HAROLD HANKE
Age: 90
Born: Sept. 25, 1919
Hometown: Lake View, Iowa
Residence: Palm Desert and Atlantic, Iowa
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 20th Air Force; 505th Bombardment Group; 484th Bombardment Squadron
Years served: 1943-1945
Rank: Staff sergeant
Family: Wife Dee; three children, Steve Hanke of Baltimore, Md., Scott Underwood of Des Moines, Iowa and Curt Underwood of Newton, Iowa; four grandchildren; five great-grandchildren
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Richard Zuber of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at www.mydesert.com/WWII
More
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Harold Hanke was one of the first airmen to survey the damage after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Based in the Northern Marianas island of Tinian in the waning days of World War II, Hanke observed preparations for the atomic bombs.
He had no idea what he was actually watching at the time.
“As you went to the airport, there was a fenced-in area like a prison,” he said. “It was two blocks square.”
The area was bustling with activity. In the middle of the action sat a B-29 bomber.
“The people (working) in that area were confined with that B-29,” he said.
Barracks were set up within the enclosure. Those working on the project weren't allowed to leave the area, he said.
“They would bring food to the front gate,” Hanke said.
Later, he found out they were building the belly of an airplane big enough to load the atomic bomb.
“At the time, we didn't know that was happening,” he said. “Nobody knew that. Then one day, it was gone. Everyone asked where it had gone. We were told, ‘It went to Hiroshima to drop the atomic bomb.'”
Hanke, a B-29 flight engineer, departed for his overseas assignment from San Francisco in a B-29 — one of three in a squadron flying across the Pacific to Tinian.
“When we left San Francisco, the captain said, ‘Go look back at the Golden Gate Bridge, because you might not see it again,'” Hanke said. “It was scary. You got tears in your eyes looking at it.”
Soon after the squadron arrived on Tinian, one of the bombers and its crew were called out to bomb Tokyo.
“The next morning, a GI truck came and took their personal belongings,” Hanke said.
The men asked what happened and were only told that “They won't be coming back.”
“They were either shot down or lost at sea,” he said.
A second crew was called out and a GI truck came by to pick up that crew's personal effects.
“Out of the three crews (that flew over together) we were the only one left,” Hanke said.
Just getting off the island was dangerous.
The heavy, long-range bombers took off from runways high above the ocean.
“You had to have all the power you could because the airplane would sink low,” after takeoff, Hanke said.
A Navy ship was stationed nearby in case a bomber dropped into the sea.
“It was infested with sharks,” he said. “The Navy sat out there and immediately picked up the men.”
Hanke, stationed directly behind the co-pilot, made seven observation and bombing missions.
One time when the bomber was on its way back from an observation mission, it ran headlong into a typhoon.
In the heart of the typhoon the winds were so strong, “It looked like a suds barrel in a washing machine,” he said.
Another time, when the bomber ran into head winds and there was a real threat of running out of fuel, the pilot put the plane into a slight descent.
“We didn't use as much gas (in a descent) and we came into Tinian in good order,” Hanke said. “We pulled into the runway and the gas people came out.”
After one of the men checked the fuel level in the gas tank, the crew was told just how close they'd come to running out.
“He said, ‘The stick said you're out of gas,'” Hanke said. “We were very fortunate to come home.”
Their plane was called to go over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to take photographs the day after the cities were bombed, he said.
A professional photographer flew with the crew.
“Completely destroyed,” he said. “Just a smoldering ruins of both cities.”
