Mission #6   5 June 45   Kobe

This was to be another fire raid on Kobe, which is the most densely populated city in the world: 125,000 per square mile. So an incendiary strike on Kobe should do a lot damage.

We took off from Guam at 1541Z and headed for Iwo Jima. It was a good night for celestial and I got four fixes going into Iwo. We arrived at Iwo at 1915Z flying at 5500 ft.

We left Iwo and headed toward our Assembly area. Due to bad weather over the target we were to bomb at 13,500 ft. but a weather ship was to radio back any changes and we received a message that we were to climb to 15,500: After passing through a severe front we began our climb and reached the assembly area at 15,000. The assembly area was about 15NM west of a point of land. (33-10N 134-00E). We arrived there at about 2235Z. There we formed into a ten plane formation. We flew K-62 and were No. 6 in the formation.

Departed the assembly area at 0912K. We hit the IP (34-17N 135-00E) at 0921K and hit the target at 0927. We dropped 184-100 lb. incendiary bombs. There were an awful lot of bombs dropped on Kobe that day.

It wasn't too bad over the target. We saw some flak (barrage type) up ahead as we were going in but there was none while we were on the bomb run. Some fighters however. We were attacked eight times by Tonys and Irvings. I saw none shot down.

Right after bombs away there was a large billow of smoke up ahead of us. We went around it however. Over near Kyoto on the way out we ran into some more flak. We left the coast at 34-04 N 136-18E at 0005Z and headed for home. Shortly after we left the coast Snyder reported seeing a Jap battleship underneath us heading for Japan.

I used sun lines a good deal coming back to Iwo. We also passed through the same