Miss SuSu as you remember had a painting of a naked baby, lying on her belly. Our B-29 A.C. was Capt. Hale. The painting of the baby was Sid Hales Daughter, Susan Hale. We made many missions in Miss SuSu and she had always brought us home safely.

It was about the 18th mission that we bombed an air craft factory that we were attacked by fighters. We were attacked from 3 o'clock high. The fighter was in a pursuit curve and I was firing with both forward and aft lower guns. I was not hitting the fighter, so I threw the computer switch to manual and started firing again at the fighter and he immediately broke away from his attack. The rest of the mission went without further incidence.

After we had landed back on Tinian, I made a request to have my guns and computer checked out. They took Miss SuSu from our hard stand to the gun testing area which was near the take off point on dog runway. There were two stacks of 500 lb.G.P. bombs next to Miss SuSu.

Another B-29 was taking off on dog runway and lost an engine. Peitrangelo saw the plane was in trouble and started running as fast as he could. He said he was the first man to break the 10 second record for the 100 yard dash. When the B-29 crashed, all the bombs exploded in the plane and concussion caused the two stacks of bombs near Miss SuSu to explode. Most everyone was at the theater that evening and you could hear three distinct explosions, whoom--whoom--whoom!! Our ground crewman was thrown through the air by the concussion, but emerged from the incident without serious injury.

The next day we surveyed the damage to Miss SuSu. She was sitting array her landing gear, the wing was ripped apart, the fuselage was caved in and the emennage was blown completely off.

When replacement crews came in to our squadron they would some times ask what was the toughest mission we were on, and I would show them a picture of Miss SuSu. They would look at the picture and say "How did that plane every fly back?" I'd say "Boy it sure was tough and were lucky to get back." They would look at the picture, and walk away shaking their heads in disbelief.