By Cliff Radel
Enquirer staff writer

On this day, 59 years ago, history scrubbed the last bombing run of the City of Cincinnati.

Two members of the B-29's flight crew, pilot Bob Morris and navigator Mike Cunningham - assisted by their children - recently shared their memories of that day.

"It was my wife's birthday," Morris recalled. She was stateside. He was enduring a pre-flight briefing at an airbase on Guam.

The City of Cincinnati sat on a nearby runway. The Superfortress was ready for a 13-hour round trip. Ready to flatten enemy targets on Japan. Ready to dodge antiaircraft fire. Ready for war.

In mid-briefing, the bomber group's commander was suddenly called away. He returned with good news - all bombing runs were canceled - without explanation.

History supplied the answer. On Aug. 6, 1945, one B-29 , the Enola Gay, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, another B-29, Bockscar, deposited a second weapon of mass destruction on Nagasaki. World War II was over.

But the City of Cincinnati flew one last mission. "On Sept. 2, we dropped supplies to a prisoner of war camp on the far side of the island of Japan," said Cunningham, a graduate of Purcell High School, class of 1937, and the University of Cincinnati, 1951.

"On our way back, we flew over Tokyo Bay," he said. And history.

"We saw the surrender ceremonies," said the man responsible for giving the City of Cincinnati its bearings and its name.

"They named each ship in our bomb group after a city," said Cunningham, a self-employed mechanical engineer.

"They had some idea they'd get publicity out of it," said Morris. "The pilot would name the aircraft. The hometown would be proud."

"But, I didn't quite see it that way. My whole crew was involved," said the former pilot who retired from the Air Force with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Morris could have named the plane after his hometown, Punta Gorda, Fla. Instead, he had each member of his 11-man crew sign a dollar bill and drop it in a hat.

He pulled Cunningham's buck from the hat. The navigator got to name the bomber the City of Cincinnati.

One day, on a runway on Iwo Jima, the name on the plane's nose caught the eye of Milton Chase, WLW radio's roving war correspondent. He bummed a ride, sat next to Cunningham and heard about a mission over Kawasaki.

"We were hit 50 times," Cunningham recalled.

"We took a shell in a fuel tank and lost an engine," Morris said.

Chase recorded an interview with Cunningham. The radio station sent a copy to the navigator's wife, Velma, in St. Bernard.

Nearly 60 years later, Cunningham's children put the interview on a CD.

The old navigator, now 85 and living outside Buffalo, N.Y., sent a copy to his old pilot, now 82 and living in a Memphis suburb.

Morris' son, Bob, sent the CD to the Enquirer. He wondered "if anyone would be interested in an old plane that's long gone."

But not forgotten.

Morris remembers putting the City of Cincinnati down on Guam for the last time. The engines ceased their deafening roar. "I left some of my hearing on that ship." And, he unbuckled his seat belt.

"I was so grateful to have lived through the war," he said. "I didn't want anything from that plane."

So, he never looked back.

Cunningham did.

Performing an about-face, he looked at the name on the nose and gave it a farewell salute.

The navigator never expected to see a piece of that plane again.

Years later, his brother-in-law called from an Air Force base in Arizona. World War II planes were being mothballed in the desert.

The City of Cincinnati had just landed.

Some time later, a package arrived in the mail. It held the plane's compass, the instrument that safely brought home the crew of the City of Cincinnati.

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E-mail cradel@enquirer.com