Imagine the fears and feelings of being a young, untried young man from the Glenwood neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina who had never been out of the state being sent to fly in the Pacific, a world away, during World War II.
Explore his fears and feelings—and his incisive postwar reflections—in this book. That young man was my father, Elmer C. Jones, the radar operator aboard his B-29 bomber and flew 28 combat missions over Japan 13 bombing missions and 15 photo-reconnaissance missions for a total of 489:50 combat flight hours.
One of the photo-reconnaissance missions was the longest aviation combat mission of the war, from Guam to Hokkaido to Guam: 4,650 miles in 23:00 hours. See the article “The Longest Mission” at AIR & SPACE FORCES MAGAZINE’s web site archives (article published in the April 2010 issue of the magazine).
The crew’s last mission was flying over battleship USS MISSOURI in Tokyo Bay on VJ Day (Victory over Japan):
September 2, 1945 (Pacific date) or September 1, 1945 (United States date).
The crew flew over the battleship as part of an air armada after the surrender documents were signed; the flight commemorated the signing of those documents, the documents that ended World War II.
He flew the missions in 1945 as a lieutenant at ages 20 and 21. Learn the genesis of the names “DOUBLE TROUBLE” and “Mr. Bee.”
See the bomb pin tags Jones “personalized” after removing them from bombs he helped to arm before bombing missions.
Elmer C. Jones participated in the historic, withering, relentless, brutal aerial bombing campaign against Japan in 1945. And he lived to tell about it– the books are filled with his firsthand verbatim reflections and quotations:
“THAT’S THE BEST DEAL I EVER HAD—I DIDN’T GET KILLED IN WORLD WAR II.”
My father retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve in 1972.
The book is my father’s biography, from birth (1924) to death (2014), with heavy
emphasis on his time in the Pacific during World War II.
He was a noble warrior as demonstrated by his handwritten note dated 7 October 2013 just months before his death in 2014:
My favorite of his many writings and notes are the words he wrote by hand on a small piece of note paper on 7 October 2013 that could have been lost--easily.
I found by chance (and I thank God for this gift from Him) in his bedroom after his death that shows his true nature and character and
how he viewed his wartime service. Its sentiment is consistent with all combat veterans when they are called heroes. They shun that title by saying the true heroes are those who did not return from the war:
“It was my privilege to serve my Country. I was fortunate to
survive 29 missions and one last trip to fly over [the] Missouri
battleship for the surrender of Japan. I was not a hero but I did my duty.”
And then he signed this note of a lifetime.
IN SUMMARY, YOU WILL SEE WHY I SPENT THE BETTER PART OF 2018 WRITING THE BOOK AND WHY I CONTINUED TO WRITE AND TO REVISE IT
FROM 2019 TO 2020.