Kenneth M. (“Windy”) Mansir was born on August 23, 1922 to Harry Troop Mansir and Mabel Iva Chapman of Pittston, Maine, about eight miles southeast of Augusta. The 1930 Census shows Ken living with both parents and an older and a younger brother in a rented house on Kinderhook Street in Randolph, Maine. Harry Mansir was working in 1930 at a shoe factory, probably across the Kennebec River in Gardiner.[1]

Harry and Mabel divorced at some point in the late 1930s. The 1940 Census shows Mabel, marital status “divorced”, living in a rented house at 14 Maple Street in Randolph with her sons Charles (19), Ken (17) and Everett (15). The census was taken in April, so Ken and Everett were still in school at Gardiner High, but Charles had graduated and was working in what appears to have been a part-time job as a post office clerk, working 28 weeks and earning $700 in 1939. Mabel was keeping house but also working as a housekeeper for a private family, earning $100 in 1939 for twenty weeks of work.[2]

Ken completed all four years of Gardiner High School, graduating in 1940. He played on the school’s hockey, football and baseball teams, and was named the captain of the baseball team in his senior year.[3] Ken and his brother Everett (“Red”) played together on the school’s 1940 hockey team, with Ken at left wing and Red at center. “These lads,” one local newspaper reported, “are heralded as one of the finest youthful forward lines performers seen in this section in several years.”[4]

After graduating from high school in the summer of 1940, Ken took a job with the Gardiner Shoe Factory (along with seven of his classmates),[5] but a local newspaper article later reported that before joining the service in 1942 he was working as a shipfitter at the Bath shipworks.[6]

On October 26, 1942, at the age of 20, Ken went to Portland, Maine and enlisted in the Army. His civilian occupation at the time was “Semiskilled…fabrication of metal products”, which sounds more like a shipfitter’s job than a job in a shoe factory.[7] His enlistment record does not specify his branch of service, but it appears that he volunteered for the Army Air Forces and was accepted.

Ken completed Flexible Gunnery School at Ft. Myers, Florida in November 1943—about a year after he enlisted.[8] Gunnery training did not take anything close to a year to complete (the usual duration was six weeks), so it is clear that Ken’s first year of service would have included about ten months of other types of training as well. That is especially so because Ken ended up serving as a radar operator—a position that required considerable specialized training. One B-29 radar operator who deployed overseas at about the same time as Ken had nine months of other training before beginning Gunnery School (Basic Training, Radio Training and Radar Training) and ten or eleven months of training after completing Gunnery School (more Radar and miscellaneous training and Flight Crew Training) for a total of about twenty-two months of training between enlistment and overseas deployment.[9] We can safely assume that Ken’s experience was similar in type and length.

Upon completing Gunnery School, Ken would have received his gunner’s wings and a promotion to Sergeant. His stateside training concluded in October 1944 with several months of combat crew training at Pratt Army Airfield, north of Pratt, Kansas, as a member of the 20th Air Force’s newly-formed 497th Bombardment Group.[10] By then, he had been promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant.

At Pratt Field S/SGT Mansir was assigned to the crew of Aircraft 42-24598, a B-29 Superfortress piloted by CAPT Walter R. (“Waddy”) Young and nicknamed Waddy’s Wagon in honor of its pilot. CAPT Young had been an All-American football player and a Big Six champion wrestler at Oklahoma University, after which he played professional football for two seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National Football League.

In January 1941 Young enlisted in the Army Air Forces, and between June and December 1943 he completed 25 bombing missions over Europe in B-24s before returning to the States for re-assignment. In early 1944 he was assigned to the 497th Bombardment Group, and after more than seven months of organization and training at Pratt Field, the 497th began to deploy to its overseas base in the Pacific—Isley Field on Saipan in the Mariana Islands. The Group’s first echelon of combat B-29s began to arrive at Isley Field in October 1944.

S/SGT Mansir’s primary assignment was as the Radar Operator on Waddy’s Wagon, which was part of the 869th Bombardment Squadron of the 497th Bomb Group. The crew’s second combat flight, on November 24, 1944, was historic—Waddy’s Wagon was one of the B-29s that participated in the first Superfortress bombing mission over Tokyo and was the first to return from the mission.

The crew’s sixth mission took place on January 9, 1945. Its objective was the Nakajima Aircraft Engine Factory at Musashino, just outside Tokyo. Waddy’s Wagon was one of 72 B-29s that participated in the mission. High winds en route to the target scattered the bomber formation, leaving some isolated aircraft susceptible to Japanese fighter attack. Six of the aircraft on the mission were lost, each with all eleven crew members aboard, for a total of 66 casualties. Waddy’s Wagon was one of the lost aircraft.

Details on the loss of Waddy’s Wagon are sparse and in some respects inconsistent. The few details that have survived are summarized in a companion story to this one, also posted under “Stories”, which bears the title “The Loss of Waddy’s Wagon”. Essentially, it appears that after dropping bombs over the target and beginning to return to base, CAPT Young observed that another B-29 in the formation had lost an engine and was under attack by a large number of Japanese fighters. CAPT Young dropped down to provide protection to the threatened aircraft. It was a courageous decision, but a fatal one for Waddy’s Wagon and its crew. Both B-29s were last observed heading into the clouds with Japanese fighters in pursuit, and no trace of either aircraft or its crew was ever found.

All members of the Waddy’s Wagon crew were initially listed as Missing in Action, but in accordance with standard War Department procedure, when no evidence of their survival was found after a full year, a Finding of Death was made for each of them as of January 10, 1946.

The names of S/SGT Kenneth Mansir and his fellow crew members are among the names inscribed in the stone tablets of the Honolulu Memorial within the National Cemetery of the Pacific to honor the more than 18,000 Americans missing or lost at sea in the Pacific during World War 2.

Military awards received by S/SGT Mansir were the Purple Heart and the Air Medal.

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This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen member's name and read his/her story.

[1] 1930 United States Census (Randolph, ME; Harry Mansir household), www.ancestry.com.

[2] 1940 United States Census (Randolph, ME; Harry Mansir household), www.ancestry.com.

[3] The Quill, Gardiner High School Yearbooks (1938-1940).

[4] “High School Puck Squad Has Four Sets of Brothers”, Kennebec Journal (Feb. 12, 1940), page 4.

[5] The Quill, Gardiner High School Yearbook (1941) (reporting on members of the class of 1940).

[6] “Gunnery Graduate”, Kennebec Journal (Nov. 1, 1943), page 4 (Sgt. Mansir was “a shipfitter in Bath” before enlisting.) www.newspapers.com .

[7] Enlistment Record of Kenneth M. Mansir, US, WWII Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946, www.fold3.com.

[8] “Gunnery Graduate”, Kennebec Journal (Nov. 1, 1943), page 4, www.newspapers.com .

[9] Tribute to Robert D. Cookson, Sr. and B-29ers of the Marianas: Uncle Bob Training/Becoming Radar Operator www.cooksontributeb29.com/uncle-bob-trainingbecoming-radar-operator.html (accessed June 6, 2024).

[10] “Kenneth M. Mansir”, story added by SePennartz to www.fold3.com (S/SGT Mansir underwent B-29 aircraft transition and combat crew training at Pratt Army Air Field, Kansas). Mr. Pennartz has written and posted to www.fold3.com stories on most of the members of the Waddy’s Wagon crew.

S/SGT Kenneth M. Mansir