PORTLAND, Ore. -- Victory over Japan Day, September 2, 1945, was declared by the United States with the Imperial Japanese formal surrender, accomplished aboard the US Navy battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay.
As the proceedings concluded, hundreds of US Navy carrier aircraft and hundreds more higher flying USAAF Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombers flew over the anchored ships in a mighty show of force demonstration. A future commander of the 142nd Fighter Group (today’s 142nd Wing) Wing and the Oregon Air National Guard was a B-29 Superfortress aircraft commander who played an important part in achieving this victory against militarism in the Pacific. His name was Waldo E. Timm.
Getting into Military Aviation
Waldo “Walt” Earl Timm was born in Milwaukie, Oregon on August 5, 1918. He graduated from Milwaukie High School in 1937, and later joined the Oregon National Guard. He and Oregon’s other Army Guardsmen when it was brought into federal service in 1940. In August, 1941, he was assigned to the 41st Infantry Division at Ft. Lewis, Washington. Timm was later selected for Officer Candidate School of the Quartermaster Corps and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He then was assigned to the 26th “Yankee” Infantry Division and served on the east coast until November, 1942, when he transferred to the Air Corps and went to pilot training to earn his wings.
His wife, the former Waleen Cowell of Milwaukie, Had a different view of the Air Corps. Timm mentioned “I’d had flying in my craw for a long time but my wife didn’t care for the idea so much.” But stuck on the ground with the Yankee Division, Timm thought he wouldn’t see any action in World War II. Being away from his wife and home with assignment to a unit on the east coast, he applied for aviation training in hopes of joining the fight against the Axis powers.
After earning his wings at Seymour, Indiana on June 30, 1943, Timm served as an instructor pilot at Davis-Monthan Field in Arizona, still far from combat until May, 1944 when he was sent to Alamogordo Army Air Base, New Mexico (Holloman AFB today) to assemble his combat crew. The Timm crew then moved on to an operational training unit for very heavy bombers, the 246th Army Air Force Base Unit at Pratt Army Airfield, Kansas for three months of training to prepare for combat in the Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber. For characteristics on this aircraft, see the National Museum of the USAF B-29 page at: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196252/boeing-b-29-superfortress/
Captain Timm was 25 years old when his crew formed in May, 1944. He and his navigator, 1st Lt. Joseph Rogers from Wharton, New Jersey, were the oldest men on the 11-man crew. The average age of the entire crew was 23 years old. The crewman assigned and their position aboard the B-29 were as follows:
Position Crewman Military Occupational Specialty
Aircraft Commander Capt. Waldo E. Timm 1093
Pilot 1st Lt. John D. Kurz 1091
Navigator 1st Lt. Joseph P. Rogers, Jr. 1034
Bombardier 1st Lt. Nelson McDowell 1035
Flight Engineer Flt Officer Otto V. Schiemann 1028
Radio Operator S/Sgt Garland D. Smith 2756
Central Fire Control T/Sgt James E. Doolittle 580
Right Gunner S/Sgt Ronald R. Oliver 611
Left Gunner S/Sgt Benjamin Moffa 1685
Radar Operator 1st Lt. Adelbert B. Hunt 0142
Tail Gunner S/Sgt Kent J. Sprague 612
At Pratt Field, Timm and his new crew were assigned to the 52nd Bombardment Squadron (Very Heavy) of the 29th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy), in which he became an aircraft commander and a flight commander in his squadron. He and his crew trained at Pratt in the B-29, the most advanced bomber of World War II, and accomplished long-range overwater missions to Borinquen Field, Puerto Rico and Cuba in preparation for combat in the Pacific. Training at Pratt concluded by December 7, 1944 and the group deployed westward by air and by sea for the war against Imperial Japan.
Off to War in the Pacific
Capt. Timm and his crew left Mather Field, California on February 7, 1945, then flew to John Rogers Field by Honolulu, thence to Kwajalein and then Guam where his squadron was the first to arrive.
Timm’s 29th Bomb Group (Square O group tail marking) deployed to North Field, Guam (Andersen AFB today) with three other B-29 groups which formed the 314th Bomb Wing, the 19th (Square M), 39th (Square P) and 330th (Square K), all at North Field. (Note: Corporal Charles Buchinsky, better known as Charles Bronson, was an aerial gunner in the 39th Bomb Group. He flew 25 combat missions and was awarded the Purple Heart for a wound to an arm on a mission.)
With an authorized number of 45 B-29s per group (many averaged a few higher, 50 or so), the 314th BW fielded a nominal 180 of the mighty Superfortresses based at North Field. The Timm crew’s first aircraft, in which they flew their first four missions, was originally named “Timm-id Virgin” by the crew’s bombardier, Lt. Nelson McDowell, and featured nose art of a nude redhead painted on the big silver surface by an “imaginative artist.” The serial number of this aircraft is yet unknown, and a picture of the artwork has not been found thus far in any searches.
With Timm’s experience as a flight commander, he and his crew were designated as a lead crew in the 52nd BS (VH). On a group mission they would lead the squadron’s contribution of between nine and eleven B-29 bombers. He soon exerted the lead crew privilege of having the choice of a newly-arrived aircraft from the States. Capt. Timm selected a Boeing B-29-65-BW Superfortress, serial number 44-69869, an aircraft delivered to the USAAF on February 23, 1945 as his crew’s new ship.
Nose Art Sanitization Order
In the same timeframe, however, an order came down from higher headquarters in late March which ordered individually personalized aircraft names with colorful female-themed nose art on all the group’s B-29s to be removed.
There is some evidence available in historical documentation for this sanitization order. An example from a neighboring B-29 group illustrated the nature of it. In paragraph 1 of a memorandum from the Commander of the 505th Bomb Group to his men dated April 2, 1945, an extract from the order of his group’s parent wing on Tinian Island, the 313th Bombardment Wing, was conveyed, that “Group Commanders will see that all pictures of women are removed from aircraft of their Group.”
Paragraph 3 of the memo gave some rationale for the order “General Arnold and commanders on down the chain of command somehow feel that the B-29 is a cut above the ordinary airplane and being such is not to be placed in the common class by pictures of nude women.” Capt. Timm recalled it was the Commander of 20th Air Force, Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, who “…decided his boys had gone a little too far with the suggestive names, and especially the racy drawings that adorned the noses of the huge silver bombers.”
Despite such official explanation, rumors said the actual origin of the issue was with the wife of a general officer. There may be some truth in that, as aviation historian Steve Birdsall records on page 197 in his 1980 book Saga of the Superfortress - ”The directive came from Washington and was the result of some war-weary B-29s taking their artwork back to the States. Apparently several women’s religious groups (the Ladies’ Aid Society was one mentioned) protested violently to Arnold about the lewdness of the paintings…” How the members of these groups seeking the ban may have considered female nose art against the obscenity of warfare is unknown.
It was an unpopular order. Birdsall quoted an issue of the theater magazine Brief as stating “The war, it would seem, is being cleaned up, just like burlesque… It marks the end of a great tradition and means the loss of one of the last personal touches in an already impersonal war… Most of the bomber crews we know named their plane at first only because it was expected of them, but after a couple of rugged missions, the plane became as close to them as any one man in the crew and they would have rather parted with their wings than with their insigne…”
The City of Portland
So, with the sanitization order in effect, there would be no “Timm-id Virgin II” and Capt. Timm picked “Portland” to name his new ship “City of Portland.” He proposed nose art of a huge red rose, but was directed to use the new 314th Bomb Wing standard template for all four assigned bomb groups for city names which featured a navy blue globe with a map of America with a flagstaff marking the location of the city and a banner which carried the city’s name.
City of Portland soon received the city logo forward on the right side of the fuselage, the 29th Bomb Group (VH) tail marking of a black Square with a natural metal O, along with the "Victor" number 48 for individual aircraft identification on the aft fuselage.
The aircraft’s crew chief was T/Sgt Scott Paceley, who was credited for launching some 750 missions during the war in the different units he served with, including those flown by the Timm Crew. The names of his assistant crew chief and three or four other ground crew in this B-29 unit are lost to time in the records we have found thus far.
Into Combat
The City of Portland’s first combat mission took place on February 25, 1945, a daylight mission to Tokyo at 25,000 feet frustrated by an undercast that prevented visual attack and forced the group to bomb by radar. But the ship soon received its first battle damage in Operation Meetinghouse, the low-level (5,000-feet altitude) raid on Tokyo on the night of March 9/10, 1945. It collected three holes on that mission. Five of the group’s B-29s were shot down that night, including two from Timm’s 52nd Bomb Squadron. But the damage inflicted on the enemy was far greater.
Nearly 16 square miles of Tokyo, with much light industry that contributed to Japan’s war effort, and over a quarter of a million buildings, were destroyed. An estimated 100,000 people were killed and over a million more rendered homeless. It was the single most destructive air raid in the history of humanity.
After the raid, Emperor Hirohito went to see the devastation in his capital city. This led him to reconsider his reliance on Japan’s generals and their military decision making in the war. It seriously influenced his thinking. With the following destruction of urban centers in Japan by conventional and atomic bombing it eventually led to his decision in August to surrender and end the war. That choice averted an impending invasion of Japan and spared the lives of millions of His subjects, American and Allied military personnel as well as many more people across the Imperial Japan-occupied Asia-Pacific region.
Following this devastating incendiary raid on Tokyo, the crew flew City of Portland on similar night, low-altitude incendiary missions including Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. They also raided enemy airfields, particularly the ones in western Japan (Kyushu) from which the massed kamikaze aircraft attacks were launched against our ships around Okinawa.
The November, 1959 issue of the Air Scoop, the monthly newsletter of the 142nd Fighter Group (Air Defense), gave some details of his combat record based on a January 13, 1946 full-page article in the Oregonian newspaper titled “When ‘City of Portland’ Called On Tokyo,” written by military editor Mr. Herman Edwards. Edwards reported that City of Portland flew 37 missions (other sources credit the Timm crew with 35), through “the toughest flying weather on earth, bombed Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama and the… best defended targets without a scratch to crewmen, or abortion (airmen’s term for failure to drop a bomb over a target) and came back safely every time to its home base.”
In the interview with Mr. Edwards, Capt. Timm spoke of when a Japanese “…suicide plane hit one of the B-29s of our squadron head on. The big bomber exploded, not more than 150 feet from us, and sent down another ship in the squadron.” This incident may have occurred on the April 7 day mission to Nagoya. B-29 42-65350, “City of Muncie” flown by the Frank A. Crowcraft crew was rammed directly over Nagoya by a twin-engine Ki-45 Toryu fighter, Allied code name Nick, from the Imperial Japanese Army’s 5th Sentai. According to Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) #14232, “Aircraft was rammed by Enemy Aircraft “Nick” then turned over on its back and went into a flat spin engulfed in flames.” Eight of the crew were killed and three were captured.
Another 29th Bomb Group B-29 was lost directly over Nagoya eight minutes prior on this mission, 44-69669, flown by the William S. Buttfield crew, all 11 and one observer aboard killed in action. MACR 14231 reported that “Bursts from Enemy Anti-Aircraft Guns caused left wing to shear off which further caused aircraft to go into a flat spin.”
“We had another close call with a kamikaze over Tachikawa which is just east of Tokyo (sic, Tachikawa is just west of Tokyo and became a major US air base after the war). We had just hit the target and were circling north around Mount Fuji. We had considerable fighter opposition. This time I was flying in the lower element instead of in the lead. Suddenly the pilot on my right, on which wing I was flying, pushed his nose down sharply. I saw two blazing balls of fire – they were the distinctive insignia painted on the underside of Jap(anese) fighter planes – only for a second and he was gone. He had tipped into a vertical bank and come between us. One of my gunners got in a burst at him and thought he scored a hit, but he couldn’t tell.” The 29th Bomb Group attacked the Tachikawa aircraft factory on June 10, 1945 during a daylight raid. Ramming attacks by defending Japanese fighters reportedly destroyed nine B-29s during the war and damaged another 13.
During one harrowing night mission over Tokyo someone on the crew inadvertently activated one of City of Portland’s landing lights. “We really stretched our luck on one of the Tokyo attacks,” Capt. Timm recalled. Japanese planes over their own home territory were noted to fly at night with their running lights on. Suddenly, another B-29’s crew began firing their machine guns at City of Portland. Timm recalled “He might have shot us down but he had been badly hit and in just a few seconds blew up and went down over the target. We went ahead and made our run, and dropped our bombs on the target… we concluded that our own ship had fired upon us because it had seen our light and thought we were an enemy.”
Mr. Larry Smith, son of the Timm crew radio operator S/Sgt Garland Smith, remembered his father talking of a daylight raid on Yokohama on May 29, 1945 in which City of Portland lost two engines during the mission but completed it with the remaining two. They fought off several enemy fighters and destroyed at least one of them.
Capt. Timm remembered this mission: “The propeller governor stuck on takeoff and after we got into the air I was unable to reduce the speed of No. 1 engine, which was running 2500 revolutions per minute. I very foolishly decided to go ahead and make the mission, figuring that after we made the run on the target I could feather No. 1 prop and make it back on three engines.”
But in combat the enemy gets a “vote” on the outcome. Timm continued, “Just before we hit the target, ack-ack struck the No. 4 engine and I had no choice but to feather that. Well, we made the run and as soon as we left the target I had to feather No. 1 in order to have enough gas to get back to Guam. But we made it along all right on two engines and when we got over Saipan I figured I would have enough gas left for the remaining 130 miles back to Guam, so I cut No. 1 back in again and we came in on three engines.”
Capt. Timm “celebrated” his 27th birthday and his sixth wedding anniversary on August 5 with a night mission to Nishinomiya and City of Portland’s luck held out bringing all back to Guam safely. When the fighting ended with an armistice on August 15, he and his crew had completed 35 combat missions, a bit over half of the 66 missions flown by the 29th Bomb Group.
By the end of the war, the ship received a total of 12 holes from enemy flak and suffered damage to its propellers which required replacement on three occasions. Even with this, City of Portland brought its crew back unscathed from nearly three dozen combat missions against the Empire. Capt. Timm said that “The City of Portland was a great plane, and the luckiest in the world.”
Over 400 B-29s were lost on operations in World War II, with 147 lost due to enemy defenses and another 267 lost to mechanical failures, engine fires, takeoff crashes, accidents and other non-combat causes. Roughly, for every B-29 lost in combat, nearly two others were non-combat operations losses. But City of Portland survived, mostly intact, and the Timm crew, all intact, though each likely were affected in their own way by the combat experience.
Timm’s group earned two Distinguished Unit Citations (the Presidential Unit Citation today) for outstanding missions against the Empire. The first was for its March 30 attack on the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service’s big Omura Airfield, 10 miles northeast of Nagasaki, which took place just before the invasion of Okinawa. And a second DUC for a series of attacks against an industrial area in Shizuoka City, the Mitsubishi aircraft plant at Tamashima in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture (which produced the G4M2 “Betty” bomber and the N1K2-J Shiden-Kai “George” fighter for the Imperial Japanese Navy) and the Chigusa (or Chikusa) Ordnance Factory (maker of small arms for the Imperial Japanese Army) of the Nagoya Army Arsenal from 19 - 26 June, 1945.
Timm and his crew returned to the US in September of 1945, not aboard City of Portland or any other B-29, but on a Douglas C-54 Skymaster transport plane. Before he left Guam, however, he managed to liberate the B-29 horn button/yoke center from the control yoke of his esteemed ship.
Capt. Timm was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) with two Oak Leaf Clusters (OLC) for combat missions flown in the Pacific. He also received the Air Medal with three OLC and credit for participation in two campaigns with two battle stars on the Asiatic-Pacific service ribbon.
After the War
In late 1945, Timm joined the Portland Police Bureau and later the Oregon Air National Guard (ANG). Like many WWII veterans in the Oregon ANG, he returned to active duty during the Korean War callup. CMSgt Gene G. Thomas remembered Col. Timm served at Hamilton AFB, California during the Korean activation as a lead checkout/instructor pilot.
By 1957, Col. Timm became the Commander, 142nd Fighter Group (Air Defense), and after the passing of the Oregon ANG’s founding father, Brig. Gen. G. Robert Dodson in late 1958, the Commander of the Oregon ANG as well. He held these posts until August of 1962 when he relinquished command to Col. Patrick E. O’Grady.
Col. Timm then served at the Pentagon for 10 years, and had a role in the design of the Total Force concept which improved the integration of National Guard and reserve units with active duty counterparts in the conduct of combat operations. He retired from active duty service as Chief of Policy and Liaison, National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon on October 31, 1972, and continued his service to the nation as a Department of Defense civilian until retiring in 1980. Col. Timm flew west on September 2, 2000, 35 years after V-J Day, at the age of 82. He is buried in Willamette National Cemetery, at Section AA, Site 81.
City of Portland did not outlast its aircraft commander. Although the ship’s postwar service is unclear after Capt. Timm left Guam in September, 1945 there is information to indicate that 44-69869 was “reclaimed” (scrapped) at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma on August 8, 1954.
On this 80th anniversary of V-J Day, we remember Waldo E. Timm and the crew of “City of Portland” for their vital service in the B-29 Superfortress strategic air campaign against the Empire of Japan which helped bring an end to the War in the Pacific and usher in an era of peace. He faithfully served nation, state and community in World War II and afterwards. Lest we forget.
Special thanks to Mr. Michael Timm and his brother Mr. Gary Timm for information and images of their father; to Mr. Rick “Cecil B.” deWilliams for Capt. Timm’s January 13, 1946 interview published in the Oregonian; to Mr. Allan Pawlikowski, former secretary of the 29th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy) Association (inactivated in 2010); and to Mr. Mark Martin at the B-29 Museum in Pratt, Kansas for information on Waldo E. Timm and the 29th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy).