ARMED FORCES
Ever since dusk the ground-crew men had been tending the long, silvery B-29 like acolytes, running their flashlights along her vulnerable joints, pumping her broad wings full of 8,000 gallons of high-test gasoline, gently hoisting a dozen 500-lb. demolition bombs into her wide bays. By 11 o'clock pilots, navigators, radarmen, engineers and gunners tumbled aboard for a 2,400-mile training flight. With them went Brigadier General Robert F. Travis, the handsome, battle-tested commander of the air base and "old man" of the Ninth Bombardment Wing, to keep a sharp eye out for mistakes.
Heavy with her warlike load, the huge plane...
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