Our crew arrived on Tinian May 15th, 1945.  I was scheduled out 4 days
later as a pilot for Capt Dale.  Our crew quickly made  14 more trips while
Maj, Schindler (our A.C.)and I squeezed in another before taking the crew with
us. We made our last trip July 9th to Sendai. On one of our last trips up into
the vicinity of Tokyo, we lost oil pressure on one engines just before we got
to the target.  Our crew unamimously urged us to drop our bombs on 3 engines,
so that they would get credit for the trip.  We elected to do that, so
feathered the engine and proceeded over the target.  Immediately after that ,
we slowed down to about 160 MPH. A B-29 fell in along side to escort us back to
Iwo.  They soon decided that we were flying too slow for them, so they went on
ahead.  Soon a second plane spotted us, and fell in along side.  It too decided
that we were flying too slow, and headed back home.  We called ahead to Iwo,
and told them we were coming in on 3 engines.  When we got there, we found that
2 planes were crashed on the runway, and 3 or 4 more damaged planes were
waiting to land after the runway was cleared.  After a hasty conference
with our top-notch engineer (Tech Sgt Homer Ashby) who assured us we could get
to Tinian if the Major and I continued to keep the plane "on the step".  The
Iwo Tower said not to try it! Our engineer continued nursing the 3 engines with
low RPM, and high inches of mercury.  As we slowly cruised on to Tinian, we
started getting calls "Are you still up"?  After several more of these calls,
we told them "Yes, and hold dinner."  Long after everyone else had landed, we
came in, almost 2 hours late.  The first thing they did was to "dip the
tanks".  Lo and behold, we had more gas left than anybody else in the
squadron!  The Major and I had been reading about what Lindberg has done with
some P-38s.  We thought it was a good idea!  Afer word of this feat got around,
we were selected for Lead Crew School back at Muroc. After less than 60 days,
we were headed for home with a few days leave after our tiring 7 1/2 weeks of
duty.  However, I feel like we set a few records. such as the number of flights
(16) in a 52 day period, and the number of flights by the crew (14)  without
missing a Primary Target, and without an abort.