Wall's torpedo bomber may not be
as familiar as the European Theater bombers and fighter planes more often portrayed in movies. It was a three-man aircraft, 40 feet long, armed with two forward machine guns, another in a turret on top and another in a belly position. It also had room for rockets, a 1,000-pound torpedo or several bombs, some weighing 500 pounds.

Robert Sherrod provides an account of Marine fliers and thier aircraft in his 1952 book, History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II.

Wall sat in the aircraft's top turret, facing backward behind the cockpit. His pilot was Lt. M.L. "Rock" Johnson. Sgt. Robert E. "Red" Eldridge operated the radio and the belly gun.

The bomber, which was based on islands rather than on an aircraft carrier, never engaged enemy aircraft during its missions. Wall said he sometimes strafed buildings and enemy toops.

Some of the more harrowing missions involved dropping supplies by parachute. The bomber would come in on a supply run at 200 feet, flying at the relatively low speed of 110 to 120 knots, and unload food, ammunition, radio batteries, grenades, water and mortar shells to Marines fighting on the ground.

"You could basically see the Japanese shooting at you," Wall said.

Though it often negotiated small-arms fire and flak from anti-aircraft guns, the plane Wall flew in never was hit.

But during a July 11, 1945, raid on the Japanese mainland, a gasoline tank sway brace damaged the plane's left stabilizer, a device in the tail structure that helps keep an aircraft steady.

The long flight from their Okinawa base required the bombers to carry supplementary wing tanks for fuel. When the fuel was used, the tanks were dropped, and in the close-flying formation, a brace from another plane hit Wall's.

Nonetheless, the mission continued, with Wall keeping a wary eye on the stabilizer. The squadron's intended taget airfield was "socked in" -- obscured by weather -- but on the way back, a pilot spied another airfield and the bombers attacked that one instead.

Flak was heavy, Wall said, "close enough to scare the daylights out of me."

"That was my most memorable day."