Blasting a Burma Train
A B-25H takes off from grassy Dergaon Field on an overcast day in Assam, India, during the summer of 1944
A low-altitude mission was off Dergaon Field to Burma on August 7, 1944, when Capt. Mark T. Seacrest led a two-plane echelon to Naba Junction early in the morning. The aircraft arrived on target at 0740 and dropped twelve 500-lb. HEs on a railroad bridge. Two bounded off but exploded, shifting the rails and damaging the foundation. One was a direct hit on the adjacent roadbed, while another bomb hit the bridge but did not explode. Crew members reported it as a dud. After dropping the bomb load, they came across a train. According to the mission report, gunners strafed rolling stock, damaging an estimated fifteen railroad cars. A 40 mm post was in operation 300 yards west of the bridge, and a few bursts were sighted behind and above the planes. Both bombers returned safely to base after three and a half hours.
Encountering the train was an unexpected bonus. Trains usually moved at night, but occasionally one was spotted on the move in the daytime or being made up. The Japanese were pressed for locomotives and used diesel units interspersed throughout the trains. Because the power units in the trains were indistinguishable, gunners strafed the entire length of the string of cars and stopped them that way. The trains were pulled by steam locomotives, and when they hit the engine's boiler, steam would blow it to bits. Should the engine crew see the attacking planes in time, they let the steam out of the engine boiler so it would not blow up and could be repaired.
The mission on this day was one my father, then Cpl. James H. “Hank” Mills, remembered particularly well. "I was top turret gunner. I rode up with the pilot.” Seacrest told him, as Hank recalled, "We're gonna strafe that train" but warned against firing forward because the concussion from the guns could break the Plexiglas cover. The aluminum gun-slot shields were sometimes removed to improve forward visibility, but this practice caused the Plexiglas canopies to shatter from the air pressure, resulting in injury to the gunner's face.
The upper turret of the B-25H extended above the roof of the plane and carried two .50-caliber machine guns that were ordinarily fired by the flight engineer, who was expected to know more about the plane than anyone else on board. Working closely with the pilot, he sat on an elevated folding bicycle-type seat with foot platform, mounted on a pedestal located in the aft portion of the cannoneer's compartment. When in position, he sighted and fired the guns through an electrically-powered Plexiglas dome that swiveled to provide the best angle of attack. The turret was operated by means of hand grips that had controls for speed, intercom, and trigger that fired both guns simultaneously. The twin guns were mounted on either side of the gunner's shoulders. Each gun was fed by an ammunition box that held 440 rounds of ammunition―enough for only a few seconds of continuous firing.
According to Hank, the pilot instructed, "When I get part-way through, I'll pull up real steep and you shoot between the tails" (the two vertical stabilizers). He described what happened next: "I turned the guns around and he did what he said. He went in at an angle where he fired, then he pulled up and I put those tracers on that train and fired all the way down and in a little bit one blew up and it made fire—smoke and flame you could see for fifty miles. So that's the only thing I know of that I did that affected anything.”
He felt pride in that mission. "I got a lot of satisfaction that day. That one day I hurt them."
Want to know more of the story? Find it now in The Spray and Pray Squadron: 3rd Bomb Squadron, 1st Bomb Group, Chinese-American Composite Wing in World War II.