After the islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were secured by the Marines, the US Navy Seabees went into a building frenzy to build their airstrips on the newly captured islands. The purpose of securing these islands were to begin a full-scale bombing of the Japanese homeland. These islands were close enough to Japan so that the heavy bombers could reach their target and return safely. As soon as the fields were operational, Pensacolian 2nd Lt. Ronald Hixon Eddins landed his B-29 bomber with the US Army Air Corps 9th Bomb Group. His group had been assigned to the 313th Bomb Wing of the 20th Air Force. Ronald was born on September 29, 1923 in Pensacola, Florida and was a graduate of the Pensacola High School class of 1942.
His nickname was “Hardtack” and he was originally supposed to graduate in the class of 1941, but on his way home from football practice his car was hit by a drunken sailor resulting in a broken leg. The injury put him one year behind his graduation class. Several months after graduation Ronald married Helen Lee Price Mondean on October 31, 1942 in Pensacola, Florida. By the time he was shipped overseas, the young couple had rented a house at Rt. 3 Box 494A where he left his wife and one-year old daughter Diane and headed off to war.
Ronald took off from the Tinian airbase and bombed the Japanese islands night and day. However, in March 1945 he and his fellow pilots began flying night missions against the Shimonoseki Straits. There they began dropping anti-shipping mines to block the Shimonoseki Straits from any enemy vessels coming into or out of the area. These missions were suspended in April so that the huge bombers could redirect their devastation on the Japanese aircraft plants. Another target was the Kyushu airfields that were launching Kamikaze attacks against the American Navy on station off of Okinawa where his brother Vernon (Pensacola High Class of 1943) was fighting with the 3rd Marine Division.
By May 18th, Ronald and the others were ordered to resume their mine-laying operations. He would fly over the targets at night at an altitude of 5,500 feet and drop their mines over the Shimonoseki Straits and the harbors on Kyushu and the northwest coast of Honshu. These areas were one of the most heavily-defended targets in Japan.
On May 20th Ronald and his crew revved up their engines and thrust their throttles all the way forward as they raced down the Tinian runway. But for whatever reason, the veteran of fourteen bombing missions suddenly lost altitude and crashed on takeoff and was killed instantly. He was buried in the Tinian Cemetery until after the war whereby his parents had his body shipped back to Pensacola in 1949 and interred in the Bayview Cemetery.
Ronald Hixon Eddins as a young boy in Pensacola
Pensacola High School Class of 1942
2nd Lt. Ronald Hixon Eddins,
B-29 Pilot, US Army Air Corps
Pensacola News Journal 1949
Grave of Lt. Ronald Hixon Eddins, KIA Tinian, USAAC, Bayview Cemetery