The bright silver B-29 Superfortress was named “Dina Might” and featured on its fuselage a buxom girl in a swimsuit, sitting on a lit explosive. It shook and roared as it powered down the Tinian runway, its four big Wright R-3350 engines surging, as the biggest bomber in the world lifted off on its way to attack the Empire of Japan. In its bomb bay it carried more than a 14,000-pound bomb load, a destructive payload unthinkable even a few years before that.  This day’s target would be the Aichi aircraft plant at Eitoku , near the city of Nagoya on Japan’s largest island of Honshu. Fourteen other sites were on the list as alternates.  It was June 26, 1945 and the end of the war was less than 45 days away.

(Just four miles away on the Island of Saipan, a young Army PFC from the 77^th Division, recovering from his wounds incurred in the Okinawa campaign, was indulging in his favorite new pastime.  PFC Marty Hawkins was from Chicago, and had also fought on Guam and Leyte, where he helped to take those islands from the Japanese Army. Now that his shrapnel wounds were healing, and lacking any military duties as a patient, he and a few buddies would find a shady spot, maybe grab a Coke, and watch the giant planes take off and land over on Tinian.  The two islands were part of the Marianas Chain and the seasonal, dry sunny weather made for a tropical paradise. That was one of the reasons for building both the airstrips and the hospitals.)

“Dina Might” was lead bomber on this mission and was soon joined by 64 other Super Fortresses as it flew toward its target. Its captain was a young West Point graduate (and eventually a three star General) who had grown impatient with the bombing skills of his previous bombardier, and who had used his “West Point status” to get a new lead bombardier.  Lead bombardiers were important: when they dropped their ordnance, everyone else followed. Success or failure of the whole mission hinged on this one man’s skills.

In the nose of the big plane was the new lead bombardier, 1^st Lt Gilbert J. Finn, on his second mission with this crew. His previous 23 missions over Japan were with another crew, that one flying in a plane called “Big Boots” and captained by a big man, its namesake, Captain Art Tomes.  Gil was a young husband and father, though he had yet to see his infant son. He had been flattered when the Group Commander recommended him for the lead bomber position, but was reluctant to leave his crew. He and Art talked it over and, largely because Gil had some ambitions to stay in the air service after the war, he moved to the new job.

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As the Japanese coastline loomed the Flight Engineer was digging out the flak suits to distribute to the crew.  All hell broke loose as the big plane crossed the coast. A Japanese fighter burst from a cloud, setting two of the four engines on fire with its cannon fire. Riding in the exposed Perspex nose, Lt. Finn was killed instantly on its first pass. Captain and crew struggled to gain control as other enemy fighters saw smoke and oil pouring from the plane and closed in for a kill. The crew got four fighters before the plane’s luck ran out and the electrical power was lost.

At 9,000 feet it was time for the ten survivors to bail out. The left gunner, crew chief, and other officers went from the bomb bay.  The tail gunner made it through his hatch, pulled his ripcord and watched as his chute failed to open. He began to pull it out with his hands, only to find it riddled with bullets. It opened, but he hit the water with a tremendous impact, and somehow survived.  The radar operator and the right gunner went from the rear escape hatch: their chutes were spotted and later reported by the others, but neither was ever seen again.

One other officer, a Major Carr, along for the ride to get his flight pay, moved Gil’s body, beyond help, to an area where he might be aided. He was last seen sitting on his parachute near Gil’s body. He never jumped. Thirty seconds after the crew got out, the big plane exploded.  Within a few hours, submarines on picket duty had them safely on board. (Author’s note: This account was from a letter written by 1^st LT Burton Coit, Flight Engineer on that doomed flight.)

Two months and two atomic bombs later, the war ended.  Art Tomes and his remaining crew, PFC Marty Hawkins, and millions of other GI’s, airmen, marines, and sailors found their ways back home. Back to Chicago for Marty, where I would later become his son-in-law and friend; back to Minnesota and a career in commercial aviation for Art.  They knew they were lucky to have made it, and they carried the fierce pride of having done their job, and done it well.

They were finished with their war, but the war wasn’t quite finished with them. Most spent years trying to make some sense out of it, to get answers that would never come, to wait for the nightmares to fade. Many tried to reconnect with the families of the lost to express their sorrow, and perhaps seek at least temporary release from the curious guilt one feels to have survived when the man next to you did not.

Gil’s widow, Rita Finn, shattered by the loss of her husband, went back to work as the crack secretary she was. Like so many other young war widows, she found love again after a few years. She married a young fireman named Tom, himself a widower with a child, and both forged a new life out of the ashes of the old. Her infant son, Gil, Jr., and Tom’s young daughter Maureen would become the start of a new family.

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Gilbert J. Finn, Jr., the infant son now 55 years old, picked up the phone to hear Art Tomes’ voice. Art had been trying for years to locate Gil’s mother, Rita Finn (now Wogan), but was having no luck.  In those “pre-internet” days, simply remarrying and changing your name could create a pretty big dead end for anyone trying to find you, particularly in a city the size of Chicago.  Art had found Gil’s name, spelled exactly as his fathers’, in an Aurora, Illinois phone directory and gave it a try. And so a few weeks later, I found myself driving my mother and Gil to a house in Merrillville, Indiana, owned by Art’s daughter.

It was an uneasy ride for my mother and, I think, for Gil. We were about to reconnect with one of the last living persons his father had known, a man who had flown 23 missions with his dad. What would we learn, what would we say? How to begin?

As I pulled into the driveway, the big man, now old and a bit stooped but looking every inch the command pilot he once was, came out to greet us. He looked at me a bit confused. My brother and I look nothing alike; Gil has his father’s slight build and my genetic award was my father’s square one.   He must have been wondering how Gil’s son could look so different than he expected. Once he saw Gil emerge from the other side of car, he smiled and went to him, draping him in a huge bear hug. I could see the tears forming at the ends of his closed eyes and I wondered if he was making good on a 55 year-old promise to hug Gil’s child if the worst happened.  Then he saw my mother, whom he had met those many years ago when the crews trained together across Florida, Nebraska and Texas as they moved toward combat. They knew each other immediately, and both reached out their hands to each other.  They didn’t say anything for a few moments, but both of their eyes were glistening.  The silent flood of emotions was almost palpable.

They talked at the kitchen table for hours, Gil and I mostly listening. There were details and subtext to the story that we had never heard.  Names of crewmen, the nature of that final mission, did this person survive, where does he live now? And then both Art and my mother did something extraordinary. They each produced a letter and gave it to each other. My mother’s letter was from Art, expressing his sorrow and relating the circumstances of that final deadly flight, as he knew them, and what the wartime censors would allow. It was written in 1945 in his classic cursive style. The letter Art produced was from my mother, dated a few weeks later, thanking him for letting her know the circumstances of Gil’s death. I could see the familiar feminine cursive style of her writing and the fragile paper and envelope. Both letters had the word “free” where a stamp should have been. The postal service didn’t charge for letters to servicemen during the war.

We began to wrap things up when Art made one final comment that still haunted him and in a way maybe haunted all of us. His gaze shifted to some unknown point in the distance and he said” I’ll never understand how a fine young man like Gil lost his life so many years ago, and I got to live out the rest of mine.”

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Handwritten letters are rare now, at least as a common means of communicating. If I see one in my mail, I tend to open it first, I am that curious. We exist in a transient trivial world of texts, emails, Twitter feeds, and Facebook postings. Our written communications seldom outlive a single day.

The careful crafting of sentences and paragraphs and the framing of a message has fallen into disuse, as has the Palmer Method of cursive writing. Keyboarding, not handwriting is taught today in schools. But I still marvel at the enduring power of those two letters, the emotional commitment it must have taken to write them, and how, once written, they attained great value, something to be kept throughout the years.

Those letters that were exchanged that day somehow closed the circle surrounding this tragedy. More than 50 years they had both kept those letters, and neither could have foreseen a day such as this. Somehow, when they made their way back to their original authors, it was as if we could finally lay 1LT Gilbert J. Finn to rest.  During the ride home I don’t think anyone said a word; we were each in a private, personal place. A place of remembrance, a place of solemn pride, maybe, at last, a place of peace.

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