Frank Mittelstaedt
I know him as
Grandpa, but everyone else calls him Frank.
Frank Mittelstaedt was born in Milbank, South Dakota on July 19,
1923. Frank had never stepped foot
outside of the United States before World War II when he joined the Army Air
Corps. Frank is very modest about his
duties in World War II. He is a very
soft-spoken man that carefully thinks about his responses.
You
had to [enlist] in World War II if you were physically fit and all that. Then you either got drafted, or else you
joined--and then I joined the Army Air Corps.
I volunteered because I wanted to get into the Air Corps. If you didn’t volunteer, then you got
drafted and then you might end up in the infantry or artillery or something in
that order.
I went in at Fort Dodge, Iowa; and then
I went to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and then I went to some school there
at Springfield, Ohio and that lasted five months. Then I went to San Antonio and then--let’s
see, where did I go, oh, yeah!--I went to Radio School at Sioux Falls, South
Dakota. That was for five months,
and then I went to Tucson, Arizona--the air base there--Davis Monson Field
and we trained as a crew for five months.
Then we went to Herrington, Kansas, and we picked up a new B-29 there. They were manufactured in Wichita, and then
they parked them up there at Herrington.
Then we flew that out to California.
I can’t remember the name of that field. Then we went out to Hawaii, on a little island out there--Quadulane--and
then we finally got to Tinian [Northern Mariana Islands] where we were based--and
we flew our missions out of Tinian.
Let’s
see. I must have been—well, I would
have been about twenty when I went in.
I suppose, maybe a person grew up a little faster than they would have
normally, being away from your parents and your friends and being by yourself
for a couple of years. You didn’t see
anybody that you knew--lonesome.
[I was a]
radio operator on the B-29. You’d send
back messages that the pilot would give you, and you’d get weather reports; and
you did it with a key using Morse code.
Of course, I learned that when I went to Radio School. Of course they don’t use that anymore, but
you could send and receive in Morse code.
[We’d] take
off from Tinian, and then it was about 1500 miles up there [Japan]. So we’d usually leave Tinian about five in
the afternoon, and then we’d get up there about midnight. Dump the load, and then we’d get back to
Tinian about seven in the morning.
When you would
get close to the target--I suppose maybe ten miles away--then I would go into
the back part of the plane, and they had a camera hatch there. I suppose it was a couple feet square, but
you could look straight down and see the ground. Of course, this was usually about midnight. They [Japanese] had a lot of
radar-controlled searchlights, and they were always trying to pick up the
planes. If they could see you in the
searchlights, then they had something to shoot at. But we’d throw tin foil out, and then that would kind of screw up
the searchlights so they couldn’t get you pinpointed. Also, the bottom of the plane was painted black, so that helped
too; but we threw out a lot of tin foil.
Each plane would throw it out.
Well, we
carried, mostly we carried, they call it Napalm. It’s kind of jellied gasoline; but it was in hundred pound bombs,
and I think we’d drop about 180 of those each time. When they’d hit, they’d splatter; and of course that sets on
fire. So you start some pretty good
fires. Then they [Allies] tried to burn
down a city. So we had to take about 50
or 75 B-29’s, and then each one of them would drop that many Napalm and then
that would burn the city down.
Usually our
group was well, I’d say, 50 to 75; but then there would be other groups. Usually on a night they’d get maybe eight
hundred airplanes up there. So they
could get five cities each night--so they’d wipe out quite a few cities, you
see.
Well, there
was a certain amount of anti-aircraft fire, but they weren’t too accurate with
it. Most of their fighter planes were shot down by that time, so most of the
time it was pretty easy.
We used to run out of gas once in awhile, or run
low on gas; and then we’d have to stop at a little island out there, Iwo Jima. Sometimes we’d have to land there and get more
gas; but if we did that, then that would take another couple of hours.
So there were some pretty long days 
there. Of course, you’re always concerned because,
of course at that time they used Piston engines, and they weren’t as reliable
as jets now days, you know. So it
was a long flight over water. So you
always hoped that the engines would keep turning.
Some of the planes, of course they went down; they had submarines stationed
out there. So some of the planes that
went down, they could contact a submarine, and they would come and pick them
up, see. So that was a good deal.
Well, I got a
couple of air medals. At that time they
handed them out for--you had to fly so many combat missions to get one. I think it was about six or seven missions. I think it was about fourteen [missions I
flew], and then the war ended. So, that
was it.
Two and a half
years of active duty; about six months of reserve. When I was doing the reserve, that’s when I got a pilot’s
license. So that was time well spent.
Of course
being in the military at that time, you got--I think you got a day of college
for every day that you served--so you got a college degree out of it that
didn’t really cost you anything. In
fact, they paid us sixty-five a month to start with. And then a little, I think the last couple of years, then we got
105. But a person could live on that
then. You see your board and room and
the whole shebang. You could live
pretty good on it, too.
Then I went to
South Dakota State College for a year.
Then I worked at the telephone company for a year; and then I went to
North Dakota State College for three years and finished up there. When I went to college, I took agriculture
for some strange reason. I don’t know
why, but that led to the Farmers’ Home Administration. Well, I worked for the Farmers’ Home Administration
for twenty-eight years; and then the last twenty-two, I guess I’ve been
retired.
Probably I
would opt out of the military, if I had a choice; but I can’t complain about it
too much either because at least I got a college degree out of it. So I can’t complain too much, I guess.
*This Oral History of Frank
Mittelstaedt was researched and prepared by Kari Untereker in Spring 2002.
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