Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  He was referring to the bombs they would’ve been carrying had they not left Japan with drop tanks on the pylons instead. Those tanks had been emptied thirty minutes ago and jettisoned into the mountains to become more scrap metal in the detritus of war. Alongside their now-empty pylons, each ship carried six air-to-ground rockets, HVARs just like the Navy Corsairs carried, along with the six .50-caliber machine guns in the wings.

  “Banjo Flight from Banjo Leader,” he called, “join up on me. Attack in echelon right from their eight o’clock. That’ll keep the dust out of our eyes. We’ll target the lead tank and the three behind her on this pass. Two HVARs per pass.”

  Jock broke in, asking, “You’re planning on more than one pass?”

  “Yeah, why not? They’re not going to be shooting at us anymore, right?”

  “Looks that way, Banjo Leader,” Jock replied and then told himself, I like working with this guy, whoever he is. He sounds like he really knows his onions.

  *****

  Sean Moon’s jeep was equipped with an extra radio that covered the fighter control frequencies. He’d been listening with great interest to the aerial attacks on the Korean tanks, knowing every tank they killed was one less that would threaten the convoy.

  But there was something about Banjo Leader’s voice:

  If that Brooklyn mouth ain’t my brother Tommy, I’ll be a son of a bitch.

  Suddenly, the convoy began to slow. Within seconds, it had come to a halt. Sean had already pulled his jeep out of its slot near the tail end and raced to the front. When he got there, he saw why they were stopped: the highway was clogged from soft shoulder to soft shoulder with civilian refugees on foot, along with their livestock and wheeled carts, all trying to flee south, away from the KPA.

  *****

  Banjo Flight’s first run stopped two T-34s in their tracks. That left six more, which just kept racing toward the highway. They were less than a thousand yards from it now.

  “Time for round two, boys,” Tommy told his pilots. “Let’s cut the approach tight. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  As the spotter plane reversed direction to keep the attack in view, Jock noticed his convoy was stopped.

  The T-34s must have noticed it, too. The tank now in the lead fired its main gun toward the highway.

  *****

  Sean hadn’t wasted much time at the head of the column. Colonel Lewis was standing there, impatient but doing nothing, as the ROK captain who was their interpreter tried to order the refugees to clear the road. He was having no luck.

  “Colonel,” Sean said, “didn’t they ever tell you that a convoy doesn’t stop for shit?”

  “But…all these people,” Lewis mumbled.

  “Fuck ’em,” Sean replied. “Run ’em over if they don’t move. That’s one of the reasons this Chaffee is up front. We gotta get going right fucking now or those gook tanks are gonna be on our asses in a minute.”

  As if to make his point for him, the round fired by the T-34 streaked over their heads, exploding against the ridge a hundred yards away.

  “But the Air Force is taking care of those tanks,” Lewis protested.

  “They’re just flyboys, Colonel, not miracle workers. If you want to live on faith, that’s swell. But the rest of us gotta get outta here right fucking now. That guy only missed because he fired on the move. If he stops and aims…”

  As if he’d just gotten the best idea in the world, Lewis offered, “We can just go around these refugees.” Then he signaled the lead Chaffee to do just that.

  “Hold up, Colonel,” Sean said. “That ain’t gonna work. You see how soft that fucking ground is? It’s like every drop of water that drains off these hills ends up here. Looks like they built this road through what used to be a rice paddy. All the wheeled vehicles will sink up to their hubs the minute they leave the pavement.”

  Lewis dithered for another moment and then turned to the ROK captain. But the captain wasn’t there; he’d fled into the crowd of refugees, running south as fast as he could. It had only taken one round from a KPA tank to motivate him.

  “Ain’t that fucking typical?” Sean said. “A couple more steps and he’ll lose that uniform he’s wearing, too, and blend right into the crowd. So what’s it gonna be, Colonel Lewis? We move? Or we die?”

  *****

  Banjo Flight’s second pass netted two more T-34s. That left four still moving. Three were within six hundred yards of the American convoy; they’d turned parallel to the highway, driving south as if intent on getting to the head of the American column. The trailing T-34 had, for some inexplicable reason, stopped and then reversed course back to the direction from which it had come.

  It would be nearly a minute before the F-51s were in position for another run. It would be their last one with rockets; each ship had only two remaining.

  In that minute, the T-34s could be right on top of the stalled convoy.

  *****

  The radio traffic had become a chaotic, non-stop stream of critical information. Sean thought he’d distilled it all to its essence: Colonel Miles wanted to integrate the air attack against the T-34s with direct fire from the howitzer battery and the Chaffees. But it would require careful coordination. They couldn’t be engaging the KPA tanks at the same time; there was too good a chance of errant artillery fire downing one of the aircraft.

  And if an HVAR from an F-51 sailed high over its target, it just might strike the convoy.

  But if it was coordinated by someone who had his eyes on everything—like Colonel Miles—there wouldn’t be much chance of friendly fire accidents.

  Sean could hear it in Colonel Miles’ voice: he was losing his patience with the artillery battery commander. They’d yet to fire a shot. Now, as the F-51s swung around for yet another pass, the window for artillery fire was closing.

  Though it was still on the move, one of the T-34s fired again.

  That round struck the gun mantle of the Chaffee in the middle of the column, knocking her main gun out of action and wounding three of her crew.

  Sean slalomed his jeep through the line of stalled vehicles to get to the battery at the rear of the convoy. He didn’t have to drive more than halfway down the line to see what the problem was: the battery’s deuces had pulled off the road to position the guns for engaging the tanks. That involved making a tight U-turn in the mucky ground.

  All six trucks had tried the move simultaneously, but none of them had made it through the U-turns. All six were stuck axle-deep in mud. The howitzers they pulled fared little better. Manhandling the mired howitzers in time to do any good was out of the realm of possibility.

  “Forget the howitzers,” Sean radioed to Jock. “One Chaffee knocked out, too.”

  *****

  Tommy Moon could imagine what the commanders of those Korean tanks were thinking:

  If we stop to shoot accurately, we’ll be easy pickings for the Yankee airplanes.

  If we get too close to the Yankee convoy, soldiers will climb on our hulls and destroy us with grenades.

  Since the T-34s were now running parallel to the convoy, it made aerial attacks on their flanks very difficult. Hitting them from the east ran the risk of launching HVARs or .50-caliber bullets into the GI convoy. Hitting them from the west involved a steep and sudden descent after clearing a ridge. Pulling out of that descent left almost no time to aim; you had little enough time to get a good sight picture even on a flat and stable approach to the target. And if your rounds went short, you hit the convoy.

  That left only a head-on or rear approach to the tanks. Either one required another adjustment of Banjo Flight’s position—and more precious seconds.

  Think back to Europe, Tommy. How many tanks did you ever destroy in a head-on attack against their thickest armor?

  He could never know the answer for sure. But he knew it was probably close to zero.

  But an attack from the rear?

  Everything about it, the thinner armor, the easier firing geometry, the lesser
likelihood of being seen by your quarry, made an attack from behind the best choice.

  “Banjo Two from Leader, you lead Three and Four in trail and hit them in the ass. I’ll mop up anything you miss. Break on three. One…two…BREAK.”

  *****

  The convoy had started to crawl slowly forward again. That made getting back to its head difficult for Sean, who had to weave the jeep through a chain of vehicles whose spacing rippled like an accordion. When he was adjacent to the deuce mounting the forward-most quad .50, he saw her panicked crew taking aim at the T-34s.

  Screaming at the top of his lungs, he tried to get their attention: “DON’T FIRE. YOU WON’T DO SHIT TO THE TANKS AND YOU’LL SCARE OFF THE AIR FORCE.”

  The man on the trigger squeezed off a short burst before one of his crew, who’d had to lean over the moving truck’s side rail to hear what Sean was saying, finally stopped him.

  *****

  “Banjo Leader from Banjo Two, we’re still a ways out but I’m seeing tracers bouncing all over the place. I’m fixing to abort.”

  Sean broke in before his brother or Jock had a chance to key their mike. “Banjo Flight, Banjo Flight, this is Montana Four-Six. Negative on the tracers. We turned them off. The sky is yours. Let them gooks have it.”

  Tommy had been in the middle of an orbit, trading space for time before beginning his mop-up attack run. He hadn’t seen the tracers from the quad .50s.

  But he’d certainly recognized his big brother’s voice.

  A feeling crept over him that he hadn’t felt in five years, when in the skies over Czechoslovakia: Today, I’m not doing this for anybody but my brother. Not God, not country, not flag, and not Mister Truman.

  It’s just for Sean.

  *****

  Banjo Two’s rockets barely missed the lead tank.

  The three T-34s plowed forward, turrets traversed right, firing their sporadic, poorly aimed main guns toward the convoy. They’d added rounds from their coaxial machine guns, too, but those were as off target as the main guns.

  Then came Banjo Three. One of her rockets blew the trailing tank apart. A brilliant shot, it managed to penetrate her aft deck, igniting fuel and ammo simultaneously. The gun camera footage of her spectacular explosion would be one for the newsreels.

  Banjo Four made her pass. Her rockets brought the second tank to a halt as she shed both her damaged tracks. Her crew promptly abandoned her and started running east, away from the American convoy.

  The only T-34 still functioning pivoted hard left, centered her turret and proceeded to drive east, away from the highway. She slowed just enough for the crewmen of the disabled tank now on foot to clamber onto her deck. Then she accelerated away.

  “Montana Six from Banjo Leader, looks like we’ve got two rust buckets still on the loose. Which one do you want me to take care of? Only got enough rockets left for one.”

  Jock replied, “Banjo Leader, take that one with the passengers. She’s still too close for comfort. Keep an eye on the other one, too, in case she gets too close to my guys on foot.”

  “Roger,” Tommy replied. “Banjo Two, you come with me. Three and Four, go make life miserable for that other runner.”

  *****

  Tommy led his wingman in a tight orbit around the T-34 closest to Jock’s convoy. It was fleeing east at great speed; the crew that had bailed out was still clinging to her deck.

  “She can run, but she can’t hide,” Tommy said. “I’m going to shoot her from the rear—try to put one of these rockets right up her ass.”

  He rolled out of the orbit and began to bear down on the tank.

  Then she did something he wasn’t expecting: a rapid deceleration.

  “Dammit,” Tommy said as he overshot his release point without launching his last rockets. “Clever little bastard.”

  Flying well behind his leader, Banjo Two had the best view of what transpired next. “She’s stopped dead,” he said. “And we’ve got runners. A bunch of them. Must be the crew on her deck as well as the gooks inside.”

  “Well, ain’t that something?” Tommy said as he pulled his ship around for another look. “Maybe they threw their Russian tactics away and took a page from the old Wehrmacht book. Toward the end, the Krauts would usually ditch their tanks as soon as the jugs showed up.”

  “Yeah, so I heard,” Banjo Two replied. “How do you want to handle this?”

  “I’ll finish her off,” Tommy said. “You chase the track stars.”

  *****

  The other runner—the T-34 who’d fled the action a few minutes earlier—was having transmission trouble. It was getting harder by the minute for her driver to keep her moving. The only gears in which she could make steady forward progress were the two lower ones, which deafened her crew with the noise of the engine screaming at high rpm and produced a slow crawl of only a few miles per hour.

  The crew hadn’t dared to open their hatches with the threat of fighter-bombers still overhead. The lack of visibility in that buttoned-up tank accounted, perhaps, for why they’d driven straight into the midst of 26th Regiment’s foot soldiers.

  Just as they realized the vulnerability of their position—Americans were running in all directions around them; some might be on the hull already—the transmission failed with the piercing crunch and clatter of metal being fed to a shredder.

  The T-34 lurched to a stop.

  To the GIs, the fact that she stopped could only mean she was preparing to fire at them.

  Instead, the T-34 exploded with a ferocity that knocked them flat. Every hatch blew open with a violence and speed that belied their heavy weight. Nothing but roaring columns of flame and smoke escaped those hatches.

  As she lay burning from within, two F-51s streaked low overhead. They hadn’t harassed the T-34 with their machine guns, the only weapons they had left. They’d watched her blow up through their gunsights from a thousand yards away, as if they’d simply willed her destruction.

  Banjo Three reported back to his leader, “Somebody just blew her up. It sure as hell wasn’t us.”

  *****

  It was Patchett who’d led the 3.5-inch rocket crews that blew up that lone T-34. When he’d seen her coming back toward them, he radioed Colonel Brand that he’d engage the tank, but Brand had balked. “A bunch of tanks passed through this column before. One can pass through it again,” he’d replied. “Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage.”

  Patchett ignored him. He’d placed the rocket team with his forward scouting party after the initial parade of T-34s had passed through, cursing himself for not having them with him from the very beginning. When they saw the tank lurching back toward them, grinding her gears as if driven by a raw novice, he’d led them toward her down a narrow draw that offered some small amount of concealment.

  As she came closer, they were amazed and thankful her buttoned-up crew hadn’t seemed to notice them. They were less than twenty yards away when she’d driven past, and then—inexplicably—stopped.

  The kill had been almost too easy.

  There was no time to dwell on it, though. The column had to get moving again if it was to make Taejon before nightfall.

  When Colonel Brand caught up to Patchett, he was livid. “You disobeyed my order, Sergeant.”

  “What order would that be, sir?”

  “The one in which I told you not to engage. Actually, Sergeant, you disobeyed two orders: mine and Colonel Miles’, too.”

  “Hang on a second, sir,” Patchett replied. “Colonel Miles said don’t engage. He didn’t say don’t defend. Were we supposed to let that tank run us over all she damn pleased?”

  Before Brand could spit his irate reply, he was interrupted by his RTO. “First Battalion’s on the line, sir. They’ve got a casualty.”

  “A casualty? From what?”

  “From bad luck, apparently, sir. Colonel Bryant’s collapsed. Might be a heart attack. The medics got him on a stretcher.”

  *****

  The regiment’s convoy
was moving again, but its average speed was less than before. It was necessary now and then to slow down and bulldoze off the road the carts and animals of refugees who still hadn’t realized the Americans would do just that if they didn’t yield.

  The artillery battery wasn’t with them anymore, either. Its mired deuces and guns were being hauled out of the roadside muck by other trucks using recovery cables. Two F-51s from Banjo Flight orbited over the rescue operation, acting as scouts who could turn into protectors at a moment’s notice.

  The other two aircraft of Banjo Flight flew a wide orbit over the convoy and the foot column, providing the same service as their sister ships.

  Colonel Bryant was actually having a heart attack. It was Patchett who’d called Jock and advised that the man needed to be flown out or he’d never make it. That lifesaving thought had never occurred to Colonel Brand.

  Jock’s plane was getting low on fuel, anyway. He directed his pilot to land on a trail near the column, pick up Bryant, and evacuate him to the field hospital at Taejon. Jock would stay with the foot march. After refueling, the plane could return and pick him up again if sufficient daylight for flight operations remained.

  As they watched the little plane fly away with the ailing Bryant, Jock asked Patchett, “Give it to me in a nutshell, Patch…how’s it going?”

  Patchett rolled his eyes. “In a nutshell, sir? Pretty fucking awful. You and me gotta have ourselves one hell of a talk.”

  The spotter plane returned a little over an hour later, landing near the column as the shadows of late afternoon grew long. The convoy—including the artillery battery—had already reached the division CP at Taejon. The foot column still had about three miles to go—an hour of walking.

  Jock elected to stay with his men. He put the artillery FO onto the aircraft to act as airborne observer instead.