by Colin Downes
If you turn to her and say – ‘Ojo-san dozo’;
Well: you’re getting just a little Nipponese!
The only way I could get my pay was to collect it from the British Embassy in Tokyo, and I made this the reason to have more than my fair share of the ferry flights. In hitching an airlift to Tokyo and back I saw quite a lot of ‘Nippon – Land of the Rising Sun’ as opposed to ‘The Chosen – Land of the Morning Calm’. I considered myself fortunate to take advantage of this concession, and I was also fortunate in my contacts with the US Marines Corps. Shortly after my arrival in Korea I renewed my friendship with Major Willie Newendorp who was in my flight on 41 Squadron while he was on exchange with the RAF. He was the squadron executive officer of a fighter-bomber squadron flying F-9F Panthers at K-3 on the east coast. I visited him a couple of times at K-3, meeting some interesting reservists serving with the Marines, including the great baseball player, Ted Williams, and Woody Woodbury, a popular pianist and entertainer. One amusing reserve pilot on the squadron from Brooklyn had a fund of stories about New York and New Yorkers that he recounted with a broad Brooklyn accent. It appeared that a true native of Brooklyn had the same type of humour and sense of the ridiculous as a genuine London Cockney. One amusing tale that he swore was factual occurred while he was on an F-9F Panther Jet squadron at Cherry Point in North Carolina when he volunteered to demonstrate a Panther Jet at an air show at La Guardia Airport in New York. He had done so in the hope of spending some time at home in nearby Brooklyn. Owing to an air movement restriction the aircraft was not allowed to fly into La Guardia and so the Panther Jet with its wings folded upright on an aircraft transporter travelled with its pilot to New York by road. The transporter, while negotiating a bend in the Holland Tunnel, caused the aircraft’s wing tips to strike the tunnel roof, creating a monumental traffic jam. Amid the chaos and the blaring of horns from irate motorists a tough looking New York traffic cop on a Harley Davidson motor cycle reached the scene of the accident and the following conversation took place:
Traffic cop, ‘OK, Flyboy, is this your plane?’
Marine pilot, ‘Yeah, I’m trying to get it to La Guardia.’
Traffic cop, ‘Ok, Leatherneck, let’s move it out of here!’
Marine pilot, ‘How the hell am I to do that with the wings stuck on the roof?’
Traffic cop [jabbing with his index finger], ‘Look, Buster, don’t give me any goddamn static. You flew the goddamned plane in here, now you fly the goddamn thing out of here or I’ll book you for obstruction!’
As a result of my contacts with the US Marine Corps I had an interesting liaison visit to HMS Ocean at the end of its west coast patrol in the Yellow Sea. My Marine friend arranged to fly me out to the carrier and while I was in the ward room, the pilot received instructions to return to base and did so without telling me, thinking I was remaining on board. It was all rather embarrassing being marooned aboard the carrier without being able to return to K-14. I therefore had no alternative other than to relax and enjoy the hospitality of the Royal Navy. The following day the Firefly squadron carried out their last mission to the Haeju escorted by the Sea Fury squadron, and I went along for the ride as a navigator. Our assisted take-off from HMS Ocean was interesting; it being my first and only experience of being catapulted into the air. My pilot briefed me to brace myself firmly between the instrument combing and the seat, but in my haste I ignored one of Newton’s laws of motion. The Firefly and I jerked forward violently on the release of the catapult and my face struck my camera now suspended in air from where I placed it before our launch. My goggles and oxygen mask probably saved me from a bloody nose or a broken tooth. Fortunately, the camera’s carrying strap became caught up in the process saving it from finishing up in the rear of the fuselage. Whatever reservations I may have had flying from K-14 I modified after that comparatively slow, uncomfortable, noisy and bumpy ride in the Firefly. The flight was uneventful but it gave me an entirely different perspective operating from a carrier and flying low level interdiction over the Haeju, than from my F-86 high above the ground combat. We landed back on the carrier in time for cocktails and an enjoyable lunch in the wardroom as HMS Ocean set course for Sasebo in western Kyushu.
My hosts apologized for the poor fare, explaining that towards the end of their tour of duty the provisions supplied under contract by the Chinese victualler in Hong Kong ran a bit thin. I replied that they would have suited us very well at K-14. The US Navy visitors to Royal Navy ships always commented on the frequencies of meals aboard with breakfast, followed by a morning coffee break, lunch, afternoon tea, cocktails and dinner. After duty on a ‘dry’ US Navy ship the Americans appreciated the difference of the sociable wardroom with the added conviviality of the Royal Navy warships, especially with the Fleet Air Arm aircrew relaxing after their tour of operations. Only the skipper, Captain Evans, abstained as he maintained his lonely vigil in his quarters with an occasional invitation to visit the wardroom. After a short call at Sasebo, the port the Royal Navy used as a base when supporting the UN forces in the Yellow Sea, we paid a brief visit to Nagasaki. This port was the secondary and alternative target to Kokura for the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. On 9 August 1945 the more powerful 10,0001b plutonium ‘Fat Man’ bomb exploded over the city at 1,500 feet ending the war with Japan. The effects of the bomb were contained within the surrounding hills but still resulted in around 70,000 immediate casualties, with many others to follow as a result of radiation sickness. Emperor Hirohito sued for peace the following day. We cruised through the Inland Sea of Japan, under perfect weather conditions, to Yokohama. It had been a thoroughly enjoyable liaison visit and confirmed my view that although I had great respect for the Fleet Air Arm I had no desire to ‘Fly Navy’; but I certainly appreciated ‘Living Navy’ when compared to our conditions ashore. HMS Ocean docked in Yokohama to a ceremonial welcome before returning to Hong Kong for a full replenishment of supplies and aircraft before redeployment. Despite an invitation to stay and enjoy the festivities before their departure, I decided I should move on to Tokyo to organize my return to Korea before my prolonged absence was viewed as AWOL.
My first concern was to collect some pay from the British Embassy and following this I went to Tachikowa AFB near Tokyo, for a flight back to Korea. A big double-decker Douglas C-124 Globemaster aircraft was about to leave for Korea and as this was the USAF’s latest and largest transport I thought it would be interesting to fly back on it. However, the dispatcher in charge had other ideas as I did not have the appropriate travel orders and would not allow me to board the aircraft. I returned to Tokyo to make alternative arrangements and heard that the aircraft had crashed into a rice paddy after take-off with a double engine failure. This was the worst transport aircraft accident during the Korean War with the largest loss of life. Investigations showed the cause was probably due to the second pilot feathering the inboard propeller by mistake when the outboard engine failed. It was a close call and I had reason to be grateful to the dispatcher who I viewed as officious and unsympathetic in following the inflexible travel order system of the USAF. When I did eventually arrive back at K-14 I found the ‘brass’ were a bit cool with my explanation for my prolonged absence and unimpressed with my narrow escape from terminating my USAF tour in a paddy field in Japan aboard the ‘Globemaster’. I did have the advantage of being merely on exchange with the USAF, and so consequently any misunderstanding passed without repercussions.
I was to spend two R&Rs with Newendorp in Japan during which I experienced the differences in the US Armed Services. I was particularly impressed by the US Marine Corps facilities at and around their main air base at Itami near Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. It always appeared to me that although the US Air Force had better aircraft to fly; as was the case between the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm; when it came to organization both navies had it over their respective air forces. I always felt an affinity when with the Marine Corps, and after the cease-fire during a visit to K-3 to see Ne
wendorp, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to fly the F-9F. Just one flight was enough for me to assess it as a good fighter-bomber, and it was as nice to fly as the F-80, however, it could not compare with the F-86 as a pilot’s aircraft. Bill Newendorp was a good and generous friend. We spent some very enjoyable times together, both in the UK and while on my secondment to the USAF in Korea. Consequently it was distressing for me to hear when I returned to the UK that he was killed in a flying accident shortly after returning to the United States.
The peace talks at Panmunjon, a small village at the west end of the front just below the 38th parallel, dragged on through the spring and early summer of 1953. I can never see or hear the name Panmunjon without associating it with the word panjandrum. The catalyst being Syngnam Rhee, President of the Republic of Korea, who behaved just like the Grand Panjandrum himself. President Rhee was against the peace talks and wanted the UN, which meant the US, to continue the war. As the talks appeared close to reality during the summer, the South Korean President carried out acts devised to create as much inconvenience to the US forces as possible. The main stumbling block in the discussions centred on the repatriation of the North Korean POWs and after the communists walked out of the talks, Syngman Rhee started to disrupt the negotiations with organized protest marches. The rent-a-crowd demonstrations soon escalated to full scale riots in Seoul with girl students placed in the front ranks to hinder the reaction of the US troops, while the South Korean troops and police were conspicuous by their absence. The disturbances spread outside Seoul to the US bases and at K-14 crowds of screaming girls blockaded the entrance to the base. All UN personnel were confined to their bases, and it was disconcerting to those of us at K-14 to have random shots fired at us from outside the perimeter fences.
In June 1953 in response to the stalled armistice negotiations regarding the repatriation of the North Korean POWs the Chinese struck at the South Korean front. Syngman Rhee’s response to the Chinese onslaught was to try to torpedo further negotiation by ordering the release of the North Korean POWs. At Inchon and Pusan the South Korean guards opened the gates of the prison camps and the North Koreans walked away. Out of the 27,000 POWs released only a few were recaptured and the rest being Korean faded into the countryside. Following the release of the North Korean POWs saboteurs cut the railway line from K-14 to Inchon, the main port for Seoul a few miles to the south-west, necessitating much tighter security. The double barbed wire fences around the base had South Korean guards patrolling the outer fence and USAF guards patrolling the inner fence. My hut was close to the inner perimeter fence and next to the hut occupied by the wing commander and the three group commanders. One night I was awakened by gunfire and ran outside with my ‘45’ automatic and found that an American guard had shot dead an armed Korean attempting to cut through the inner fence. There were no South Korean guards in sight along the outer fence and there was nothing to distinguish the colonels’ hut from any of the others. The intention of the intruder is speculative, but if his mission was to assassinate the colonels he knew where to cut the wire to reach their hut. President Eisenhower visited Seoul and made a very generous offer of aid to the ROK that Syngman Rhee could not refuse. The USA agreed to a mutual security pact with the ROK, long term economic aid and a $200,000,000 down payment for the expansion of the ROK army to twenty divisions. The disturbances calmed down and the armistice negotiations continued until the cease-fire on 27 July 1953.
June produced the highest Mig count of the war and the last week of July saw a slackening of activity in the air war as the Migs pulled back to their bases around Mukden. Most of my missions involved reconnaissance flights with little or no opposition. By 27 July the 4th FIG claimed the most Mig kills, with my squadron, the 335th FIS, being the top scoring squadron of the Korean War. The new commanding officer of the 335th, Lieutenant Colonel Vermont Garrison, had reached a score of ten Mig-15s destroyed; the only pilot to claim ten kills in the Second World War and ten kills in the Korean War. Captain Lonnie Moore and the group commander, Colonel James Johnson who flew his missions with the 335th, also claimed ten Mig-15s destroyed. Major James Jabara and Captain Pete Fernandez of the 334th FIS each claimed fifteen Mig-15s destroyed, and only Captain Joseph McConnell of the 51st FIG beat these scores with sixteen Mig-15s claimed destroyed.
Captain Ralph Parr had claimed nine Mig-15s destroyed by the 27 July when he led a flight of four F-86s from the 335th on a reconnaissance sweep of all airfields in the Yalu area to check the disposition of Mig aircraft. I was flying as the second section leader and we flew with the big 200 gallon drop-tanks in order to cover all the airfields from the Chong-Chong River and the Sinanju/Anju airfields along the west coast to the mouth of the Yalu River. Around the Antung/Sinuiju complex were five airfields on both sides of the Yalu, and further north was the big Mig base of Feng-Cheng in Manchuria. Flying at 45,000 feet with no sightings of Migs on the airfields or reports of any Mig activity, we turned east towards the Suiho Dam and Tuan-Tien, an airfield in Manchuria north of the Suiho Dam. We had by now dropped our tanks and when turning over the Tuan-Tien airbase back towards the Yalu river I spotted an aircraft low down heading north-east from the Suiho lakes. I called the ‘bogey’ but Parr did not pick it up and fearful I should miss it against the rugged mountains I called ‘lock-on’ to keep it in sight and rolled over with my wingman into a dive to identify the aircraft, calling on Parr’s section to provide top cover. On reaching 10,000 feet I identified the ‘bogey’ as an IL-12 flying at about 6,000 feet. The mountain tops were around 3,000 – 4,000 feet and as I closed on the aircraft at a reduced speed, to my surprise Parr passed me and closing to short range opened fire. The aircraft started smoking from both engines and went into a shallow dive until it crashed into the mountainside and exploded. On the debriefing Parr claimed his tenth aircraft destroyed, duly confirmed by his gun camera film and the rest of the flight, making it the last hurrah in the air battle and Parr the eleventh double ace of the Korean War.
The signing of the armistice occurred at 10.00 am on the 27 July with the cease-fire to take effect twelve hours later on 28 July. On the evening of the 27 July the whole of the 4th Fighter Group diverted to K-3 (Pohang), a Marine Corps base 150 nm to the south on the east coast. The deployment was to forestall any last minute attack on K-14 by the Communists before the cease-fire. We returned the following day to find that not even a ‘Bed-Check Charlie’ had paid us a visit. The shooting war was over and we were virtually back where it had all started four years before.
Two days later 5th Air Force conducted an inquiry at K-14 in response to a protest lodged at the United Nations by the Soviets into the shooting down of an unarmed civil IL-12 transport aircraft over Manchuria while on a flight from Port Arthur to Vladivostok. The US admitted shooting down a military IL-12 over North Korea and denied any infringement of Manchurian airspace. It was very obvious from the Soviet protest in the UN that the IL-12 aircraft was carrying important and high ranking passengers onboard who were in all probability Russian, or Chinese. The routeing of the flight so close to the war zone border was strange especially without a fighter escort, instead of flying to Vladivostok via Mukden, 100 miles north of the border. It seemed likely to me that the important passengers were viewing the big hydro-electric plants along the Yalu, of which the Suiho Dam was the biggest, supplying power to China and North Korea. The constant attacks by the USAF on the hydro-electric power sources severely damaged the industrial capability of North Korea, making the country dependent upon military supplies from either China or the Soviet Union. I often wondered about the consequences had I attacked the IL-12 instead of Parr, but under the circumstances I do not think I should have attacked a transport aircraft that far into Manchuria. As it was there was no international investigation and Parr was granted double ace status with ten confirmed kills.
In viewing the F-86 v Mig-15 combat during the Korean War and assessing the ‘numbers game’, there is the inevitable query regarding the kill-to-loss ratio a
nd the ‘aces’. Air combat started in the First World War and the politicians quickly saw a way of boosting a sagging national morale by firing the public imagination with the propagation of the image of knights of the air engaged in mortal combat. The media has continued the myth of a mano-a-mano concept of aerial combat by the fighter pilots ever since. Such propaganda was largely fantasy and is not supported by statistics, either in the First World War or in the succeeding air wars. The relevant national authorities claim not to recognize the established status of ‘ace’ and the respective unofficial definition of an ace varied. The generally accepted definition of a ‘kill’ required confirmation of an enemy aircraft destroyed. To some that meant an enemy fighter aircraft shot down in aerial combat. To others it meant any aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground. The establishment of a kill requires confirmation of aircraft wreckage examined on the ground, the enemy pilot baling out, or later, ejecting from the aircraft; and the disintegration of the aircraft in flight by an independent witness and the gun camera film. Following these requirements a pilot credited with the personal destruction of five enemy aircraft in flight became an ‘ace’.
Following the First and Second World Wars the claims for aircraft destroyed by both sides were found to be exaggerated by a factor of at least two and in some cases as much as three. There was a distinct grey area in relation to the claims in the First World War where the term ‘victory’ was applied to such claims as ‘driven out of control’, ‘driven down’ and the ‘shared’ claims. Such claims were added to the total of ‘kills’. Although it is proved beyond doubt that the claims for aircraft destroyed in both World Wars was well in excess of the actual number of aircraft destroyed, the ‘kills’ credited to the aces remain as claimed. It is, therefore, left to personal assessment to establish the discrepancies of the claims and very obviously some ‘kills’ claimed can be reassessed as ‘probable’, ‘damaged’ or bogus claims.