Veterans' Day is a fitting time to recall and record remembrances of military service. Many of my memories of World War II concern the B-29 Superfortress, a major factor in ending the war in the Pacific. The B-29 was a superb aircraft and an entirely new bomber, different from any previous aircraft. With its higher speed, pressurized crew compartment and greater endurance, the B-29 could fly at higher altitudes than any other WWII bomber.

The island of Iwo Jima was an important part of B-29 operations. Situated halfway between the Mariana Islands and Japan, Iwo Jima served as a refuge for planes that could not make it back to the home base.

While in Manila, and living in barracks that only weeks before had been occupied by Japanese staff officers, I received urgent orders to report to the Mariana Islands to prepare the communications for the planned invasion of Japan. Within 24 hours, I was on a plane headed for the island of Guam in the Marianas.

On Aug. 6, 1945, a B-29, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb, named Little Boy, on Hiroshima. The news struck me like a thunderbolt. The Enola Gay had lifted off from the island of Tinian where I had been a short time before.

Enola Gay was named for the pilot's mother. The second atomic bomb, called Fat Man, was carried by another B-29, Bock's Car, named for the pilot, Fred Bock, whom I had met.

Thankfully, Japan surrendered, averting an invasion, and I returned to college, to the same classrooms I had left three years earlier, to continue my engineering studies.

George Rand