World War II Bases and Training THEN and NOW,
Volume II (includes Pratt Army Air Field)
By Lou Thole

All the links and stories to a man's past have died away. The papers are left to him from an era he only saw from the eyes of a youngster.There is an unanswered question to his family history in a missing airman. The fifty-seven years that have gone by without answers must end. We have the technology! B-29 The lost flight of 428 is the beginning of the question. Where did this plane go?
By T.C. Geary

Published by Newsfoto Publishing Company 1947,
by Col. Arnold T. Johnson, Group Commander.
Note: This is an out-of-print, hard-to-find book.
Donations of a copy to the Pratt County Historical Museum would be greatly appreciated.

The Battle of Kansas
November, 1945(Vol. 13 No. 8), pages 481 to 485.
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas State Historical Society.

The B-29 bomber was made to soar in thin, cold air, dropping its massive bomb load from heights so great that the crews might never see their targets through the clouds below. That was just fine with Ben Robertson, pilot in command of one of the big four engine bombers hammering Japan to its knees in a nonstop bombing campaign in the Pacific. When General LeMay ordered the B-29s to switch tactics from daylight, high-altitude bombing runs to nighttime, low-level runs, Ben’s attitude changed. What was once seen as simply dangerous--bombing Japan--now seemed a whole lot more like suicide.

By Gordon Bennett Robertson, Jr.

Air warfare was a decisive component of World War II, especially in western Europe and over Japan, where Allied bombers damaged 66 of the country's largest cities. The guts and glory of the bomber crews came, however, with a high casualty rate which had only improved marginally by the war's end. Descriptions of the Bombers' harrowing missions told from the firsthand perspective of their pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners create the immediacy of a single person's experience during one of America's most daring military expeditions. A short biography of each veteran accompanies these tales of typical and not-so-typical missions.

Compiled and Edited by Alan L. Griggs