Albert E. Knight, South Jordan, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, June 21, 2004: Saving the Legacy tape no. 664

Page 24

LB RT E. KNI HT J 21 2004 d gr turn and go right back, back to Guam. Well, Guam wa n t ry big and it wa awfully black. I didn't know whether I could even find Guam. o I decid d t fly n but it didn't get any better. I didn't fly any more than a hundred feet above the water becau it was so black. As a matter of fact, there was a merchant ship right down there [points down] and the mast wasn't very far below. I learned quickly why they called our form of navigation dead reckoning. It was because you'd better "reckon" properly (laughs). So I stayed on course. There was a heavy wind and, oh, boy, right when I thought I should see it, there was the little green shoreline of Tinian. Then from Tinian to Saipan was a piece of cake. BEC: But it was just black and stormy the whole way? ALB: The whole way. I found out later that the only other plane that made that flight that day made it on radar and it wasn't that good. I was truly blessed. The more I think about it, the more scared I get. That was dumb. [phone rings, tape off, tape on] ALB: I was on Saipan when the first B-29s came out to start hitting Japan with all their firebombs and stuff. I didn't see how they could ever build a bigger airplane, but they have. So they made another airstrip parallel to the old one. It was down over a hill. It was what they called the transient strip. It was for our airplanes. We moved our airplanes down there and other lesser planes were down there, planes other than B-29s. One day, at high noon, we were working on the Avenger, the torpedo bomber. We were having a little engine problem. I was sitting in the cockpit and two crewmen were on the cowling just behind the propeller out there. We heard a bullet hit the runway and go, "Ping!" "Oh, some Marine took a shot at something." Then we heard a bunch of 24