World War II veteran navigator to fly again

“They removed the blindfold and told me to find my way home,” Wakefield recalled Monday, 73 years later from his Goshen home. “I was a celestial navigator and used the stars to head home. It took me about four hours, I think."
A World War II veteran, Wakefield, 94, was the navigator on Boeing B-29, based in Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Wakefield said his crew completed between 25 to 32 missions against Japan. 
The veteran, now a resident at The Maples at Waterford Crossing in Goshen, described sitting left of the pilot with a little desk in front of him during their missions in the B-29 bomber.
“We had a fantastic crew. The pilot was calm and easy-going. We left at dawn (on bombing missions) so we couldn’t be seen and I used star constellations while flying over water, because there was no visible land,” Wakefield said. “We ... we would be tired at the end of a mission. They (a bombing mission) usually averaged 13 hours so we got pretty tired. We got to rest and get the planes ready between missions on the island. It almost seemed like a southern vacation, sometimes, because of the sunshine.”
Wakefield said he opted to join the Army Air Corps after completing his second year of college in 1943.
“The air training sounded a lot better than the Army ground training,” he said, and attended navigation school in southern Texas. After the war, Wakefield returned to college and received a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He was married to his wife, Joan, until her death in 2014. The couple had three sons.
“It’s been a wonderful life and the Lord has been good to me,” Wakefield said.

Where are Guns from

The earliest projectiles were made of carved stone and early cannons were crude and dangerous to operate but proved to be effective against fortifications and had a powerful psychological effect against the enemy. Innovations in the firing mechanisms allowed infantry to carry these potent weapons into the battlefield which eventually led to a tactical advantage of infantry against mounted knights – effectively ending the armored knight as a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.A firearm is useless without gunpowder and so, it is worth noting when and where gunpowder originated. Though no one knows for certain exactly when and where gunpowder was invented, many believe it originated in China in the 9th Century A.D.

With the invention of gunpowder, armies began to seek ways of incorporating the new combustible powder into their arsenal of weapons. And so it was that sometime in the early fourteenth century, the first firearm was invented in Italy. Prior to the introduction of gunpowder on the battlefield, armies would rely on three types of armed combatants: foot infantry, missile infantry and cavalry. The foot infantry would usually consist of men at arms armed with swords, axes and pole arms, which were effective at close quarter fighting. Missile infantry troops would consist of men armed with sling-shots, bows and arrows and javelins, and were effective at a distance.

With the introduction of gunpowder, armies could now fire high velocity projectiles at greater distances with devastating effects.  The advancement of firearms technology in the 18th century created improvements from the matchlock arquebus to the flintlock musket and soon, professional armies drilled and disciplined in the use of these new firearms dominated the battlefield. The introduction of fixed ammunition which combined a primer, pre-measured charge and a projectile further revolutionized the use of guns in the battlefield. Fixed ammunition (bullets) and breach loading guns were widely used in the 1860s and allowed the shooter a greater degree of safety while increasing his rate of fire in the battlefield.

Further refinement of firearm technology led to the development of repeating rifles, made famous in the Old West. The introduction of the Gatling Gun during the American Civil War introduced greater carnage in the battlefield, which would ultimately lead to the machine guns of World War I and World War II. The development of the firearm and the improvements to this technology effectively changed battlefield tactics and strategies throughout history, always at the expense of the