Hubert L Kordsmeier (1920-1945) - Find A Grave Memorial

KIA: 10 March 1945

APC Pilot: O-761967Hubert L Kordsmeier 2Lt ARK 10-3-1945 B-29 #44-69747 T-SQ-15

Second Lieutenant Hubert L. Kordsmeier was airplane commander of the Boeing B-29A Superfortress serial #44-69747 tail code T-SQUARE-15 of the 498th Bombardment Group flying from Saipan. For reasons that may remain forever a mystery, shortly after depositing their firebombs on a burning Tokyo, three B-29s from three different bomb groups—two from Guam and one from Saipan—flew into the same mountain in Japan at about the same time. Kordsmeier’s was first. It was 3:40 am, Chamorro Standard time, March 10, 1945.

NOTE: When General LeMay took command of XXI Bomber Command, he changed the tactics from high-altitude fragmentation bombing to low-altitude incendiary bombings. During the night of 9-10 March 1945, a total of 334 B-29 bombers took off for Operation MEETINGHOUSE to fire-bomb Tokyo. Fifteen square miles of the Tokyo urban area are burned out; an estimated 83,793 Japanese are killed and 40,918 wounded. T-SQ-15 was one of the fourteen B-29 Superforts lost.