18th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Korea

INTO THE FRAY

First Combat Mission ,Taejon, South Korea, July 1950

On 16 July, 1950, while our " Dallas Squadron " crews were flying combat missions out of Taegu airstrip with nine remaining " South Korean " Mustangs, the 40th Fighter Squadron from Johnson Field, Japan's 35th Fighter Group, was being re-equipped with other hurriedly refurbished F-51s, brought out of storage. They were promptly deployed to Korea at the old Japanese airstrip at Pohang, directly east of Taegu on the shores of the Sea of Japan. With the 40th's arrival, FEAF then had two under-strength USAF F-51 Mustang squadrons based on Korean soil.

Initially the 40th had their hands full trying to slow the advance of the North Koreans racing down the coastal highway on the eastern side of the Korean peninsula, while we at Taegu directed our primary efforts against the fast-moving enemy thrusts on the central and western side of the penninsula.

By the 19th of July my Squadron Intelligence operation was organized well enough that I could finally consider doing some flying. The telephone hook-up with 5th Air Force Advance headquarters in Taegu city was working, most of the time, enabling us to relay strike results and receive word on which areas were most in need of air support. Sergeant Thornton knew what to look for during pilot's post-mission interrogations, and how to plot heavy flak areas on our makeshift situation maps.

It was time for me to "get my feet wet"; to start flying some combat missions. I asked our CO, Capt. Moreland to put me on the mission schedule whenever he had an opening; he wasted no time in setting me up for early the next morning... 20 July, 1950.

It had been over six months since I had last flown the F-51 Mustang, an airplane which requires a pilot's undivided attention even under the best of circumstances. With the change back to the "tail-dragger" (tailwheel) configuration, following the ease and good visibility of the F-80 Jet's nosewheel set-up, plus the challenge of Taegu's dusty, bumpy dirt strip and the Mustang's grossly changed handling characteristics with a full fuel and bomb load ...I was somewhat apprehensive about my first "refresher" flight. My thoughts and concerns with just getting the old bird up and down safely, were such that I didn't have time to think about the fact that I was going into a combat area where people on the ground would be trying their damndest to shoot me down!

The morning of the 20th dawned warm and clear, but 'way high we could see a layer of thin clouds forming... indicating the approach of the outer fringes of Typhoon "Gloria", which had passed the southern Philippine Islands on the previous day and was now headed for Japan. Our weather was forecast to remain reasonably clear for at least one more day.

On my first combat flight I was scheduled to fly as wingman for Captain Howard "Scrappy" Johnson, who had by then completed two or three missions into the Suwon-Taejon area during the past couple of days. We were limited to use of two-ships ...flight leader and wingman, rather than the standard four-ship formation simply because we didn't have enough airplanes to concentrate four at a time onto any one target area. On the other hand, two planes were minimum for mutual protection and area location, in case one should be knocked down.

After my very thorough preflight check of the dusty, old WWII vintage Mustang, I climbed onto the left wing, pulled my back-pack parachute on over my "Mae West" life preserver jacket and over my pistol belt and holster, snapped the buckles and cinched the straps to the point where they were "just uncomfortable" if I tried to straighten up. I then climbed awkwardly over the left cockpit ledge and sat on the one-man life raft which had previously been placed in the seat "pan" by the Crew Chief. Thick aluminum snap fasteners on each side of the life raft pressed into my thighs as I attached the "dinghy" pack to the metal rings sewn onto the side straps of my parachute harness. After reaching over and behind the seat back to pull the pair of shoulder straps across to my midsection, I carefully positioned the lap-belt and snapped the lever to fasten all four ends of the shoulder and lap harness together. With the added protrusion of the .45 caliber automatic pistol and holster on my right hip, I had to squirm my buttocks around until the holster hung outside of the seat bucket and, with the large, uncomfortable snaps of the dinghy harness pressing into each side of my posterior, I continued to squirm in the seat to get each cheek into it's least uncomfortable position while I pulled the lap belt to a snug tension.

Finally, after plugging the radio cords into the wires from my hard-hat helmet, fastening the oxygen hose connection and clamping it to the shoulder harness, I placed my helmet astride the top of the windscreen. With all of the necessary preliminaries completed, I could at last get about the business of starting the Mustang's big Rolls Royce Merlin, 1650 hp engine. But first, there was the all-important cockpit check. With "hot" guns ...six .50 caliber machine guns in the wings, each loaded with several hundred rounds of ammunition, six 5" high velocity rockets loaded under the wings, and a 500 pound demolition bomb slung under each wing, I was very careful to ensure that none of the armament switches in the cockpit had inadvertently been left in the "on" position, where accidental touching of the control stick trigger or bomb release could cause them to release.

I turned the fuel selector handle, located between my ankles, to the Fuselage tank position for starting, so that I could use up some of the 80 gallons of fuel stored behind the pilot's seat, to reduce some of the Aft CG weight which made the little ship extremely tail-heavy until the tank's level got down to about 20 gallons.

Then, calling "CLEAR" to no one in particular ...just the usual warning that the prop was about to start rotating, I raised my feet a couple inches off of the floor to depress the toe brakes on each rudder pedal, held the control stick back tightly against my middle...in case the engine were to catch and surge too quickly, turned on the Master Switch, then the Magneto switch and pushed the Starter button. The big four-bladed propeller started turning, slowly at first, then, as the big twelve cylinder engine started to fire, a few cylinders at a time, I quickly moved the mixture control from it's Idle-Cut-Off position over to Full Rich, and adjusted the throttle for a smooth, steady idle. The bellow of power from the exhaust stacks on each side of the nose was reassuring, and the familiar, distinctive Mustang sound made me feel at home once again.

Pushing the radio control button for our tactical channel, I pulled on my helmet as the set warmed up. I held the toe brakes as I signaled with an outward jerk of my right thumb for the crew-chief to pull out the wheel chocks. I then called Scrappy for a radio check, lifted the handle on the cockpit's left console to raise the wing flaps, released my toe brakes and added a "touch" of throttle to begin my zig-zag taxi course through the dusty haze toward the take-off end of the dirt runway.

For all of it's power and grace in the air, there are few wheeled contraptions more awkward than a tailwheel aircraft on the ground. It was as if the engineers, after designing a superbly efficient flying machine ...decided that their only concession to the fact that the ship must occasionally spend some time on the ground, very reluctantly agreed to hang on a set of three wheels. The main, front wheels, under the wings, had to raise the fuselage high enough to keep the big four-bladed propeller from striking the ground, and the small tailwheel had to be as compact and as light as possible in order to retract into the narrow aft section of the fuselage. As a consequence, the resulting configuration meant that the pilot could not see over the nose while taxiing, and had to be continually turning the nose from side to side in order to see where he was going. Then too, the placement of the main gear, close to the center of gravity in the wing, made it very risky to apply brakes too quickly, or the weight of the heavy engine would have a tendency to shift the balance forward with embarrassing and costly results, as the tail would swing up, and the propeller blades would dig a furrow in the turf or pavement of the taxiway. The invention of nose gears meant a major and dramatic improvement in the ease of the Fighter pilot's chores.

With due respect for the heavy load I was carrying, and the numerous soft, sandy spots in our taxi trail, I proceeded with extra caution to the end of the dirt strip behind Scrappy's airplane. The great cloud of thick dust raised by his propeller made it necessary for me to fully close my canopy while taxiing, and to place my carburetor air filters in the "filter" position to keep at least part of the dust out of the vital internal parts of the engine. Unfortunately, this filtering reduces the volume of air to the coolant radiator and usually causes the engine temperature to rise above its normal range.

Upon arrival at the end of the runway the armament crews scurried under our wings to pull the safety pins from the rockets and bombs and, only when they had moved clear, did we make our engine run-up checks. My coolant temperature was still climbing toward the red-line on the coolant gage on the instrument panel, but I thought that it might be OK once I built up speed on take-off and had a lot of cooler air passing through the radiator.

I taxied to the upwind side of the strip as far as I could, hoping to stay out of Scrappy's dust and, as he accelerated to the point where I could see his tail rise, I added full power to start my take-off roll. Because of the billowing cloud of dust ahead, I had to leave my filters ‘in’, still reducing the amount of cooling air reaching the radiator.

With one eye on the coolant needle and the other looking ahead for chuckholes in the runway, I lumbered down the runway with my heavily loaded bird. After a seeming eternity of rough bouncing, fearful that the shaking would dislodge the 500 pound bombs under my wings, I was finally able to raise the tail and, with heavy back-pressure on the control stick, managed to force it, semi-stalled, into the air. I immediately retracted my landing gear and moved the air filter switch to the "unfiltered" position. But the unfiltered cooling air came too late; the steam was streaming out the right side of the nose, and I knew that I had "popped my coolant". The automatic pressure relief valve had opened from the excess heat of the over-heated engine coolant, and unknown quantities of the vital fluid had steamed out into the atmosphere. Even though I leveled off and reduced power immediately, the steam continued to pour out for several minutes.

My possible alternatives were quickly considered and discarded. But I could not dawdle too long, for my coolant temperature was still hovering on the redline, and I had no idea how long the engine would keep running with it's minimum coolant level.

"I could look for an uninhabited area somewhere in the vicinity, and jettison my bombs, hoping they wouldn't go off and hit someone." But I wasn't familiar with the locale, and didn't know where to find such a remote area ...if there was one. I couldn't jettison my rockets, because the only way to get rid of them was to fire them off. With my luck, the prop would stop just about the time I decided to jettison my bombs ...and I'd have to bail out. I decided to take my chances with a heavy-weight landing on Taegu's bumpy dirt strip rather than risk continuing to fly without sufficient coolant, where the hot-running liquid-cooled engine could (and probably would) heat up to the point of stopping the engine, and I'd hate to have that happen on my first mission over enemy territory.

Johnson was informed by radio of my predicament, and my decision to return to Base; he elected to circle the field, waiting, while I went back in to have the tank topped off with additional coolant fluid. I made a wide, sweeping turn to the left, so as to set up for a very long, flat approach for landing.

Landing the F-51 Mustang with an almost-full fuselage fuel tank is, by itself, a tricky maneuver ...even on a long, paved runway, because the rearward center of gravity often causes the need for forward stick pressure to keep the tail from dropping out faster than the nose... apprehensively referred as "the tail tucking under". But with full ammunition, plus armed rockets and bombs, as well, it would indeed have to be an extremely gentle landing or the live bombs could be shaken loose and it could become a really HARD touchdown!

Setting my final turn a good five miles out, I lowered landing gear and flaps, then coordinated my pitch angle and engine power to ease the nose down for a long, flat final approach. With airspeed stabilized at 125 mph, the controls felt extremely sensitive, but they continued to work in their proper directions: 'stick back, the nose came up, stick forward, the nose went down'. At 115-120 I was over the Mustang's normal approach speed, but I knew I'd need the extra speed to keep control of the heavy load through flare-out and touchdown. I'd worry about slowing down once I had it on the ground.

I skimmed the tops of trees a mile from the end of the dirt runway and held my gradual, controlled descent constant until just before touching down, when I eased the stick back and chopped the throttle for a gentle, tail high, "wheel" landing. As I slowed on the ground, I had to push the stick forward to keep the heavy tail from banging down onto the ground too hard. Then, with heavy braking, while holding the stick hard back, the Mustang slowed to a stop with no further problems.

Our Line-Chief had been watching ‘his’ airplane like a mother hen from the time I had started the take-off roll, and knew exactly what I'd need when I came back in. He had picked up two five gallon cans of coolant and met me with the jeep as I turned off the runway. I shut off the engine and within five minutes he had me topped off and ready to go again.

Since the winds were calm, I restarted the engine and swung the tail around, making my second take-off in the opposite direction from which I had just landed. The coolant temperature remained slightly above normal for a few minutes, until after I had retracted my air filters; it then settled back into the "green" range and I felt better. After another five minutes I was sliding into position on Scrappy's left wing, heading west over the mountains toward the battle front near the city of Taejon.

Climbing leisurely on course toward the west, we crossed the Naktong River at two thousand feet. There was no need yet to climb very high, since we were still over friendly territory; we could have a better view from lower altitudes, of our primary navigation device: the railroad winding thru the low hills. Upon approaching Taejon, we made radio contact with a T-6 "Mosquito" spotter plane who was just returning to Taegu for fuel. When asked where we'd find the enemy, he just told us to take anything on the road north out of Taejon; it was all enemy. Swinging north to trace the road out of that city, we were over a heavy pall of smoke from the burning buildings. We could see flashes from the muzzle blast of tanks firing in both directions; the battle was raging in the streets of Taejon. Three miles north of the city we could see a trail of dust heading south on the road, then another and another; three Russian-made North Korean T-34 tanks were racing to join the battle.

We climbed to 8000 feet and headed slightly east of the road to position ourselves into the bright morning sun for our bombing attack. Scrappy called to remind me to "arm" my bombs and rockets, and I reached down to the console panel by my knee, lifted the switch guards and moved both the bomb and rocket switches to the "armed" positions. That transferred control of the bomb release to the switches on the control stick; the red button at the top of the stick would release the bombs, and the button on the left of the stick would fire the rockets. The trigger on the front of the handgrip would fire the six machine guns simultaneously.

For "bombsights" our war-weary '51s had a very simple, but effective system ...a series of one-inch red stripes painted on the leading edge of each wing, near the fuselage, radiating out at different angles from the pilot's line of sight. Another was painted on the top center of the nose cowling, extending from the windscreen to the prop spinner. In use, the pilot would simply fly off to one side far enough to keep his target in view along the side of the nose, then, as the target passed under the red wing stripe for the altitude he was flying, he would roll over into a steep 60 or 70 degree dive, and line the target up with the nose stripe. Finally, when approaching 4000 feet in the high-speed dive, it was necessary only to check that the needle and ball instrument was "centered", to be certain there was no skid or slipping of the aircraft, then press the bomb release button as the target passed out of sight under the nose. As soon as the bombs were released, usually at about 2000 feet, a very sharp pull-up was necessary to keep from flying through the bomb's blast.

Johnson adujsted his heading slightly, then peeled off, rolling into a near vertical dive from 8000 feet, aiming for the first tank in the line and, after another couple of seconds, I rolled over into my dive bombing run. I fired a few short bursts of machine gun fire as I started down, checking to "clear" my guns, and also hoping to keep enemy gunners' heads down, to discourage them from shooting back as we made our attack. We both had close 'near misses' on the first and second tanks, hitting within 40 to 60 feet of each. But after the dust and debris had settled, the tanks were still moving. Russian T-34 tanks usually needed a direct hit with a 500 pound bomb to knock them out of action.

Dropping down onto the deck, we swung around to come at them from the side with our rockets. Again Scrappy aimed at the lead tank and I opened up on the second. We salvoed our six 5 inch HVAR rockets from about three hundred yards, and both got good hits against the tracks and wheels. Both tanks were badly damaged, but the crews quickly opened their hatches and started firing at us with their machine guns.

Discretion being the better part of valor, we then flew on north looking for other targets; we knew we couldn't finish off the tanks with just our machine guns, and the chances of knocking out the crews inside the tanks' steel armor plating were too slim for the risks involved; maybe we could catch them by surprise on our way back. We circled wide and came back down onto the road at about 200 feet, following it north, with Johnson on the west side of the road and me on the east. Just south of Suwon we found a pair of south-bound trucks loaded with enemy troops. Scrappy blew the first one in the engine, on our initial pass, but we had come upon them so suddenly that I didn't have time to properly line up to take aim for a good shot. We swung around for another pass from the side, as the enemy troops were taking cover in the ditches and rice paddies alongside the road. I blasted the second truck with machine gun fire, while Scrappy spaced himself for a pass lengthwise with the road, strafing the ditches. The troops were all firing at us with their rifles, but their aim was off, and neither of our planes was hit. We made a third pass, strafing the ditches on both sides of the burning trucks, then continued north toward the airfield at Suwon. There was nothing moving there, and all we could see was the smoldering hulks of our two C-54s which had been damaged on the ground a few days before. Someone had finished the job with a good fire.

We retraced our route back toward Taejon, letting loose a short burst at a couple of soldiers standing near the burned trucks, then continued on to where we had attacked the tanks. We were starting to run low on ammunition and couldn't waste it on one or two stray soldiers. Two of the tanks were still where we'd left them, but the third was gone, hidden in the pall of heavy smoke which hung over the city of Taejon. We made one pass to look at a couple of troops standing by the side of the first tank, but pulled up sharply to get out of range of the rifle and machine gun fire which we knew would be coming up at us from the town. As we rejoined the road on the east side, we could see our Army troops fighting a holding action, while a long line of our trucks and jeeps retreated toward the east.

We climbed back up to 8000 feet, where the air was cooler and more clear, and followed the railroad east to the Naktong River, our checkpoint for home base at Taegu. After crossing the river, we nosed down for a sweeping turn, in close formation, into a low, on-the-deck initial approach. Upon reaching the runway at about 350 mph, Scrappy pulled up into a steep chandelle as he chopped his power for landing. Two seconds later I pulled up to take spacing behind him on downwind leg. With speed down, after the steep pull-up, we dropped our gear and turned onto a tight base leg, and were still turning slightly on final as we touched down onto the dusty runway.

It felt good to fly a good "tactical approach" traffic pattern again ...the fighter pilot's traffic pattern. It was developed during World War II to keep speeds high as long as possible, and to make the "vulnerability period" ... slow speed with gear and flaps down, as brief as possible, in case enemy aircraft were waiting to ambush the flights as they returned for landing...low on fuel and low on ammunition. However, there were occasional gross miscalculations and a number of pilots had been killed over the years, from stalling and spinning out of too-tight a turn at low altitude and low airspeed. Fifth Air Force's General Partridge decreed, a few weeks later, that we didn't have enough air opposition near our fields in Korea and, as the war became more "organized", he insisted that we go back to the safe, but undramatic rectangular traffic patterns at 1000 feet above the ground.

Our mission on July 20th had been a good and successful one, despite my false start with the coolant problem. Neither Scrappy nor I had picked up a hole, and we could take credit for two seriously damaged tanks and two destroyed trucks. And, more importantly, for me, my nervousness about getting back into combat was under control; I was tense with anxiety, but stimulated by the success of the mission, and ready for more.

That afternoon, as Harry Moreland was returning from a bombing and strafing mission in the same area, he was forced to belly-land in a dry river bed when his engine froze up as a result of a bullet hole in his coolant line. He wasn't hurt, but his plane was demolished. That brought us down to a total of eight flyable Mustangs in the squadron... not much of a fleet to fight a war.

[ to be continued.....]

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