The 313th Bomb Wing

    The 313th Bomb Wing, Very Heavy (VH) was organized at Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, Colorado in April, 1944, to be equipped with the Boeing B-29 superfortress. The 6th and 9th operational groups were reassigned to the wing. Both groups were already in active operations, with the 6th being reassigned from the 6th Air Force in the Caribbean, where it was performing anti-submarine missions and protecting the Panama Canal from airfields in Panama. The 9th group had been assigned to the army air force training command in South Florida. They were reassigned to Grand Island Army Airfield, Grand Island, Nebraska and McCook Army Airfield, McCook, Nebraska, where they trained initially on B-17 flying fortresses, until the B-29 aircraft could be manufactured and made available to them. The 504th group at Fairmont Army Airfield, Nebraska and the 505th group at Harvard Army Airfield, Nebraska were new groups assigned for training. Nebraska army airfields had never been used to train the larger B-29 crews, so facilities were being built when the wing components arrived. Training programs for the B-29s had to be established. After dealing with various training issues and problems with the B-29s, the groups were ready to deploy to the Pacific theater. They departed for North Field, Tinian, in the Northern Mariana Islands, and arrived in December, 1944.

    On Tinian, the wing was assigned to the 20th Air Force. The 313th group began flying missions, initially against Iwo Jima, the Truk Islands, and other Japanese-held areas. Missions to the mainland of Japan started at Nagoya on 15 February, 1944. In March, low-level night incendiary raids on area targets in Japan and mining missions started and continued until the war’s end.

    A fifth group, the 509th Composite Group, was assigned to the wing in May, 1945 from Wendover Army Airfield, Utah. The 509th was assigned the 20th Air Force atomic missions and was operationally controlled by 20th Air Force headquarters. The 509th was given a base area north of the airfield, isolated several miles from all the other groups. They used a wide variety of tail codes from various groups so that their planes could not be identified. In early August, the mission of the 509th was revealed when the group flew the atomic bomb missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In November, they were relieved from the assignment to the 313th bomb wing and reassigned to Roswell army airfield New Mexico.

    Starting 27 March, 1945, the wing was ordered to fly missions to drop mines to destroy or bottle up Japanese shipping. Continuous mining missions were started in June. Individual sorties were made at night at low altitudes. Mines were dropped by parachute in the harbors and the inland Sea of Japan. Some harbors in Korea were also targeted. The target areas, types of mines, and timing of the missions arrived directly from the bomber command. The wing operational staff worked up the routes, aiming points, and other operational details. Radar operators used the newly designed PQ-13 radar system to drop mines, which proved to be highly successful. By July, Japan was essentially blockaded with no movement of ships of any appreciable size between China or Korea and Japan or between coastal cities within Japan. A total of 1528 sorties were flown by the 313th wing. Although not well publicized in the U.S., and not at all in Japan, this mining campaign doubtlessly had a major psychological impact on the Japanese military and political leaders. This helped reinforce the obvious feeling that Japan’s situation was hopeless. After the war, the commander of the Japanese minesweeping force told an American interrogator, “The result of the mining by B-29s was so effective that it eventually starved the country. I think you probably could have shortened the war by beginning earlier.”

    The wing flew its last combat mission on 14 August. The wing participated in the Asiatic-Pacific campaign (1945-1944). Afterwards, the wing carried relief supplies to allied prisoners of war camps in Japan & Manchuria and participated in ‘show of force’ flights over Japan. As part of the post war drawdown of forces, the 504th and 505th, were deactivated in late 1945 and early 1946. The 6th and 9th bomb groups continued assignments in the 20th and 13th Air Forces. The groups were deactivated in June 1947.