18th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Korea

FLIGHT from REALITY - Color it Heavenly

Clark Field, P.I. April, 1951

During the 1950's, Air Force Regulations required each pilot to maintain night flying proficiency by logging a minimum of ten hours of night flight each six months ...never fewer than twenty hours per year.

The airplanes, even in those days, flew just as smoothly in the darkness as they did in the daylight; the engines really couldn't tell whether the sun or the moon was shining; if the pilot was in the clouds and flying on instruments or in clear and blue ...they would just drone on and on, doing exactly as they were supposed to do ...usually.

However, since the pilot cannot see as well outside the airplane in the darkness ...can't see the horizon to know when his wings are level, and whether he's climbing or diving, it is necessary to continually fly by instruments at night to maintain the desired flight path. Then too, in the very rare event of an engine malfunction, there was always the little 'itch' in the back of our minds that we would not be able to see the ground for a forced landing, making it necessary to 'bail out', landing in our parachutes 'we would know not where' ...in the darkness.

So, all in all, most of we fighter pilots ...in those pre-computerized, auto-pilot days, did not especially relish the prospects of flying single-engine fighter planes at night, and would often go out of our way to satisfy the Air Force requirements as painlessly as possible. This we could do by:

Choose a night with a full moon and no clouds; or, take-off as early as possible after official sunset, while there was still some twilight remaining for a visual take-off, or, take-off very early in the morning, before dawn, and remain airborne until it became light enough to land visually.

Seldom ..if we could help it, on our practice flights, did we ever purposely, make both our take-offs and landings during dark, moonless nights. Those little idiosyncrasies, of course, did not apply to our combat flying, or other official mission requirements ...only when we were out flying just for practice.

One evening, at Clark Field while temporarily back from the air war in Korea during the early spring of 1951, after Captain Harlan Ball and I had been sitting Combat Alert in our Lockheed F-80C Shooting Star jet fighters, throughout an especially long and very boring afternoon, we arranged for Radar Control to "Scramble" us ...order us into the air just about sundown, for we knew there was to be a full moon that night, and it would be a good relaxing time to get in some much-needed night practice.

We took off toward the north, in close two-ship formation at dusk, just as the setting sun began to sink into the western horizon, and climbed steadily northward toward Laoag, on the far northern tip of Luzon.

I was flying Harlan's right wing, carefully flying in the silhouette of his airplane to shield my eyes from the great, large bright orange ball of sun which seemed to hang lazily suspended just on the horizon over the China Sea as we continued our climb into the clear tropical sky. The graceful lines of his F-80 fuselage separated, yet blended the fantastic colors of the sunset into a truly memorable, wonderful sight. Above his clear plexiglas canopy the sky was a brilliant, ever-deepening blue with traces of golden yellow on a few lacy cloud layers and, reflecting on the plane's underside, the flaming rich golden glow from the sun played on heavier cloud layers, turning them into fluffy blankets which ranged from deep purple, all the way thru the spectrum to brilliant yellow.

Radiating beyond that great, wonderful mass of beauty, the individual sparkling rays of the sun spread their fingers over the greens and browns of the valleys far below, and those, too, occasionally reflected off of the shiny aluminum underside of his airplane ...like a heavenly artist mixing his colors for a great, spiritual masterpiece.

As we climbed steadily toward the north, levelling off finally, at 30,000 feet, I realized that I had been privileged to revel in that beautiful once-in-a-lifetime scene for at least twenty glorious minutes ...never remaining the same ...the colors and patterns constantly changing, as though the Lord was giving me a brief preview of the beauties to be found in heaven...!

When the sun reluctantly slipped below the horizon, and the waters of the China Sea had at last changed from gold to a deep, irridescent purple, the western sky gradually lost it's majestic glow ...like a beautiful woman wandering gracefully into her maturing years, and becoming ever more charming, in such a way that no one could really notice, or could remember just when the youthful beauty had changed to charming grace.

Only then did I detach my fascinated gaze from the fading vision in the west and force myself to look briefly into the darkened cockpit, illuminated only by the little red-colored 'eyelid lights' over each instrument, looking inside just long enough to tune my radio compass receiver to a commercial Manila radio transmitter. The strongest and clearest signal I was able to tune was emanating from a station playing organ music, a pre-Easter broadcast of the Benediction.

As we had pre-planned before leaving the ground, Harlan Ball started a wide, gentle turn toward the west, while I started my turn toward the east ...we were ready to proceed our separate ways rather than continue the tedium of close night formation flight; we would meet after landing, following another hour of individual night flying practice.

While I continued my turn, I glanced out to the east, and could hardly believe my eyes ...for there, already above the haze layer, was a gigantic, brilliant moon, showing with sacramental brightness against the backdrop of the clear, deep-blue sky.

I was sure that I must be on the lower steps of the portals of heaven!

It simply was not possible for beauty such as that to be penetrating the thick hide of hate, distrust and death which I had so recently been experiencing on earth !!

The organ music and the choir... which I had so found hard to believe was coming from my radio headset, rather than from the supernatural 'beyond', stopped abruptly as the moon rose higher. But by then it did not matter, for the moon seemed to have gradually shrunk to it's 'usual' size, and seemed to have lost many of it's sacred properties.

To earthbound creatures, it was, no doubt, still a lovely sight ...but to me, who had just been privileged to experience not one, but two glorious spiritual pageants in less than thirty minutes... the moon by then appeared, small, dull and lifeless.

My mind was not on my work during the rest of the flight; I hardly noticed or remembered the sequence of switching fuel tanks as each ran dry.

I faintly recall the shocking sensation I felt when the bright red warning light came on in the cockpit, telling me that I was on my last remaining tank of fuel, and had best head quickly for home.

Letting down from thirty thousand feet toward the Clark Field landing pattern, diving rapidly at a 6000 feet per minute rate of descent, and 400 miles per hour to save as much of my remaining fuel as possible, I could feel the warm, humid '...muggy' atmosphere replacing the clean, fresh and cool, air-conditioned air of the higher altitudes, and when my wheels finally touched down on the pavement at Clark... I felt like a person walking from a beautiful, aromatic flower garden into a stinking garbage dump ...the sting of reality.

I was back in the real world once again.

To this day, almost fifty years later, as I try to describe that special flight, I still have wonderful, vivid pictures in my mind's eye of the beautiful sights of that early Spring evening over northern Luzon in the Philippine Islands, and I am convinced now, as I was then, that ...

...every once in awhile the Lord will take compassion on us, long-suffering mortals, when life seems most dreary and depressing, and will present us with a totally different view... just to show us that things really can be better!

As I walked toward the dim yellow lights of our Squadron Operations Office with my heavy parachute and flight gear slung over my shoulder, I felt good, better than I'd felt in months. And the war in the North seemed SO far away...!

Within two short weeks I was back in Korea flying combat missions once again... bombing, strafing and killing.

I was ever-so-thankful for my very brief respite outside of earthly reality.

Duane E. 'Bud' Biteman,
Lt. Col, USAF, Ret
‘...One of those Old, Bold Fighter Pilots’
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