USGI sea stories

[Winger Ed.]

I was on youtube and watched a old film about the B-29's air war over Japan.

One of the first reasons taking Iwo Jima was so important was to provide a emergency landing strip
for shot up B-29s on their way back from bombing the home islands of Japan.

It reminded me of a guy I used to know who was there in the early days.
They'd gotten a workable run way built, but they were still getting mortared,
and you could hear gun fire from the Grunts still chasing Jap. soldiers around.

He told of one of the first damaged B-29s to land there on its way back 'home'---
Their other option was ditching along the 'picket' line near one of the ships & submarines on rescue duty, and lose the plane.

A shot up B-29 with several different sizes of holes all in it, chunks of its skin hanging off, came in, and set down.
About that time, mortars started landing,,,,,,,,, much closer than they were comfortable with.

The Aircraft Commander- probably a kid about 25 years old had just gotten out of the plane, followed by the crew.
He looked around, then told his crew to get back on board.
He said, "This place is worse than where we came from". They fired it back up and left.

[Winger Ed.]

A couple days ago a thread reminded me of something I've laughed about ever since.

A little background:
In the Marine Corps, there are two very small groups of people who wear stars as, or as part of their rank insignia.
General grade Officers, and enlisted Sergeant Majors. (see picture) And nobody messes around with either group.

A (a E-9) SgtMaj fills the billet of the senior enlisted person in any command where the specialists in their field-
such as Aviation Maintenance can rise to become a (E-9)Master Gunnery Sergeant.
As such, not that it matters much to them, but the most junior SgtMaj technically out ranks the most senior MGySgt.

So, in aviation, we rated a SgtMaj in every command from the smallest squadron, or Group, on up to the 'Wing' level.
On Okinawa, we had 9 on our air station--- that would have only had one or two SgtMajs if it had been populated by Grunts.
They were all Grunts, they all knew each other, hung out together, and had served together for at least 20 years and a couple of wars.

One Friday afternoon, there wasn't much going on in the Admin. Office.
Our SgtMaj stuck his head in the door, on his way out of the building, and told my room mate,
"Sergeant ______!,,,, there's a SgtMaj's meeting over at the Staff NCO club. I'm headed over there".

He replied, pretending to be all confused, and fumbling through some papers on his desk, said,
"Sir, when I wrote out the Plan of the Day, I didn't see anything about a Sergeant Major's meeting at the Staff Club".

Our SgtMaj,,, pretending to be mad, patted his shoulder and said,
"That star says there's a SgtMaj's meeting over at the Staff NCO club"!

I still chuckle when I remember that.