Hog Wild in Korea:
A WWII Account of Skill, Fortitude and Resilience
Pictured under the damaged left wing and landing gear of the Z28 B-29
Hog Wild are ten members of the Queen Crew and three observers. The commissioned officers include aircraft commander/pilot Joe Queen (standing hatless), pilot/co-pilot Bob Rainey (standing wearing a ball cap), navigator Gene Harwood (standing second from the right) and bombardier Marion Sherrill (standing second from the left)
(Photo credit: frame from a 16mm film in the Robert Rainey collection)
Welcome to This Site
The Hog Wild Queen Crew and three observers were on an humanitarian mission to the Konan PoW camp in northern Korea when Russian-Yak fighters attacked and brought the Superfortress down to a crash landing on an airdrome in the vicinity of the camp on August 29, 1945. My father - Lt. Robert S. Rainey - was the co-pilot.
The following paper features my dad's training regimen leading up to and including the Queen Crew's deployment to Saipan and sorties over Japan that preceded the unexpected, extraordinary and near-calamitous Russian attack. In addition, an in-depth study is provided on the event and the theories that abound to explain it. Finally, the reader will get a glimpse of my father's role in post-war American society which was, like so many other World War II veterans, emblematic of the "Greatest Generation."
Enjoy!!
Pictured above is the Konan PoW Camp probably snapped from the same hill Australian prisoner of war Arthur Kerr witnessed the crash landing of the B-29 Hog Wild. (Photo credit: Australian War Memorial)
Australian prisoner of war Ron Mill (standing center) with "Konan officers and Russian liberators." Mill kept a journal of his PoW experiences, including an entry for August 29, 1945 on the crash landing of the B-29 Hog Wild. (Photo and caption credit: John Mill)
Senior British officer in the Konan PoW camp Captain George Kinlock (left) is pictured with Colonel Leslie Martin of the USAAF. Martin was the Chief Engineer of the Pacific Area and had arrived at the Hog Wild crash site in a C-46 aircraft whose mission was to rescue the Queen Crew and observers plus reclaim and return what was salvageable from the ransacked and unairworthy Superfortress. (Photo credit: John Mill)
Pictured in 1978 (left to right): Queen Crew bombardier Marion Sherrill, navigator Gene Harwood, co-pilot Bob Rainey, observer Barry Grant, ring gunner Cy Barnacki and aircraft commander Joe Queen. (Photo credit: Robert Rainey collection)
Robert Samuel Rainey
April 19, 1922- January 5, 2005.
(Photo credit: Robert Rainey collection)
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Gandhi