Us Official Photographs

B-29 Superfort over Saipan Island

On 27 February 1945 a group of men on the shore of Saipan Island, Marianas Group, watched a Boeing B-29 "Superfort" heading towards them. It was obviously in trouble and losing altitude fast. The pilot was trying to make a runway near the shore. He came close -- heartbreakingly close -- when two sputtering engines quit and nosed into the sea. The men on the beach went into action. Some waded and swam to the wreck, while others gave the alarm summoning ambulances and crash crews. Soon there were dozens of men swarming around the plane. Crewmen, some of them injured, were freed from the Superfort and carried ashore in liferafts. But despite the frantic efforts of the men in the water to chop open the submerged nose of the plane, three men were trapped and died in the crash, their bodies were recovered and later the wrecked plane was hauled to the shore it had just failed to reach.