Published April 2005
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20050418/EXTRAS02/504180330/0/search

Aspiring pharmacist left Hendersonville to become bombardier

By Jennie Jones Giles
A young man who grew up in the small town of Hendersonville and was studying to become a pharmacist found himself traveling halfway around the world to drop bombs on enemy targets.
Larry Feagin, 80, grew up in the Hyman Heights neighborhood of Hendersonville, the son of Eugene and Audella Knight Feagin. The 1941 graduate of Hendersonville High School had plans to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a pharmacist.
When the United States entered World War II, his plans changed. One year and a half after entering Auburn University, Feagin joined the Army Air Corps.
“A group of us from Henderson County left together,” Feagin said. “There’s an old photo of us down at the bus station waiting to leave.”
Feagin spent more than a year training at various bases in the United States to become a bombardier on a B-24 bomber.
While taking officer training classes in Galesburg, Ill, he met his future wife.
“My roommate at Knox University was supposed to take her to a dance at the country club,” Feagin said. “So I had to take Martha.”
Throughout the rest of the war the couple kept in touch through letters.
Feagin was assigned to the 5th Air Force, 380th Bombardment Group, 530th Bomb Squadron, as the bombardier in the B-24 Liberators.

Bombs fall in Pacific

Feagin was first sent to New Guinea, but the bomb group soon transferred to the Philippines in 1945. By February 1945, he was flying bombing missions out of Murtha Field, San Jose, on Mindoro Island in the Philippines.
The 380th Bomb Group transferred to the Philippines to give the Allied forces bomber support as they attempted to liberate the northern portion of the Philippines from the Japanese.
“I was a bombardier, dropping the bombs,” he said. “I flew in 25 missions and accumulated about 255 hours.
“Our missions were to hit military targets,” Feagin said. “We dropped bombs on oil fields, naval ports. We hit a power plant on Formosa.”
The longest missions they flew were to the oil fields in Borneo, Feagin said. The 380th Bomb Group made the longest bombing missions in World War II, according to military records, when they flew missions to the oil refineries at Balikpapan, Borneo. The B-24s were selected for use in the Pacific Theater of the war for their long-range capabilities and the heavy bomb load they could deliver.
“The B-24 is a long-range bomber,” he said. “We cruised more than 10 hours.”
Throughout the long hours, Feagin sat at his position underneath the nose of the plane.
As the planes approached the target, the pilot would take evasive action, Feagin said.
“Sometimes we would approach over the water,” he said. “As we approached the bomb site, the pilot would put the plane on automatic pilot.”
Normally, the bombers flew at about 10,000 feet, he said.
“It varied of course,” he said.
“Then the bomb bay doors would open as we centered over the target,” Feagin said. “We had to allow for wind draft, speed and other factors. Then the bombs dropped.”
As the plane cleared the target, the pilot would kick off automatic pilot and the crew flew back to the base.
“By the time I got over there all the Japanese air force was destroyed,” Feagin said. “We never had any interception from Japanese planes.”
What few planes the Japanese had left were being used on kamikaze missions, he said. The Japanese were flying their planes on the suicide missions into Allied naval ships.
“We would get hit with anti-aircraft artillery,” he said. “But the bombers I flew on were never seriously hit. The worst of it was over when I got there.
“There was a time or two when when we got hit and had to land and get another plane going,” he said. “But it was nothing of any consequence.”

Okinawa

From the Philippines, Feagin’s group moved to Okinawa in August 1945. Okinawa was the staging base for a planned bombing strike on Kure Naval Base in Japan, but bad weather intervened.
“We bombed an air base in Shanghai, China, instead,” he said.
In addition to Borneo and China, the 380th Bomb Group flew missions to Formosa (Taiwan) and Indo-China (Vietnam).
“I was on Okinawa about six to eight months,” Feagin said. “I took over the squadron’s laundry duty. One day I went down to make arrangements for the laundry, turned around to walk out and someone in the back of the tent said, ‘Hey, you.'”
Feagin turned around to see who was calling him and saw fellow Hendersonville native and future chief of police Bill Powers.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
After the surrender of Japan and on his way back to the United States, Feagin ran into his brother, Gene, who was a Navy medic serving with the Marines.
“He was on his way to China with the Marines,” he said.

Postwar

The first stop Feagin made when he left the Pacific Theater in 1946 was not to his home in Hendersonville, but to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“Coming home, I stopped and got off the train in Cedar Rapids and went down to see Martha,” he said.
His future wife, whom he married June 1947, was attending school at the University of Iowa. Feagin completed his pharmacist degree in 1950 from the University of Iowa.
The family moved to Hendersonville, where the couple raised six children and Feagin joined his brother and father at Jackson Pharmacy, across the street from the Hendersonville Post Office at the corner of Fourth Avenue West and Church Street. Today, the old post office is the Federal Building.
“Dad started the pharmacy there in the mid-1920s,” Feagin said. “Gene and I both studied pharmacy and the three of us worked together.”
Feagin entered the military service as a first lieutenant and was promoted to second lieutenant. He was a member of the Air Force Reserves for many years.