18th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Korea

A ROCKY RETURN

August 1950

However depressed we seemed to be, as the North Korean enemy's noose drew tighter around our base at Taegu, there were still moments of humor ...or pathos, depending upon your point of view, when we could look on the brighter side, and enjoy a few moments of levity, or wonder at the sometimes odd turns of events.

Fortunately for us, not all of our Unsung Heroes were casualties.

During early August, 1950, an Army Engineers unit arrived at our Taegu air base to see if they couldn't do something to improve the rapidly deteriorating, rutted dirt airstrip, which was becoming downright dangerous because of the heavy usage and recurrent rains.

We couldn't close down our high priority war operations while they worked to repair the runway surface, of course, so they had big road graders working right alongside the swerving, unsteady Mustangs as we took off or returned from the combat areas. It was as unnerving for the pilots as it must have been for the grader operators and truck drivers ...knowing that a collision between us would create one helluva boom, and dig a great hole where we'd met.

But the repairs had to be completed, and quickly, if we were to continue using our one and only good airbase in central South Korea.

A very important factor of the project's plan included the hauling of tons upon tons of gravel, to be spread over the runway surface to stabilize the sandy surface, and to minimize interruption of our flying operations, the gravel was stacked in a long, neat 15 ft. high mound just alongside the take-off and landing path we were using for an airfield, and from where the Engineers planned to prepare the surface late one night, after we had ceased daylight operations, then quickly spread the gravel and install pierced-steel-planking (PSP) on the second night, so that none of our daytime combat flights would be delayed ... it was a good, well-concieved plan.

However, before the tall, one-mile long mound of gravel could be spread, a flight of four of our F-51 Mustangs, led by Captain Jim Peek, took off into the pre-dawn darkness for their early mission to the frontlines, to be over the target area by first light; they returned to the base at Taegu, landing toward the east ... just at the crack of dawn, at the very instant that the brilliant summer sun climbed above the horizon.

Squinting into the intensely bright sun, the flight leader, was not able to differentiate between the long, smoothly-tapered mound of gravel ... which looked just like the long, flat runway from the air, and the old, rutted, "real runway" running alongside.

He made a beautiful three-point landing ...'left gear, right gear and propeller, right onto the crest of the long, symmetrical pile of gravel.

Jim Peek was not physically injured, fortunately, because the soft gravel absorbed the shock of his crash landing. But the '51s landing gear and propeller were badly bent.

Watching the formation approaching for landing, I saw the great cloud of dust billow up from the leader's crash, and had an immediate premonition of what was about to happen next ... and it did!

Captain Gus Sonderman, Peek's wingman, flying the second plane in the landing formation, seeing the billowing cloud of dust, assumed it was just another normal, dusty landing on Taegu's sandy strip by the leader, so he planned his traffic pattern to land shorter... closer to the approach end of the runway, than Peek had, so that he could be on the ground before he ran into the typical dust blown up by the first aircraft.

Straining to look into the brilliant dawning sun he, too, wound up straddled atop the dusty gravel pile for another sudden-stop three-point landing as he tried to level a hundred yards of the great mound of gravel.. Gus also was uninjured as he nosed up and wrecked the prop and gear fairings.

Sensing that something was amiss, the other two pilots in the flight pulled up at the last instant, to circle the field while they decided where to land.

But we'd temporarily lost two of our precious airplanes without having a shot fired at them. Fortunately, the loose gravel had just bent the props and landing gear fairings; both ships were repairable, and their embarassed pilots were flying combat again the following day.

Within three days the gravel was spread and pierced steel planking (PSP) laid the length and width of Taegu's runway... a tremendous improvement to our combat operational capability.

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