B-29 Noah Borshuns and crew

I don't think that many of today's generation realize the total mental dedication and physical depletion that the bomber crews experienced in action. The B-29 wasn't the epitome of dependability even without facing fighters or flack. The airplane was solid as a rock and a great bombing platform but the engines were a failure waiting to happen. Some lasted a total of six hours and even gave up on take off. Look at the cowl flaps in the pictures of Noah Borshuns, wide open and they had to stay that way until take off was well established and then it was a fight between the pilot and the flight engineer with the former try to close the flaps so he could climb and the latter trying open them further to cool the rapidly overheating engines. It was amazing that the B-29 did as much as it did but it took the sap out of many a crew.

 

Russ, you have a PM.

 

Again, I have to agree, Russ. The compressed training regimen in 1942-44 was amazing and it took skilled and dedicated boys / men to not only to complete it but to survive it. The training losses in 1942 and 1943 were horrendous and many unskilled cadets and 2nd Lt.s lost their lives. Some fighter pilots were going over seas and into action with less than 300 hours in their logbooks and flying airplanes that some were not yet equal to. At the end of one month in 1943 one of the OTU squadrons of P-40N's at Sarasota Airbase was down to 5 serviceable airplanes, the rest had been wrecked or crashed. A lot of kids were flying that shouldn't have been driving but at that time in the war, the Air Force was taking anyone who could breathe. Bomber crew training was much different but compressed and RELENTLESS. It took the best part of 1 year to get a functioning bomber crew.
I flew the first three airplanes in that list as a civilian and flew in all the others as a crew member in the USAAF. Long time ago.
Switches

 

My friend, Ed Cutler was capt. of the Texas Doll, flew off Saipan at the end of the War. He wrote a book about his time in the Pacific. He passed this last July; I could listen to his stories forever. Thrown Props, running out of gas,
saboteurs putting rotten sandwiches in the lunch kit, etc. He was a lifer,
F-100's, B-50's, Joint Chiefs, SAC. How does so much courage and duty
get stuffed into these men? What heroes.

 

Dad flew 25 missions off Saipan in "Lucky 7" and "Lucky 11". The early missions when Japan still had a fight in them that he wrote about were the scary ones. Once Iwo Jima came on line being able to make emergency landings there saved many crews.

After the 25 missions he was to be sent back to the US to train on a specially modified B-29 that was to drop one very large bomb on a specific train tunnel. IIRC it was 12,500 or 15,000 pound weapon.
But the nukes stopped the war and he went back home.

 

Rob, today I found the photos on here of Noah Borshuns. I have one to add if I might. It was my father's photo and he's gone so I hav have no idea where this was taken but it is dated December 1945.
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Hi Sandi:
My father, Ralph Robert Cameron, was a Flight Engineer on the Noah Borshuns. It is my understanding that there were 3 flight crews that rotated missions. Here is my Dads crew names.

Pilot-Captain B. Evans
Co-Pilot- 1st Lt. J. Brown
Bombardier- 2nd Lt. W. Wright
Navigator- 3rd Lt. R. Yohmans
Flight Engineer-S/Sgt Ralph Cameron
Tail Gunner-Sgt. A. Gladman
Scanners- Sgt W. Bright and Sgt. G. Basser.

This is on the back of a picture of the Noah Borshuns and is dated 1944.

The name "Noah Borshuns" is a play on words for No Abortions as many already know. What is not known is that there is another meaning also. My mother was pregnant with me at the time-I was born March 7, 1946. The nude woman facing away but looking towards the Flight Engineers window and caring a baby is my mother. Not only was the plane not to abort any missions but it was a reminder to my dad that my mother would not abort me. It must have worked because the plane never aborted and I was born! You will also note the name Noah Borshuns was located on the Flight Engineers side of the plane and not on the Pilots side of the plane like on many other B-29's. The Pilots side of the plane had the number of missions the plane flew. Booms were painted on the indicate each mission completed. Another interesting thing is that all 4 props had names. The Pilot, Co-Pilot, Navigator and Flight Engineer could give them a name. My father's was the prop nearest the Flight Engineers window and he named it Marj after my mother whose name was Margaret.

Ron Cameron.

 

P.S.- My email is [email protected] if you wish to get a hold of me. I can also be bound on Ancestry were I am filling in my Dad's info as I find more about him during WWII. He did not talk about his war experience like many veterans. About his flight missions he only said "they were long cold flights".

Ron