18th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Korea

RACE TO THE YALU - Faltering Psyche

Korea, October, 1950

On l5 September, 1950, Our Army, Navy and Marines had conducted their audacious but highly successful seaborne invasion through the 18 foot tides at the Port of Inchon ...far, far behind the enemy's then-current front lines.

General MacArthur's Operations Plan to retake North Korea was based upon a two-pronged attack against the North: General Walker was to take his 8th Army north through Kaesong and Sariwon to approach Pyongyang, the capitol. General Almond with his Tenth Corps, was to pull off the line and load onto ships for a long sea voyage around the Korean peninsula, to assemble for a joint Army/Navy/Marine invasion, another amphibious landing ...onto the beaches of Wonsan ..."just like they used to do in the World War II movies!" He was then to strike inland to link up with Walker's 8th Army.

Many commanders were concerned about taking so many troops out of the fighting for the long, slow, three weeks sea voyage around Korea .... concerned because, after all, the enemy really had not yet given up...!

The landing at Wonsan was scheduled for October 20th, 1950. General Almond would not be convinced that it would be quicker, easier and safer to continue pushing east from Seoul, to take Wonsan by land; he felt that his troops were tired and would get a much-needed rest while aboard his "cruise ships", and would land refreshed and ready to finish the war at the heavily-defended WonsanHungnam perimeter. Besides, he reminded, an airborne invasion was planned to leapfrog the massed defenders south of Pyongyang (near Sariwon), and it was felt that the paratroops of the 101st Airborne could keep the Reds off balance for sufficient time for Almond to make his sea voyage.

But to no one's great surprise, the war would not wait for General Almond's slow moving 'cruise ships'. Wonsan was caaptured, instead, by a ground-based force of Republic of Korea (ROK) troops who had raced north up the coastal highway along the east coast.

Once the Wonsan airfield was secured by the ROK, Bob Hope and his troupe of Hollywood USO entertainers landed by air, and were standing on the beach to watch the "invasion force" when it finally came ashore from its long sea voyage around the entire Korean peninsula, compounded by delays by having to remove UN mines from the Wonsan harbor!

Because Marine air units traditionally worked exclusively with and for their own equivalent ground units, rather than sharing overall theater air responsibilities, our USAF area of interdiction responsibility was once again arbitrarily moved, by default, over to the west coast of the peninsula when the Marines moved into Wonsan.

On 11 and 12 October, 1950, I completed two very long interdiction missions into the triangular target area, Kaesong-Sinwonni-Pyongyang. During the mission on the 11th, I found and destroyed one of few remaining North Korean locomotives as it was heading north into the yards at Pyongyang and, on the afternoon of the 12th, I experienced a unique and frustrating encounter that has long-since stuck vividly in my memory.

While flying very low and slow through a little valley in the vicinity of Chorwon, searching and reconnoitering the roads northeast of Kaesong, we came upon a large body of troops marching north along a dirt road. Since we'd popped onto them unexpectedly, and hadn't had time to take aim for a possible strafing pass, I pulled up to make another run on them. As I made a tight circle, I looked back over my shoulder and could see that the troops were reforming their ranks into a large "U" and "N", presumably indicating they were "United Nations" troops.

I promptly called the rest of my flight over to take a look ...Bill Slater, Warren Kane and Jim Glessner. We noted that there were no extra men standing outside of the main group, as guards might, for example; they were all clustered within the big letters which occupied the full width of the road.

I interpreted their signal to indicate that they were probably UN prisoners of war being marched to the north; but it also could have been a very clever ruse by the North Koreans to keep us from firing on them. We discussed the pros and cons over the air amongst ourselves, and concluded that we were moving too fast to identify any off-color uniforms within the group, so we'd better play it safe and assume that they were UN prisoners and leave them alone. But, what could we do to help them?

There was absolutely nothing we could do, except report their position to Mellow Control, and hope that higher headquarters could figure out some way to rescue them. We never did hear any outcome from our 'prisoner' report.

However, a few days later, following the 101st Airborne paradrop near Pyongyang, a POW train was found stopped in a tunnel.. Seventy-five Prisoners of War had been executed, shot by their guards; 15 survived by feigning death. I could not help but wonder if any had been among the "UN" band we had seen just a few days earlier near Chorwon....

The 1st Cavalry Division attacked the capitol city of Pyongyang on Thursday, 19 October, following the very successful parachute landings by the 101st Airborne on the previous day.

Our Group, which at the time was comprised of just the 12th and 67th Fighter-Bomber Squadrons, had the task of trying to soften the drop area with repeated air strikes during the morning, prior to the scheduled afternoon para-drop. In the process, Spud Taylor was shot down near Sukchon, but was able to bail out successfully... only to be shot in his parachute while on the way down.

Danny Leake, our well-liked maintenance officer, was hit and falling out of control when he was forced to bail out. As he left the cockpit, the vertical stabilizer of the spinning Mustang hit him a fatal blow and, although he was able to pull his ripcord, he too was dead before he hit the ground.

We had been pounding the enemy, but getting our individual posteriors bashed for ninety-five straight days; we'd seen sixteen of our Group's pilots killed in that time, and another six severely injured during bail-outs. We were still living in tents without floors, and we had no heat in the cold October autumn in Korea. We were still having to walk a quarter of a mile to our outdoor four-hole latrine, 'still drawing water from a Lister-bag into our steel helmets for shaving and for 'bathing'...

I was tired; I had flown more than fifty low-altitude combat missions in those three months, many reaching hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory, to their most heavily-defended cities, all the while holding down a tedious, full-time ground job. I was weary, both mentally and physically... but I didn't fully realize just how weary I really was until the night of 23 October 1950.

After a long, very late-evening session in the Intelligence tent, when my fingers were so numb with the cold that I was hardly able to type the Group's activity report, I finally trudged wearily back to my tent and flopped, fully-clothed onto my cot. I was hungry, but felt too tired to make the trek to the Mess tent.

A short time later my friend and flight-mate, Lieutenant Jim Glessner, that night's Flight Operations Duty Officer, came into the cold tent, sat on the adjacent cot, and informed me that I had been selected to lead a flight of four F-51s on a pre-dawn take-off the following morning. It was to be a long mission, since we were to hit the Yalu River town of Pyoktong... 150 miles north of Pyongyang, right on the Manchurian border close to first light.

The Ops Order had me scheduled to take a recently-assigned Major... with but two Korea missions to his credit, along as my Element leader, and each of us would have a young, newly-assigned 2nd Lieutenant flying our wings... neither of which had yet flown any combat.

I could feel the blood draining from my face as Jim continued to read off the mission details: "airplane numbers, long-range fuel tanks, six rockets, take-off times, controller radio frequencies;"... I could no longer hear the monotone of the technical details of his briefing... I was no longer comprehending his words.

All of a sudden, the burdens... the grave responsibilities of my assigned position as Flight Leader for that particular flight, had finally reached overwhelming proportions in my mind. My nerves, already tensile-taut from three long, very hard months of rough combat flying, a tedious never-ending ground assignment and, probably, most of all, watching so many of my close friends being killed each day; I was just no longer mentally prepared to take on the added burden of responsibility for the lives of three inexperienced pilots on a long and dangerous mission into one of the most treacherous enemy areas remaining in the war... the rugged mountains along the Yalu River!

During the previous three weeks, because of a persistent head cold, I had flown but four missions, and had not been as far North as the Yalu River only once, several weeks prior. I was completely unfamiliar with the rugged mountainous terrain so deep within enemy territory.

"It was too much", I told Jim, "I just can't hack it."

And immediately I was terribly ashamed; I was admitting to myself and, without saying so, I was telling Jim Glessner that I was no longer the self-confident, macho and courageous All-American fighter pilot that we all considered ourselves to be.

I was suddenly very frightened for my own physical well-being, ...I was suddenly, after all those months of combat ... "scared" ... 'afraid for my life!

The feeling I experienced at that moment was far, far deeper than the sense of apprehension which I'd felt prior to my first two or three combat missions... I was experiencing, for the first time, some very serious, classical symptoms of "Combat Fatigue", and there was no one available to help me. It was a very uncomfortable, 'cage-rattling' feeling, and although I recognized it for what it was, I couldn't shake it!

But despite my deep personal misgivings, I was also able to recognize Glessner's dilemma in having to try to round up a replacement Flight Leader for the early morning mission on such short notice; I recovered my composure enough to tell him that I would fly Element Lead if he could find someone with recent experience in the Yalu River target area to fly Lead, 'Number One'.

When Jim walked out of the tent to see who he could find to lead the early morning flight, an extremely deep sense of shame swept over me. I was shocked to realize that I had, or might just as well have... admitted to a fellow officer that I was not in full control of my psyche; I was scared ...I was 'chicken'.

That was something that we 'macho' Fighter Jocks would never, ever admit to one another ...and seldom would we let ourselves even tell it to the Flight Surgeon. It was unbearable to contemplate, even to myself!!

In my eyes, as the Chinese would say, "I had just Lost Face".

I soon found myself thinking that I really had no more fortitude than the young Lieutenant at Taegu who had shot himself in the foot with his .45 pistol early in the War, to keep from having to fly combat. He was sent back to a hospital in Japan, then back to the 'States ...he was 'shamed, but he lived to tell how 'rough it was in Korea'.

As this was first being written, precisely 35 years after that depressing evening, I could still feel that same very vivid sense of panic that welled up within me when Jim Glessner triggered my subconscious fear, and the shame that persisted throughout all those years because in my mind, I thought I didn't have the courage ...the 'guts' to accept without conditions, the leadership of that October 24th, 1950, combat mission to the Yalu River.

I flew the Yalu River mission to Pyoktong the next morning. We took off before dawn, just as scheduled, but we had Lt. Colonel Gloesner from 18th Group Headquarters leading ... he'd been up to the same area just the day before, and was familiar with the terrain and the enemy's supply routes. It turned out to be a 'good' mission after all. The weather was marginally flyable, but passable; we got some good hits on several enemy trucks and troop concentrations, and the two new pilots made a good showing, getting some hits despite their lack of experience in flying low altitude attacks in narrow mountain canyons.

Once I got into the air, I felt better about myself, but that mission... my 55th of the war, was flown with an intensely conscious effort on my part; I worked very, very hard, violently 'jinxing' my airplane around the sky during the rocket and strafing attacks, trying my very best to keep anyone from getting a 'clean' shot at me as I dove and climbed away from multiple attacks.

Only now, so very very many years later, do I realize the 'why' of that the sense of inadequacy, the heavy burden that I carried deep within my subconscious throughout all of the subsequent fifteen remaining years of my active Air Force flying career. Perhaps now, after finally having admitted to those pent-up feelings of shame, I will be able at long last to regain... in my own eyes, the self-esteem, the 'face' that I lost that night in the chill of the cold, dirt-floored tent in Pusan, Korea on 23 October, 1950!

In November, the civil engineers gradually started to buil and install wood-plank floors in our tents and finally, equipped each with a quaint,inefficientpot-bellied oil burner stove device which would cook anything within three feet, but would leave the rest of the tent in it's normal sub-frigid condition. A shower facility of sorts was plumbed into the hot water system installed for the Mess tent and, if willing to stand long enough in line, with the cold wind blowing between the tent flaps, the sensation of a tepid shower felt pretty good. As the basic amenities were gradually acquired, and the community of 'Dogpatch' started to become almost livable, it also became apparent that the luxury was too good to last ... rumors began to circulate that we were slated to move once again, to another airfield, further north, to eliminate the long two-hour flight to the front lines.

First choice for our consideration was Wonsan, on the east coast, as we had been treating the airfield there with some foresight during our attacks in the area; we purposely avoided any bomb damage to the runways and taxi strips, 'even held off strafing the buildings ...with the idea that it might some day be our new home.

The second option, and not nearly as attractive as the first, was to move to the beaten and battered airstrip near Pyongyang, the much-attacked North Korean capitol ...the airfield that was covered with debris, with hardly a single complete building still standing.

It was easy to guess which site was selected for the 18th Group's next forward operations base.... Pyongyang East! The Marines beat us out of Wonsan!

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