August 1946

The bomber force in New Mexico had been stable for a year now. For one year they had trained and none of them had been transferred. Only six new crews had been brought in, all to replace crews that had been killed in accidents or transferred out with illnesses or hardships. And all of the replacements were from senior crews. Nobody had ever seen such an elite unit of experienced men. This not only included the pilots but the remainder of the crews including the ground and support crews. It was as thought they were isolated from the rest of the Army. They were on rosters at various bases around the country but they were never at home. Incoming mail was addressed to that base and transferred to them. Outgoing mail was sent to their supposed base to be mailed. All mail was carefully censored by two people before it left the base. The two men censoring the mail were Colonels.

In late August the crews were called together. They would be making a special flight this week. They would fly to Oregon and pick up new planes, the B-17SG. The tanker pilots would get the KC-17SG’s. They would leave their B-17SF’s at the plant. The maintenance people spent most of the week clearing up all maintenance on the planes and re-writing the records to reflect the planes being anywhere but where they were. Fictitious pilots signed and back-dated the records. They realized that the x’s were causing more concern and risk. The originals were stored on the base. They would be destroyed later. The level of secrecy had just gone up. For now the bases in New Mexico could not exist and the pilots could not exist as having ever been there, even on the maintenance record of an aircraft.

The planes were exchanged and the crews were given two weeks to learn the new planes and shake out the bugs. Then the orders were cut. The planes would proceed to Midway.

September 1946

The new force with the B-17SG’s arrived at Midway. Within a week they flew a bombing raid over the islands dropping small incendiaries. The raid was opposed by new fighters that climbed up to intercept them. These new fighters had appeared late in July, they were able to climb to the altitude to challenge the B-17SF but couldn’t sustain the altitude. They would get off one gun burst and then fall away. They did no damage to the bombers, all returned to their base safely. The bombers were able to shoot down several of them.