18th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Korea

"They Called It ‘Just A 'POLICE ACTION"

Taegu, Korea, July, 1950

Traumatic personal decisions precede an ‘inauspicious’ 1st day in the Korean war zone,

"WHAT," we have to ask, "PROMPTS A GUY TO DISREGARD THE AGE-OLD MILITARY ADVICE TO NEVER VOLUNTEER FOR ANYTHING OR TO STICK HIS NECK OUT TO ASK FOR COMBAT DUTY... to leave a relatively secure assignment, with his wife and family nearby, to fly off to some dusty, dirty, almost unknown little oriental country to kill ...or perhaps to be killed?"

For me, twenty-six year old, 1st. Lt. Duane E.’Bud’ Biteman, it was a quick decision .. but not necessarily an easy one.

In those few minutes of the meeting of 18th Fighter Group Hdqtrs staff on the evening of July 3rd, 1950, I was torn between my love and loyalty for Helen and Carol, who were with me there at Clark Field, P.I., getting ready to return to the United States after two long years in the Philippines, our worrying families back in the 'States ...and the very strong obligation I felt to support what our country was doing to carry out a promise to protect a weaker nation. I had the required professional qualifications: I was an experienced fighter pilot... experience gathered over the years at the taxpayer's expense, so that I might someday repay them by fighting on their behalf. On the other hand, could I live with myself, with my conscience, and the shame if I said "no" to a request for help?

On balance, Helen, Carol and the families on one side, the duty obligations on the other. I honestly believed that both causes could be served by sending my "gals" back to the safety of the United States, while I went north to Korea for a few months. In all likelihood, with the situation that existed at the time, I would probably get back to the U.S. sooner from Korea than I would from remaining as "home guard" at Clark Field.

I put my name on the list of volunteers, hoping that Helen would understand. We didn't have a chance to discuss it at the time, but I was sure that she approved ...with considerable apprehension and reluctance.

We were both very sorrowful at the prospect of yet another lengthy separation ...the third in our young five years of marriage; but we had known what we were letting ourselves in for when I had come back on active Air Force duty in 1948. And I knew that, at the time, we just happened to be in the "wrong place at the right time"!

Those of the Dallas Provisional Squadron whose families were at Clark Field were offered the option of having them return to the 'States immediately, or to remain in their present quarters on Clark Air Force Base. Several of the officers elected to have their families remain, but under the circumstances, with our baggage all packed, and some of it already on it's way, we decided that it would be best if Helen and Carol went on ahead, and waited for me in the safety of Los Angeles with her parents.

We were still uncertain how widespread the Korean thing would develop and, since I would be a couple of thousand miles north, I would feel a lot more comfortable if I knew they were safe at home.

So, on July 7th, 1950, while the men of the 24th Infantry Division were being airlifted from Japan to Suwon and Kimpo airfields in South Korea, I was standing forlornly on the dock of the bay ...Manila Bay, looking through misty eyes at an equally-forlorn pair standing at the rail on the deck of the naval transport USS Gaffey. Two years previous, less just a few days, our roles had been reversed; in July, 1948, I had left Helen standing on the dock at San Francisco ... While the band played the same identical heart-tugging song: "Now Is The Hour". It was a song I'd not soon forget, and to this day I get a lump in my throat and a faraway look in my eyes whenever I hear it played. To me it will always be a song of sadness, gathering up visions of a little girl, not yet quite three, holding onto her mother's skirt and wondering why her Daddy couldn't go along with her on the boat.

Finally, as the ship pulled away from the dock, the band played "California Here I Come", the tune that had become our private theme song over the past several months, as we had happily anticipated our going-home journey ...together ...back to the United States.

It was a very, very sad Lieutenant Biteman who made the long drive from Manila back to the empty quarters on Clark Field. I couldn't help but wonder how long it would be before we could be together again: three months.. six months.. or never ?

The best cure for a lonely heart is intense activity, and I did my best to do just that during my few remaining days on Clark Field.

My assignment to Korea was to be in the dual capacity of Squadron Intelligence Officer and Assistant Flight Commander ...a very unusual combination of duties, that perhaps typified the screwy, topsy-turvy nature of our new little war. Historically, Intelligence Officers were never allowed to go on combat missions because of the possibility that their knowledge of classified plans and codes could be "extracted" by their captors in the event they were shot down. Not so, in Korea. Qualified F-51 fighter pilots were in such short supply that they couldn't afford the luxury of having one around who couldn't fly combat missions.

Between collecting as many maps, charts and supplies as I could lay my hands on, and clearing our quarters at Clark, the next few days and nights went by in a hurry. Up-to-date air navigation charts of the Korean peninsula were scarce at Clark ...we really hadn't previously had much use for them, ...but I managed to find ten complete sets, which I guarded like valuable securities. Plexiglas sheets, map boards, grease pencils, paper clips, staplers, typewriters, lead pencils, pads and erasers ...all of the basic tools of the Intelligence Officer's trade, plus a small, two-inch glass ball ...my "Crystal Ball" ...went into my stock of supplies.

On the night of July 9th, 1950, fifteen F-51 pilots... without a home, and without airplanes, went looking for a war. We boarded a C-54 transport for the all-night flight to Johnson Field, Japan, the nostalgic site of my first assignment to Japan in 1948.

While Captain Moreland, our designated CO, went on to Tokyo to arrange our airlift to Ashiya, on the southern island of Kyushu, and to collect instructions and orders from FEAF Headquarters, the rest of us ranged across Johnson Field to beg, borrow or steal the supplies and equipment we would need in Korea. Lieutenant Chuck Hauver, our "chief thief" Supply Officer somehow managed a whole plane load of tents and a complete Field Kitchen; a notable accomplishment, inasmuch as the units at Johnson were reluctant to give up their equipment ...they didn't know how soon they would need it themselves.

The best I could do was gather a couple of portable field tables, a packet of maps ...and a bright young, able-bodied, red-headed Intelligence Clerk ...Sergeant Dan Thornton who had worked for me at Clark, and had recently been transferred to Johnson; I convinced him to join us, telling him we would arrange for his formal, written orders later. He probably never knew it, but he was subsequently declared AWOL (Absent Without Leave), and it took me weeks to get his records cleared, and convince the headquarters that he was, in fact, with us in Korea and doing one fine job.

That evening, July 10th, we had three C-54 loads of equipment on their way to Ashiya. We rode "shotgun" to make sure no other Korea-bound outfit came along and hijacked the hard-won gear which we had so recently stolen. And, by that same day, the North Koreans had advanced rapidly southward in a three-pronged attack into the west, central and eastern parts of South Korea.

While we were moving our gear from Johnson to Ashiya, B-29s from Okinawa had bombed the rail and highway bridges at Pyongtaek, trying to slow the Reds western thrust. As the North Korean traffic piled up at the resulting roadblock, they were sighted by a lone F-51 pilot of the 35th Fighter Group, returning from an afternoon reconnaisance mission, who called for help. During the rest of the day, until it was too dark to see anything but the blazing wrecks, all available F-51s, F-80s, F-82s, plus the B-26 and B-29 bombers had a real "turkey shoot". When it was over, the Reds had lost 38 Russian-made tanks, 117 trucks and hundreds of troops. It was the first major air strike, and it slowed their advance toward Taejon enough for General Dean to pull some of his 24th Infantry troops together for a further delaying action.

We sent our Dallas Sqdn. Advance Party, Captains Moreland, Jerry Mau, and Lieutenants Frank Buzze and Chuck Hauver over to scout the airfield situation at Taegu on July 12th, while the rest of us spent a couple of days at Ashiya, collecting more equipment and arranging for sea shipment across to Pusan. From there it would have to go by truck and rail to Taegu. Again, each load had to have one of our pilots go along to ride shotgun, to make sure it didn't go astray.

Fortunately, my Intelligence gear was light enough to go by air, so on July 14th, when I finally received my bundle of black and white, PHOTOGRAPH PRINTS OF Korean air navigation charts ...the only charts available in the area, which I'd had printed on a "Priority Rush Job" by the Ashiya photo lab, I climbed aboard a heavily-loaded C-47 for the flight to our new home-away-from-home at Taegu, Korea.

While at Ashiya, I'd had a chance to talk to pilots of the 35th Fighter Group, who were already flying F-51 missions against the Reds. Things did not sound good; the Reds had crossed the Han River at Seoul... our base at Kimpo had been captured, and they were approaching our airstrip at Suwon, which was 30 miles south of Seoul. Red air attacks had caught several of our C-54 and C-47 transports on the ground at Suwon, severely damaging them; the crews had then become foot soldiers and had joined the walking retreat toward Taejon, with the North Koreans hard on their heels.

On my last evening at Ashiya, as I'd just finished my "last dinner on a tablecloth" at the Officer's club, I had a chance meeting with four great stars ...resting heavily on the shoulders of Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who had just arrived at Ashiya for a personal look at the war situation. We did a little "Alphonse & Garcon" dance routine, as each tried to step aside for the other to pass, then he smiled at me, and he, the General, stepped aside to let me, the Lieutenant, pass.

I was amazed at how tired he looked, not realizing that he was already ill with the cancer which would soon take his life. At that moment I was glad to be a lowly Lieutenant, with but one life to be concerned about, instead of a four-star General with a goodly portion of the weight of the world pressing on his shoulders. Many years later, I had occasion to recall our little "dance step", when I was present at the great missile base in California as it was dedicated "Vandenberg Air Force Base" in honor of the General I had "danced" with at the Ashiya Officer's Club.

At the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, South Korea's President Syngman Rhee had begged our President Truman for a fleet of F-51 Mustangs, because he was convinced that a timely show of airpower by the South Koreans would discourage the North Korean troops. In response, on July lst, 1950, President Truman authorized the transfer of just ten airplanes. However, since all of the Fighter units in the Far East had already converted to F-80 jets many months before, the only F-51s which were not mothballed and in storage, were a decrepit few which were being used to tow targets for aerial gunnery practice.

As Mustangs, they were derelicts. All had been stripped of instruments; they were dirty and they were "tired", but they were the only '51s in the Far East available for immediate use.

Ten pilots of the 35th Fighter Group ferried those ten "Bout One" Mustangs to Taegu and, it's significant to note, they were called upon ...on their way over, to fly top cover for General MacArthur's C-54 "Bataan", en route to Suwon, where he was to confer with General Dean and look over the battle situation. The choice of his escort was notable in that they chose the old derelict F-51s over the newer, faster F-80 jets because the old Mustangs had enough fuel to stay over the field the entire time MacArthur was on the ground, then had enough fuel reserve to escort him all the way back to Pusan, and still return for their original intended landing at Taegu!

Upon arriving at Taegu, the "Bout One" commander, Major Dean Hess, and his crew, set about trying to teach the inexperienced South Korean pilots how to fly the hot, frisky Mustangs from the rough, "cow pasture" runway at Taegu. It was a hopeless task; trying to upgrade from a 650 hp T-6 trainer to a tricky 1350 hp fighter while flying combat missions against the enemy ...an impossible situation.

Understandably, the Koreans were reluctant to take the strange airplanes low enough to make an effective attack, and one was badly damaged by groundfire in just the first couple of days. The "Bout One" pilots couldn't bear to see the air capability wasted, while they were so badly needed in the fighting, so they just left the Korean pilots on the ground at Taegu to refuel and re-arm the airplanes, and they started flying the combat missions themselves.

By the time our "Dallas bunch" started arriving a day or so later, with no airplanes of our own, Headquarters FEAF had decided to give us the nine remaining flyable '51s which had earlier been given to the South Koreans... complete with South Korean insignia painted on the wings and fuselage. Dean Hess and several of his "Bout One" pilots stayed on for less than a week, while our troops straggled in aboard our supplies from Japan, then, when we had enough pilots on board, most (but not all) went back to their units in Japan. Eventually, when more F-51s became available, Dean Hess's people moved to Masan, on the southern coast, to start a pilot training school for the South Korean pilots. Dean Hess later wrote a book of his Korean experiences, which was made into the very popular and profitable movie "Battle Hymn", starring Rock Hudson.

Captain Jerry Mau, my old friend and Flight Commander, was standing outside our C-47s door when I arrived at Taegu on July 14th, and, with a wide sweep of his arms, smilingly said: "Welcome to Taegu, Queen City and Honey Bucket capitol of the Orient". One whiff of the pungent air and I immediately knew the brand of fertilizer the Koreans preferred for their rice paddies. My eyes followed the sweep of his arm across the barren pasture ...all I could see were six widely dispersed F-51s with South Korean insignia markings, the one adobe building, and an awning-like affair over a low stack of packing boxes (which housed our "maintenance hangar") ...that was it! All of it! Off in the distance to the north, atop a steep hill, I could see a few one-man "Pup tents".

While the C-47 was being unloaded, Jerry showed me the nerve center of our squadron: the Operations Office ...one small room of the adobe hut, with a local area chart thumb-tacked to one wall, two or three wooden ammo boxes and a hand-crank field telephone. He told me that Moreland and Hauver were off on a combat mission with two of "our" nine Mustangs ... someplace near Suwon, or wherever our front lines happened to be at the moment. The only other room of the adobe shack was occupied by a detachment of half-dozen "Mosquito" pilots: spotters who flew the three assigned T-6 trainers, with South Korean observers in the rear seats, to help locate targets, and try to tell us which troops were friend and which were foe.

Taegu airfield, in mid-July, 1950, was an "airfield" in name only, and in the loosest possible definition of the word. It was simply an open patch of pastureland approximately 4500 feet in length, located four miles north of Taegu City. One small adobe-type building sat alongside the rice paddies on the north side, just below a steep 100 foot hill. The "runway" ran east and west, and was little more than a dusty road with numerous chuckholes and many soft, sandy spots.

For some reason, I'd always had the impression that air wars would somehow be more "organized" than the unpredictable battles of the mud-slogging Infantry; that an airfield required a certain amount of preparation before it could be made operational and, right along with the effort to prepare the runways, and the "work" areas, there was always someone there in the background arranging for a reasonably comfortable place for the aircrews to sleep and to eat. After all... I had thought, if the pilots were to be in condition for the rigors of aerial combat, there would have to be facilities provided for them to get some rest between flights, some nourishing, if not necessarily "tasty" food, and maybe even an occasional cool brew.

Even in China, in World War II, during our hop-scotching from one new fighter strip to the next, they always had us coming into bases with minimal niceties like a Mess tent, and eight-man sleeping tents with wood-plank floors.

But then, as I thought about it, I realized that I'd never had the opportunity to get into a combat area right at the start of a brand-new war. And, as I looked around at the bleak, non-existent facilities at Taegu, I wondered if, just maybe I hadn't arrived in Korea too soon; maybe I could go out and come in again after they had things arranged more in the fashion that I had been led to expect!

Jerry showed the way as I balanced myself against the weight of my canvas B-4 bag. At the moment it contained all of my meager personal possessions ...a couple of summer flying coveralls, two sets of starched khaki uniforms, a lightweight flight jacket, a half-dozen sets of underwear, a couple of towels and washcloths, shaving kit and toilet articles, a writing kit and pictures of Helen and Carol. With my .45 cal. automatic pistol, holster, extra clips of ammunition, a first-aid kit and a canteen on the web belt around my waist, and a Leica camera slung over my shoulder, I was carrying everything I owned, or would need in the line of personal supplies.

We first went to a jumbled mound of olive-colored equipment, where I pulled out a pair of shelter halves, a couple of short rods for tent poles and, as I started to walk away, Jerry suggested that I pick up one of the steel helmets from the pile “...not so much for protection from gunfire”, he said, but I'd need one for a wash basin and a bathtub. Mau carried part of my gear as we picked our way carefully across two or three rice paddy dikes to the foot of the hill which they'd nicknamed "Honey Bucket Heights", where the steep, eroded and dusty path led to the top and "officer's country". There was a rutted road around the back of the hill, which would take us to the same place at the top, but it was a good half-mile further around, and we soon got used to the short-cut across the narrow rice paddy dikes. Scattered at the top was a random array of pup tents, straw mats, carbines and steel helmets ...looking for all the world like a combination beach party and "exploded" view of a Boy Scout camp area.

"Pick a spot", he said, "the rent is cheap, we have a nice panoramic view of the valley...and we're away from the strip, in case someone decides to strafe the runway." There was only one sign of "organized" civilization, a 12 foot by 20 foot tent: the "officer's club and Mess tent". As I expected, when I pulled aside the flap to peek in, it was just a big, empty tent with a dirt floor and a few B-4 bags strewn down one side. There was no "Club", and there was no "Mess Hall"; it was just a place to get in out of the sun to sit on the ground and open a can of Army C rations.

It took me just a few minutes to find a reasonably flat spot and set up my pup-tent; I pushed my bag inside and we headed back down the trail toward the flight-line. I was anxious to locate my Intelligence gear and find a corner where I could set up my chart rack and start collecting pilot reports; to see if I could plot a "Bomb Line" from the reports of returning pilots. I moved my plexiglas-covered chart rack into the Operations Office and replaced the dirty, marked-up paper map that was tacked to the wall.

I asked a couple of the "Mosquito" pilots in the next room if they could tell me where the front lines were. They just laughed, and ran their finger in a broad, sweeping arc across the entire middle of South Korea: "someplace between Suwon and Taejon on the west, 'between Hamhung and Wonsan on the east coast, and it's anybody's guess where it is between the two. "The "front", if it could be called that, was moving south so fast that it was impossible to identify any specific area as being in friendly or enemy hands.

Harry Moreland and Chuck Hauver returned from their combat mission and were a little more help ...they'd been working over the roads leading into Taejon from the north, and that city had not yet fallen ...not quite yet.

While I busied myself setting up my shop, and locating my equipment from among the pile off-loaded from the C-47, a crew was busy setting up a field kitchen in a couple of tents under a few scrubby trees a hundred yards from our Operations shack, and a water trailer was brought in from Taegu. Civilization was coming, bit by tedious bit.

It was well after dark that night before I managed a dry sandwich from the field kitchen, and trudged up the dark trail to Honey Bucket Heights, and my little tent on the hard ground. Mine was an eerie feeling: laying on the ground, under the stars on that warm July night. I was dead-tired, but unable to sleep, wondering what the next few days, weeks, or even months ...would hold for us.

Weariness finally overcame my rambling thoughts and I dropped off to sleep... only to be shocked awake by the ear-splitting chatter of automatic carbine fire nearby. Seconds later, another burst was heard from another nearby hill, then another from a third hill in the distance. I could see the flashes from the muzzle of the last burst, then silence, as the darkness once again closed around us. At the first chatter of gunfire I was wide awake and out of the tent, with my cocked .45 automatic in my hand, ready to do battle.

"What a helluva way to start an air war", I thought, "...a fire fight against a bunch of trigger-happy guerillas".

I could see nothing but our other pilots, all armed and ready to shoot at anything suspected of being an enemy. Slowly and carefully we crept toward the spot at the far side of the hill where we'd last seen a South Korean Army rifleman. When near enough to see his silhouette, standing relaxed near the top of the knoll, we recouped enough nerve to stand upright and walk over to find out what was going on. By sign language and pidgin Japanese, we found that there had been no enemy attack, the bursts of gunfire were just the guards' way of signaling each other that everything was OK!

There was little sleep for the pilots the rest of that night; 'just a lot of nervous jokes about how we joined the Air Force to stay away from just that sort of life.

Bill Slater, Chappie James and Spud Taylor came over from Japan the following day, bringing another load of ammunition, supplies and some much-needed pilot's flying gear.

[.... to be continued.....]

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