“We could always tell when the assigned target was a bad one. Outside the briefing room would be a large number of military police and ambulances. As we sat in the room, the briefing officer would pull the curtain slowly from left to right past Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and sometimes as far as Königsberg. The farther he pulled the curtain to the right, the more distraught many of the air crew became. Even late in the war, German antiaircraft defenses were deadly. A man could take only so much stress, and on difficult missions some would break. The military police and the medical orderlies were there to put them into straitjackets and take them away. I saw firsthand what fear could do to a man on one of my missions. He was my copilot. I asked him to take the controls. Looking over, I saw him raise his hands, and then he froze. He tried to force his hands down onto the controls, but he couldn’t do it. I could see him trying. His face bathed in sweat, muscles rippling, he couldn’t get his hands to move. He was frozen stiff with fright.
“I remember one particularly bad mission. I was looking at my best friend flying next to me, off my right wing, and he was looking over at me. I still remember the look on his face. Then he took a direct hit. His aircraft exploded. There was nothing left for me to see. On many of our missions, the killing started before we got going. On bad-weather days—and there were many of those in England; we called them crash-and-burn days—after takeoff we were to assemble over a radio beacon near our base. In theory it was a good procedure. In practice it left a lot to be desired, and we never fixed the problem throughout the war. As we took off, the lead aircraft made a spiraling left turn until breaking out of the overcast and then waited for his squadron mates to join up. Unfortunately, there were numerous bases nearby. As we spiraled up to altitude, our turns got wider and wider, like an inverted cone, and in time our cone would overlap with the cone of another base. The aircraft crashing into each other never knew what happened.
“On takeoff I frequently could see the bodies of my friends strewn across meadows, hanging over fences. Others burned to death in the inferno of a crashing aircraft. Do you know what a human body looks like after it has burned in an air crash? A little black ball which you can hold in your hands. That’s all that’s left of a man.” Dave paused, the recollections of tragedies flitting past his inner eye as if they happened yesterday. He frowned. His eyes shone brightly. The Mighty Eighth War Diary notes that between June 1942 and May 1945, more than 6,500 B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers were lost over Europe. One in six, more than 1,000 aircraft, were lost to accidents rather than to enemy action. The Eighth Air Force heavy bomber force in England was maintained at 2,000 aircraft (Freeman 3–8).
Dave continued: “Once our group assembled, or whatever was left of it, we’d join up with other groups. We flew tight formations, the tighter the better, until our wingtips nearly touched. It provided the best defense against German fighters. Our targets varied from industrial to military. On a mission to Fulda I wrote in my log book, ‘The target is women and children.’ I simply saw things differently then.”
Dave Taylor separated from the Army Air Force in late 1945. The Berlin Airlift brought him back into the Air Force to stay, and in 1953 he found himself in Special Operations, flying C-46, C-47, and B-26 aircraft out of Kimpo Air Base, near Seoul, Korea. It was his kind of flying, mostly at night and dangerous. At that point in his air force career, danger was a normal part of Dave’s life, and he didn’t let it influence him too much. He was not a foolhardy pilot, but he had acquired a taste for pushing the limits of the envelope. He took his chances and counted on the odds being in his favor. On May 24, 1953, two months before the Korean armistice, Dave flew one of his most dangerous missions of a flying career full of danger. As reported by the Associated Press, a South Korean agent operating behind North Korean lines liberated the five survivors of a downed B-29 bomber. The agent probably had previously been inserted by Dave or by another member of his flight, euphemistically called B-Flight, which was short for Base-Flight. In the case of Kimpo Air Base, B-Flight included special missions, meaning those other than the routine flying support usually provided by such an organization.
The South Korean agent was most likely a double agent. Using his radio, the agent informed his American contacts of the opportunity to rescue the downed air crew, commanded by its pilot, a first lieutenant. Dave Taylor received the go-ahead to extricate the crew with his specially modified C-47 transport. The rescue aircraft was a forerunner of more sophisticated but similar rescue systems employed years later in Vietnam. The system used a combination of harness and cabling extended between upright poles to allow an aircraft with a hooking device to come over low and pull a downed airman off the ground to safety. Dave made several flights to locate the downed B-29 crew. Once he found them and thoroughly reconnoitered the area from the air, he dropped the ground portion of the rescue equipment, which included two tall poles to allow the suspension of rescue lines. Dave couldn’t shake his suspicion that something wasn’t right, that it was a trap. To confirm authenticity and to assure himself that this was not a setup, Dave dropped a camera and a homing pigeon. He asked the agent to take pictures of the crew and to return the film via the pigeon. The pigeon returned, but the film showed pictures only of the agent and not of the air crew. On the day before the rescue was to take place, Dave returned to the area and spoke over the radio to the lieutenant, asking him to authenticate himself by revealing private information that only he knew. The lieutenant did so and assured Major Taylor that everything was all right.
Major Taylor’s modified C-47, which was used to rescue downed airmen behind enemy lines, at Kimpo, 1953. D. Taylor.
In the early morning hours of May 24, 1953, Dave took off in his slow C-47 to effect the rescue. As he approached the pickup site, he made contact on the radio and proceeded to approach the clearing at treetop level. Dave remained suspicious, and his senses were alert. Again, something didn’t seem right. He had the lieutenant go through several authentications before committing himself and his crew. He saw the two poles, and his tail hook was extended. As he flew between the poles, the trap was sprung. The rescue poles turned out to house fifty-caliber machine guns. “The bullets were coming straight up between the two engines and the cockpit. They ripped into our belly. I punched the throttles forward, climbed, and by constantly changing heading penetrated a wall of small-arms fire as we escaped the trap. I believe to this day that I was deliberately betrayed for reasons I cannot fathom. I consider him a traitor,” Dave said of the B-29 pilot. “He could have warned me off, and he didn’t. I wanted to napalm the whole area, that’s how mad I was.” Instead, Dave returned to the area several days later in a B-26 bomber rigged with a voice recording system. He circled over the mountain hideout and spoke briefly with each of the five B-29 crew members to verify that they were alive. To his surprise, the men spoke as if nothing unusual had transpired. “They gave me no hint whatsoever of distress. That was the last contact I had with them. After the armistice, the B-29 crew was not returned by the North Koreans, and they were eventually declared dead by the air force. I wonder to this day why an American officer allowed me to be ambushed.
“When I made that rescue attempt, I had a formation of F-84s flying overhead to give me support the instant I got into trouble. They did nothing as they watched the sky erupt around me with tracers flying in all directions. I practically stood my airplane on its wing and made it fly sideways to get out of there. I got my crew out alive, but it was close. I was mad as hell. After landing I got that 84-lead together with our colonel. I wanted the same bunch of guys to go back and bomb and strafe that valley the next day. I wanted to know they had the balls to do it. The colonel agreed, provided I could assure him that the prisoners were no longer there. I was never able to provide the colonel that assurance. Why didn’t the 84s support me? Because they thought there was too much flak down there. That’s what their leader said.
“A similar incident happened to me earlier in the year. I was flying a night flare mission for
some 84s. There I sat, at low level, punching flares out of my unarmed, slow-moving C-47, an easy target for the North Korean flak. Down below, I could see a long line of trucks. I couldn’t get the 84s to come down and hit them. The flak was too heavy, they told me later. Yeah, didn’t I know that? I was down there. In anticipation of similar responses, my crew and I removed the chutes from a number of flares and added dynamite and scrap metal. On the next flare mission when the 84s were reluctant to come down low because of the flak, I had my presentos ready. We punched them out of the flare tubes, and without chutes the flares dropped quickly. Flares burn very hot, and with the added dynamite they blew the assembled trucks right off the highway. We did that several times until someone blew the whistle on us. In a way I understood the F-84s attitude. They didn’t have wet suits, and the waters around Korea were cold. A man would die in only minutes if he had to punch out over water. Of course, that’s what you did, because no one wanted to bail out over land if he could help it and become a prisoner of the Chinese. Once the F-84 guys were provided the necessary wet suits—and I helped get the suits for them from navy stocks—they were much more willing to take risks. Their success against ground targets improved greatly.”
One of Dave Taylor’s more hush-hush missions was to insert Korean agents into the North Korean hinterlands. On one of those missions he took his C-47 way up north. “It was night, and in the distance I could see the lights of Vladivostok twinkling. After I made my drop I had to keep on doing something else in the area, or anyone who saw me would know where to look and quickly pick up our agents. I kept flying up and down snowy ridges until, when topping one ridge, I saw a long line of trucks moving below me. The trucks were difficult to spot in the dark because they had snow on top of their tarps and were driving without lights. What to do? Such a fat target and no guns. No presentos either. Then I had an idea. I slid behind the ridge, turned, and as I crested the ridge again, I pushed my aircraft’s nose down, facing the trucks, and turned my bright landing lights on. Trucks slid in every direction down the mountainside, exploding in bright flashes as they hit something in the valley below. My crew had a good laugh. We turned and disappeared behind the ridge. I decided to give it one more try. But the next time around, they were waiting for us. I had to do a max-power climb to get out of range of their guns.
“One frequent problem I experienced with our South Korean agents was that they often refused to jump. Usually there were two of them, and if one wouldn’t go, the other wouldn’t either. When I flew a C-47, it wasn’t that much of a problem. When the bell rang and the green light came on and the agent froze in the door, my jump master would cut him loose and push him out. Most of the time we used a modified B-26. We fashioned two seats in the bomb bay for the agents, and when it was time to go I would open the bomb bay doors, the jump master signaled to them, and all they had to do was roll forward—that is, if they wanted to jump. If they didn’t want to jump, the jump master couldn’t do a thing because he couldn’t get to them. His threats and scowls couldn’t get those guys to move once one of them froze. The word got around quickly among the Korean agents, and soon more and more of them played this ‘I don’t want to jump’ game with us. I fixed that problem quickly. I had one of my maintenance people insert a pin in the bottom of each seat. The pins had cables attached to them which led to the jump master. Then, when the agents didn’t want to jump, he pulled the pins. The seats dropped, and so did the agents. The word soon got out among the agents, and the problem went away.
“Of course we had our fair share of double agents. On a mission deep over North Korea, I was flying a C-47, and one of the agents had two bandoliers of hand grenades slung across his chest. As he was preparing to jump, the two jump masters standing to his left and right, he yanked a grenade off one of the bandoliers, pulled the pin, and threw the grenade into the aircraft. The jump master, who had made three jumps in World War II behind enemy lines, cut the agent’s throat with his knife as he was falling away from the aircraft. The assistant jump master grabbed the live grenade and threw it on top of the falling agent, who exploded in a violent flash. I saw the explosion, looking out the window, but had no idea what had transpired.
“In April 1953, just weeks before the armistice was signed on July 27, I attempted one final rescue mission on the spur of the moment—something you should never do. I was walking into base operations when a navy captain I knew spotted me and hollered, ‘I have a pilot down. Will you go and get him?’ Without hesitation I responded, ‘I’m gone.’ Off we went, just north of Panmunjom. When I got into the area, I could see the wreckage of the fighter still burning fiercely, emitting black swaths of smoke. No sign of the pilot. I dropped the nose of the C-47 until I got down to treetop level, clipping the tops of the trees with my propellers. The ground fire was intense. I tried several times, but it was no good. I couldn’t locate the pilot and had to abandon the mission. When I landed at Kimpo, the navy captain met me on the flight line. He walked around my aircraft and exclaimed, ‘I’ve never seen an aircraft with so many holes.’”
Dave Taylor in front of his aircraft, 1953.D. Taylor.
It was late in the afternoon, but there was one more story Dave Taylor had to get off his chest. He smiled broadly as he told it. “The Chinese had noise-actuated searchlights,” he confided, breaking into loud laughter. “They were almost impossible to get away from once they had a track on you. I figured there had to be a solution to that problem. What I did was to fly really tight turns, flying one engine at max power while powering down the other, slamming in opposite rudder, and while the maximum sound traveled in one direction, I traveled in another. I repeated that trick several times until I had the searchlights going all over the place, unable to track me. Then I let them have several of my presentos, and that was the end of the Chinese sound-tracking searchlights.” Dave laughed loudly.
Dave Taylor went on to serve in the early days of the Vietnam War, at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. Serving in the famed Triple Nickel, 555th Fighter Squadron, on Okinawa, he moved its F-102 fighters as well as a squadron of C-130s into position in South Vietnam. He bedded them down without a mobility plan or any kind of preplanned support, quite a feat for one lone air force colonel. “I told my sergeants, if I get there and run out of anything, I’ll come back and hunt you down and kill you. I didn’t run out of anything.” Before Colonel Taylor left Vietnam, he checked out in the F-4C, which replaced the F-102. He had come a long way from flying B-17 bombers at speeds of 170 knots to flying supersonic jet aircraft. Upon his retirement in 1972, after having carried the American flag proudly and valiantly in Europe, Korea, and again in Vietnam, Colonel David M. Taylor retired to his farm on the other side of Charlottesville, Virginia. At the age of eighty, Dave stands tall and straight, and his penetrating blue eyes haven’t lost their twinkle. In a rare tribute to this courageous airman, in 1972, the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, General John D. Ryan, presented Colonel Taylor with a personal letter of appreciation for his many services to his country and to the U.S. Air Force. The boy from Mississippi never knew what awaited him when he helped gas up those Ford trimotors in 1935.
Part 3
Strategic Reconnaissance
Had the American public known about the ongoing “secret air war” between the two super-powers they would have been even more in despair than many already were about the state of the world.
Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works
The second MiG-17 made his firing pass, and I don’t care who knows, it was scary watching tracers go over and under our aircraft. This guy had almost come up our tailpipes. Carl Holt had turned around to operate our tail guns after the first MiG shot at us. It was typical for the two remotely controlled 20mm cannons not to fire. I told Holt he’d better kick them or something, because if our guns don’t fire the next SOB would come directly up our tailpipes.
Hal Austin, RB-47E pilot
Strategic aerial reconnaissance during the Cold War years, including the ove
rflight of Soviet territory, was a necessary act of desperation and reflected an inability to obtain information by other means. The information gained from such operations was vital to American policy makers and to the defense community at large. Without this information, often obtained at great risk to the air crews, it was impossible to develop the proper force size and mix of weapons to contain the Soviet military juggernaut or, if need be, to confront it and prevail. Reconnaissance flights were largely conducted by long-range aircraft of the Strategic Air Command, a command known for its secrecy and high level of security. Every planner and crew member involved in reconnaissance operations was sworn to secrecy. The battle for information along the periphery and at times over the Soviet Union and the Chinese communist mainland was mostly unknown to the American public. Losses were accepted as a part of doing business.
By 1948 America’s senior military leaders no longer had any doubt that the Soviet Union represented a major threat to the United States. The Berlin blockade had clearly demonstrated Soviet intentions in that part of the world. To make matters worse, in September 1949 a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying off the Kamchatka Peninsula picked up signs of radioactivity. The Soviets had exploded an atomic device. The United States and its allies clearly would soon find themselves threatened by atomic-bomb-carrying Soviet aircraft. In Asia, developments were even more ominous. Chinese communist forces were on the verge of completing their conquest of mainland China, and a belligerent North Korea was petitioning Stalin to let it conquer the south. Although the United States viewed these developments with concern and had helped to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in an effort to contain Soviet pressures in Europe, military strength had not grown commensurate with the threat. The air force was organizing the Strategic Air Command under the driving leadership of General Curtis E. LeMay, but even he had to make do with aging B-29 bombers. The air force of the future was evolving.
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