The original target had been Tokyo, but overcast skies caused the focus to shift when an airfield along the coast cleared just enough for the pilots to make out in the distance. The desire of McNabb’s unit VBF-87, Bomb Fighting Squadron 87, to see immediate results had been prompted, in part, by a premature celebration of the end of the war only a few days prior following news of the Potsdam Declaration.

“We stayed up half the night celebrating the end of the war,” he remembered. “I had hardly gotten to bed when my phone rang, ‘It’s 0230 McNabb, you’re down for the dawn strike.’ After that, we quit hoping. Maybe the war would end and maybe it wouldn’t, but we weren’t thinking about it on that flight. I had flown my 1,000th hour two days before in a raid on Japan, and it looked as if I would fly hundreds more before it was over.”

At high altitude, as the clouds thinned out, the squadron spotted their new objective — Choshi Airfield. McNabb was to target a revetment or parking area, which straining his eyes, he spotted as a tiny white rectangle near a runway. One by one, the planes peeled off on their mission.

“Nine. Ten. Eleven. Then it was my turn,” he said. “One last check — gun switches on, rockets on, sight on — Now! I banked sharply and pushed over into a screaming dive, speed building up — 200 knots, 250, 300 — the wind screamed around the cockpit — 400 knots, over 450 mph.

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