B-29 over Morristown: Bombardier recalls fateful flight he hid from his family

Restored WWII B-29 lands at Morristown Airport. Photo by Marco Catini
Restored WWII B-29 lands at Morristown Airport. Photo by Marco Catini
0
THEN AND NOW: WWII Bombardier Donald Dwyer circa 1945 and 2015. Photos courtesy of Donald Dwyer.
THEN AND NOW: WWII Bombardier Donald Dwyer circa 1945, and 2015 at Morristown Airport. Photos courtesy of Donald Dwyer.

 

By Kevin Coughlin

Marion Dwyer never would have known her husband was a World War II hero if she had not discovered a Purple Heart inside a foot locker, 20 years after they were married.

WWII bombardier/gunner Donald Dwyer and his wife Mary, at Morristown Airport to see restored B-29. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
WWII bombardier/gunner Donald Dwyer and his wife Marion, at Morristown Airport to see restored B-29. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

“Nobody talked about it. Everybody wanted to get back home, and back to work,” said Donald Dwyer, who is 92 and wheelchair-bound now.

This week marks 70 years since he was wounded by a Japanese Zero during a bombing run over Kobe, Japan. On that day, the bombardier/gunner was strapped into the nose of a B-29 Superfortress just like the one that visited Morristown Airport on Wednesday.

The Dwyers drove from Toms River to greet this glistening piece of history, Donald’s once-secret history.

“Let’s just say they were better than B-17s,” he said of the bomber in which he survived 29 missions. “They were pressurized. You didn’t have to wear oxygen masks. Noisy, but comfortable.”

Rushed into service in the Pacific Theater towards the end of the war, these long-range, high-altitude Superfortresses were the most advanced bombers of their era, with a computerized firing system that eliminated most of the guesswork when shooting at enemy fighters.

Joe Messina, 93, trained on B-29s like this one as WWII ended. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Joe Messina, 93, trained on B-29s like this one as WWII ended. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

“It was the most complicated plane you could imagine,” said Joe Messina, 93, of Springfield. He joined dozens of others at Morristown Airport to marvel at this refurbished warbird, nicknamed Fifi.

Messina was training as a flight engineer for a B-29 replacement crew when the war ended.

“More B-29s crashed in training than were shot down,” said Messina, a retired physics instructor at NJIT. “The most remarkable thing was the age of the pilots, young guys, 20 years old, flying the planes.”

These days, the flyboys are more mature. They are volunteers for the Commemorative Air Force, a Texas-based nonprofit that has lovingly restored 160 World War II aircraft for museums and air shows. Fifi is the last flying Superfortress.

Guns on the B-29 Superfortress had an early type of computer control. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Guns on the B-29 Superfortress had an early type of computer control. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

It will cost you about $1,600 for a 30-minute ride in the bombardier’s seat.

Seven decades ago, Uncle Sam paid Donald Dwyer to sit there for long hauls to Japan from the island of Tinian — home base of the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dwyer summed up his missions succinctly:

“Scary. We got shot up.”

On June 5, 1945, a Zero fighter attacked Dwyer’s Superfortress head-on, sending four 20-millimeter shells at the aircraft. Both pilots were wounded. So was Dwyer. Shards of the plexiglas nose section sprayed his head as he was pulling the trigger.

“I was the front gunner, and I shot him down,” recounted the Whippany native. “I got even.”

Then he lost consciousness.

“Everything goes black. You don’t see any ‘light in the tunnel.’ It just goes dark.”

Donald Dwyer was wounded in a nose cone like this, during WWII. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Donald Dwyer was wounded in a nose cone like this, during WWII. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
IT'S THE BOMB: Donations keep the Commemorative Air Force aloft. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
IT’S THE BOMB: Donations keep the Commemorative Air Force aloft. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

The crew stuffed a bomb cover into the blasted window and limped back to Iwo Jima minus one of its four engines and with a damaged propeller.

Ten days later, Dwyer was patched up and flying again. One mission in August 1945 took him over Hiroshima, only a couple of days after the city was incinerated by the first atomic bomb.

“Terrible. There was just nothing there. Unbelievable,” Dwyer said. “I guess it was necessary. We would have lost an awful lot of troops if we had to invade [Japan]. I wasn’t happy about dropping any bombs. I knew I was killing people. But it was my job.”

Dwyer lost friends during the war, including a close pal from Hillside. He was called back to duty for the Korean War, this time to train B-29 crews. Returning to civilian life, he bought a Berkeley Heights bowling alley, where he met his wife, then became a sales rep for a paint company. The Dwyers raised three children, who gave them eight grandchildren.

WWII Bombardier Donald Dwyer with his sons, visiting B-29 at Morristown Airport, June 2015. Photo courtesy of Doug Dwyer
WWII Bombardier Donald Dwyer with sons Glenn and Doug, visiting B-29 at Morristown Airport, June 2015. Photo courtesy of Doug Dwyer

“If I had known he was a war hero, I could have aced History!” lamented Dwyer’s son, Doug. “He said, ‘It was just our job.'”

The Americans who fought World War II have been dubbed the Greatest Generation; Donald Dwyer thinks the Quietest Generation is more apt.

Certainly, the war was the adventure of a lifetime for a 22-year-old kid from Jersey. Yet even if his 92-year-old legs were not hobbled by a neurological disorder, Dwyer would be in no hurry to clamber aboard Fifi for one last nostalgia ride.

“It was a thrill, it was thrilling to do it. It’s something I would never give up doing it,” he said of his service so long ago.

“But I would never want to do it again.”

MORE PHOTOS OF B-29 AT MORRISTOWN AIRPORT.

 

Restored WWII B-29 lands at Morristown Airport. Photo by Marco Catini
Restored WWII B-29 lands at Morristown Airport. Photo by Marco Catini
WWII B-29, restored by the nonprofit Commemorative Air Force, flies over Morristown Airport. Photo by Marco Catini
WWII B-29, restored by the nonprofit Commemorative Air Force, flies over Morristown Airport. Photo by Marco Catini

 

 

LEAVE A REPLY