Remembering the B-29 Hog Wild

On 29 August, 1945, forces of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (U.S.S.R.) actively engaged in combat with Japanese military forces in and around Konan (modern-day Hamhung), northern Korea, forced down the last U.S. B-29 lost to hostile fire during World War II (WWII). The bomber was commanded by Lieutenant Joseph Queen. The aircraft, B29 Model B-29-80 Serial Number 44-70136 carrying the moniker Hog Wild, was on a mercy mission providing humanitarian relief; food, medicine, and clothing to Prisoners of War (POW) previously held by the Japanese in northern Korea.

There were 13 men aboard the Superfortress. 10 were regular members of the Queen crew; three were observers. Confronted by up to eight Soviet Yak-9s over Konan, Korea and led to a nearby airfield the crew had aborted its mission and was now attempting to return to its home base of Saipan. 20 miles from the coast of northern Korea Soviet Yaks opened fire on the fleeing bomber. Lieutenant’s Queen and the bomber’s pilot Lieutenant Rainey struggled to keep the bomber aloft. Lieutenant Eugene Hardwood surveyed the damages. Hog Wild had suffered tremendous damages. Its number one engine was on fire; its bomb bay had taken at least one hit from a Soviet 37mm autocannon. Captain Campbell, an observer on the flight thought the bomber was done for and recommended to Lieutenant Queen that they abandon the bomber. Queen and Rainey turned the burning B-29 towards land and the previous indicated airfield south of Konan. Seconds and minutes passed like hours. The flight engineer, Staff Sergeant Rinaldo released the bombers fire extinguishers into the burning engine. Lieutenant Queen ordered the crew to bail out.

Some of the crew made the jump into the stormy waters now known as the East Sea. Others rode the burning bomber to the ground. All survived. In the end the crew completed its POW supply delivery mission via Soviet truck. Of the more than 900 POW B-29 relief missions flown by the 20th Air Force at the end of the war, it was the only mission where a bomber’s supplies were delivered overland, hand-over-hand, by the bomber’s crew.

The POWs, primarily British and Australian soldiers had been held by the Japanese military since the fall of Singapore in early 1942. Most had labored in the Nichitsu carbide factory and other Japanese owned industries in and around Konan since 1943. While there were other Japanese POW camps in Korea and Manchuria, the Konan POW Camp was the only actual “slave labor” camp in all of Japanese occupied northeast Asia. The Red Army had arrived in Konan only days before. The POWs had survived the Japanese. Their fight with the Japanese was over, but was the war over? Yet their fate and that of the bomber’s crew now rested in the hands of a Soviet Army some of whom had fought the Germans to capture Berlin, and now the Japanese to overrun northern Korea in the final days of the war. Were they once again free men, or had they simply traded one form of slavery for another?

More than a year after the Soviet Union had forced down Hog Wild, newsman David Snell would publish a story on 3 October 1946 in the Atlanta Constitution with the attention grabbing headline, “Japan Developed Atom Bomb; Russia Grabbed Scientists.” Snell cited the incident with the bomber as support for his tale of Soviet perfidy and Japanese atomic bomb production facilities hidden in the mountain vastness of northern Korea. According to Snell the Soviet Union had shot the bomber down to prevent it from “snooping” around the area of Konan, in search of the specialized facilities that supported Japan’s wartime atomic bomb program. The stage was now set for the creation of a legend. Snell had told only part of the story.

In the decades that followed the Snell article, myths regarding the plane, its mission, and its final fate have grown in proportion to the time that passed since those events on the afternoon of 29 August 1945. Snell was right; but for all the wrong reasons. The Soviets had forced down the bomber but not to protect rumored Japanese bomb facilities. Those facilities were not located in Konan but to the northeast.

Looking back some 67 years later, was Hog Wild the first incident in a Cold War that would exist between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for the next 40 some odd years? Was the crew of Hog Wild on some clandestine spy mission? If the Soviets were not protecting some unknown high-tech Japanese atomic bomb production facilities in the area of Konan, why did they force down the Hog Wild? Was it simply that the aircraft had intruded over an active combat area, and failed to obey Soviet orders to put down at the nearest airfield? Of was there more to the story? Who were the men that manned the Hog Wild What was their tale?

This site is dedicated to the men of Hog Wild who, against all odds completed their mission and to the POWs of the Konan POW Camp located in northern Korea during the war. It was a small corner of a big war in a far away country... (submitted by Dwight Rider).

John Barrett (Barry) Grant

Observers on Hog Wild

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COMING

FALL 2012

"HOG WILD"

LECTURE

1st Lt. Robert W. Campbell

Lucius William Weeks