 20 hours, so we took No-Doze pills to stay awake. I was located next to the bomb bay doors, so I could see the bombs dropping and exploding. I could also see the anti-aircraft explosions and the Japanese planes shooting at us. Our gunners were very busy shooting back. Two of our crew members were killed. After about 20 missions, our plane was so badly damaged that we could not make it back to base. We tried to land at the newly established airbase on Iwo Jima, but the base commander radioed to us that our landing gear was gone and that we would endanger people on the island by trying to land. Our orders were to abandon the plane and bail out. It was on my 21st birthday, and as I was preparing to jump out the bomb bay, the navigator said "Happy Birthday," kicked me in the rump and I tumbled out. It is hard to describe the feelings one has when jumping out of an airplane. I finally landed on a blacktop runway, skinned my left ankle, and was awarded a purple heart medal for being wounded in action. That was trite.

We lived in tents on the volcanic sand for the rest of the war. We managed to get another B-29 and flew as a navigator ship to take several hundred fighter planes to Japan to "shoot up" the place and then bring them back to Iwo Jima.

Finally the Enola Gay B-29 crew dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, another one was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan surrendered, and the war was over. We were privileged to circle over the Bay of Japan while General McArthur and the Japanese Prime Minister, Tojo, signed the peace agreement. We had completed our allotted 31 missions, so we were put on a liberty ship, sailed back to San Diego, USA, were given a bunch of medals and discharged from the service. I came back to the University of Iowa and graduated together with my sister, Alice, in 1948.