Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  “That’s great, sir,” Jock replied. “But will they be bringing real tanks with them, like Shermans and Pershings? Not just Chaffees?”

  “Let’s hope so, Colonel. Let’s hope so.”

  “One more thing, sir,” Jock said. “Those two bridges over the Kap Ch’on in the airfield sector…do I have your permission to blow them?”

  “Our engineer capability is extremely limited, Miles, I don’t know how—”

  “I don’t mean using the engineers, sir. I’m going to have the Air Force do it.”

  “All right, whatever works, Colonel. Go ahead and blow them up.”

  As the general drove away, Jock told Patchett, “Get Sergeant Moon to recon some good positions around that airfield for those M19s on the double. We don’t need them exposed on all that flat ground. They’ll get shot up before they can do us any good.”

  “Amen to that, sir,” Patchett replied. Then, grease pencil in hand, he stepped up to the map and asked, “How do you want to do this, sir?”

  “Brand and Harper’s battalions up, Appling’s battalion back.”

  “Outstanding, sir,” Patchett replied. “I’ll get it written up for the S3 right away. Ops order will be out in thirty minutes.”

  Sean Moon walked into the CP. He seemed amused as he told Jock, “There’s about a dozen of the most scraggly assed troops I ever seen standing outside, sir. They say you offered them jobs in this regiment.”

  Jock smiled; some of those GIs he’d come across in town yesterday—those who’d fled their units—were finally coming around. They’d thought it over and decided they had the best chance of staying alive with the 26th.

  “Yes, I did, Sergeant,” Jock said. “They’re late of the Seventeenth and Thirty-Third, I believe.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they told me, sir.”

  “Good. Let’s put them to work. I’m sure Sergeant Patchett has a place for each and every one of them.”

  Patchett smiled and said, “Damn right I do, sir. And not a moment too soon. But since they ain’t rightly ours, when do you want to inform the other regiments we got their stragglers?”

  “Don’t bother, Top. I already spoke with the other regimental commanders. Their attitude? Save us the trouble and just shoot those deserters yourself. ”

  Patchett let out a whistle, the sound of a bomb falling. Then he said, “I reckon I’ll go ahead and list them on our morning report up to Division. Maybe then their mamas won’t be getting no telegrams about sons who ain’t dead yet.”

  *****

  Banjo Flight had refueled, rearmed, and was back in the air just after 1300 hours. They had their mission in hand before breaking ground: destroy the two bridges over the Kap Ch’on River immediately west of Taejon.

  This was one of those times when Tommy really missed flying the P-47. Had he been in one now instead of this F-51, there was no doubt in his mind that his preferred method of attack against a bridge would be dive bombing. But the F-51’s gunsight wasn’t set up to double as a bombsight, as the P-47’s was. Worse, there was no tech support in theater yet to make it so. Bridges were point targets; you needed to be very accurate in your aim if you expected to hit it. Without the help of that multi-role gunsight, you had little chance of a direct hit.

  It’s pretty ironic, too, Tommy thought, since the Mustang airframe began life as the A-36 dive bomber. But once they replaced that Allison engine with a Merlin, it became a whole different airplane, a badly needed high-altitude, long-range interceptor that wasn’t about to be wasted doing ground attack when the P-47s could do it better, anyway.

  So it’s going to be five-inch rockets, Tommy told himself, fired from a hell of a lot closer than usual. I’m not sure why we even bothered to load the bombs.

  Let’s hope the triple-A isn’t too bad.

  *****

  Triple-A over the targeted bridges wasn’t the big problem; the dense clouds of smoke wafting across the Kap Ch’on were. A just-finished airstrike against KPA positions on the west bank had dropped so much napalm that smoke from the resulting fires—propelled by a northwest wind—was largely obscuring the river and its bridges. The lower the ships of Banjo Flight flew, the worse the visibility would be.

  Tommy told his pilots, “Let’s stay with the plan and use the rockets. If you can’t see the target well enough to launch, then don’t. Attack out of the north so the span of the bridge gives the biggest target. Pete, you and I will take the south bridge. Al, you and Ted take the north one.”

  Coming out of their orbit over the Taejon Airfield, they flew a few miles north. Tommy and Sublette broke formation first, rolling hard left and then diving down to begin their target run. DeLuca and Waleska began their run twenty seconds later.

  Following the river wasn’t difficult, even through all the smoke. The narrow ribbon of sparkling blue water painted a vivid stripe through the colorless landscape. But Tommy, flying lead, was startled when the north bridge suddenly passed beneath him. He’d never seen it coming.

  Sublette was surprised, too, when he flew over that same bridge just seconds later. He asked Tommy, “How far out did you see that damn bridge?”

  “I didn’t, Pete. Couldn’t see it until I was right on top of it.”

  The roughly three miles to the south bridge would click off in about a minute of flying. They were at 400 feet above the river.

  “I’m going lower,” Tommy told Sublette.

  “You sure you want to do that, boss? In this pea soup?”

  “No…but we don’t have much of a choice if we plan on shooting that bridge.”

  Thirty seconds had clicked off the clock on the instrument panel. Tommy couldn’t see the bridge at all.

  Fifteen more seconds and I’ve got no choice but to abort.

  Five of those seconds clicked off. Then a few more…

  And then he saw the outline of the bridge, its span a gray line etched into the murk.

  “I’ve got it!” he told Sublette.

  Just need to nose down a little bit…

  The center of the span slid beneath the gunsight’s pip.

  He fired four rockets.

  Pulling up sharply, he told Sublette, “Rockets away. Clear.”

  He could feel his ship tremble as the rockets impacted the target.

  Above the smoke now and turning back to the north, he could see Sublette’s ship emerge above the dingy shroud obscuring the bridge.

  “Did I hit it?” Tommy asked.

  “I think you did, boss.”

  “How about you? Did you hit it?”

  “Who the hell knows?”

  At the north bridge, Banjo Two and Three were having better luck. “Yeah, it was smoky as all hell,” DeLuca reported, “but it looks like we both got good hits. I think we shot out the center span.”

  Tommy asked, “Got rockets left for another pass?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then do it again. Good luck.”

  As Tommy flew north to prepare for the next run, he could see the reason for DeLuca’s optimism: the smoke from the napalm fires had thinned around the north bridge, greatly improving visibility. It certainly did look like they’d already rendered it useless.

  “Wow, you can see stuff pretty good up this way,” Tommy told DeLuca. “But that means the triple-A can see you, too. Change direction on your next run. Come out of the south. We’ll hold until you’re clear so we don’t end up nose to nose.”

  “Roger, boss. You want us to unload these bombs, too? Do a little glide bombing, maybe?”

  “Negative. You’ll just be throwing them away. Save them…we might need them later.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The visibility hadn’t improved around the south bridge. If anything, the smoke had gotten thicker. After their second low-level attack with rockets, Tommy and Sublette still weren’t sure if they’d knocked out the bridge.

  And now they were out of rockets. They were down to the two 500-pound bombs each aircraft carried and their .50-caliber machi
ne guns.

  But machine guns would not bring down a bridge.

  “I’m going to dive bomb it,” Tommy said. “At least from up high, I might get enough of a look at the damn thing to actually hit it.”

  Sublette replied, “Despite the paltry odds of success?”

  “Yeah, despite the odds. Let’s go upstairs.”

  They’d have to climb to 8,000 feet to begin a dive-bombing run. It would take almost four minutes and a lot of gas to get there.

  *****

  Sean had selected several points on the airfield to deploy the M19 Bofors vehicles. Each provided a hull-down firing position with decent fields of fire covering not only a portion of the airfield but the river itself and its far bank. The firing points provided a defense in depth, too; the vehicles could pull back, if needed, to positions farther from the river, with minimal exposure while in transit. To ensure against their getting lost in the dark, the routes to those fallback positions were marked with signposts: crude arrows atop wooden stakes posted at regular intervals.

  “Consider these bastards forty-millimeter machine guns,” Sean told the first M19 crew as he led them to their initial firing position. “I got it set up so you and the other M19 will have interlocking fire across our whole front, once I get his ass on firm ground and into position.”

  “What’s with all the smoke over the river, Sarge?” the gun chief, a staff sergeant, asked. “How are we supposed to see anything going on on the other side?”

  “It’s just napalm,” Sean replied. “It’ll burn off in a little bit. Don’t sweat it. Nothing’s gonna happen for a little while, anyway. The Air Force just kicked the shit out of the gooks. They gotta nurse their wounds.”

  Then he left the gun crew to retrieve the second M19. The driver of its transporter, a flatbed semi-trailer, had misunderstood the directions given him and missed a turn. The rig was now stuck fast in swampy ground just short of the airfield. If the M19 attempted to drive off the flatbed now, it would be mired just as securely; the regiment had no recovery vehicle capable of pulling a twenty-ton M19 out of the muck.

  Before Sean had left to emplace the first Bofors vehicle, he’d organized a team to build a corduroy road leading out of the swamp using railroad ties they’d scavenged all around Taejon. Now, as he returned, the road they’d built—all sixty feet of it—was about to be put to the test.

  “I don’t know, Sarge,” the three-striper he’d left in charge of the effort said. “I think the whole mess is gonna sink even deeper once the vehicle’s on top of it.”

  “Not if you laid ’em like I told you, numbnuts. Let’s see what you did here.”

  Sean walked into the marsh along the wooden roadway, much of it awash beneath an inch or two of the muddy water. But he liked what he saw; they’d used two layers of ties, each layer at a right angle to the other. Even if it sunk another foot or two under the weight of the M19, it would still provide a solid if submerged road surface for the vehicle’s tracks.

  “You see what I mean, Sarge?” the three-striper said, kicking some of the brackish water above the ties. “It’s sinking already.”

  Sean gave him a chilling look. “You ever done this before, pal?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Well then, my friend, you’re about to learn something.”

  He signaled to the M19 driver to crank her up.

  *****

  Moon’s Menace V had reached 8,000 feet. Tommy tried to shake off the chill the climb had brought on; the sweat beneath his flying clothes now felt like an ice water bath.

  He put her into a steep turn to look straight down at the bridge over her left wing.

  Son of a bitch! I can see that bridge just fine, even with the smoke.

  Now all I’ve got to do is hit the damn thing.

  He told Sublette, “I’m going to swing around and come out of the west, right along the axis of the span. That’ll give me a longer target, at least. Let me know if I score.”

  “Roger, boss. Good luck. Remember, you’ll have the wind behind you.”

  One quick orbit put his ship at the IP—the initial point—of the dive.

  He pushed her nose over and began the steep plummet.

  *****

  From their firing point several miles away, the M19 crew had watched the two unidentified aircraft circling high in the sky.

  “You got a make on those planes?” the gunner asked his chief.

  The chief didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure.

  He was the only man in his crew who’d served in the last war. But he’d only seen action in the Philippines, in an area where Mustangs were rarely, if ever, stationed.

  To his eye, those circling planes could be anything, even Russian-made.

  And then one of them started down in a screaming dive.

  Holy shit! The bastard’s coming right for us!

  *****

  The dive to the release point at 3,000 feet would take less than a minute. In that brief time, Tommy tried to envision what the sight picture would look like had his gunsight been set up as a bombsight.

  I’ve done this a hundred times before in the jug. When I was lined up right, it always looked like the bomb would drop well short of the aiming point.

  The wind’s behind me…and I’ve got to fudge the lateral acceleration of the bomb. I’ll aim for the near end of the bridge…no, no, aim short of the bridge. You always underestimate the lead.

  Okay, looks good.

  Drop one bomb or both?

  Dropping just one gives me another chance if I miss.

  But dropping both at once gives me two chances to hit it simultaneously.

  Passing through 4,000 feet, he flipped the salvo selector to both.

  A few seconds after that, he pickled the bombs away.

  He was surprised how much force on the stick it took to pull the Mustang out of the dive. For a ship that had been so agile in every other maneuver, now it felt sluggish—even reluctant—to regain level flight.

  Live and learn, I guess. But I still wish I was in a jug.

  Since he’d been so gentle on the stick at first, the pullout had taken longer and his ship sunk farther. Typically, you’d be level at 1,500 feet. Moon’s Menace V was at 800 feet before her descent was halted, racing toward the airfield at over three hundred miles per hour.

  *****

  Maybe if it hadn’t been for the napalm smoke, the crew of the M19 might’ve realized there was a bridge just a little over a mile away across that river. Maybe they would’ve seen the bombs fall away from Moon’s Menace V toward that bridge.

  Maybe then they would’ve realized she was a friendly aircraft…

  And they wouldn’t have begun throwing up a barrage of 40-millimeter shells at her.

  *****

  Tommy thought he’d flown into a wall. The force of the impact drove him hard against his seat harness, violently driving his chin against his collarbone. Had his tongue been between his teeth, he would’ve bitten it off. He felt like every inch of his body had just absorbed a colossal punch.

  The shock lasted barely a second. Suddenly everything sounded so strange; the snarl of her Merlin engine was gone, replaced by the howl of a demonic wind. The instrument panel looked as if someone had been kicking it apart from the back side.

  As he looked through the windshield, a dark line kept rapidly sweeping through his field of vision, like the shutter of a camera closing and opening. It took a moment to realize that the sweeping line was what was left of the propeller, its four blades reduced to just one windmilling survivor.

  It took another moment to realize the canopy was gone.

  At least the flight controls still seemed to work. But without engine power, there was nothing to do but sink rapidly to the ground below. The gear-up crash landing in the marsh was like a ditching, except the plane didn’t sink more than a few inches. Once she slid to a stop on her belly, Tommy, with a calmness that only comes from experience, released his harness, put the gun switch to safe,
switched off the ship’s battery, retrieved the photo of Sylvie Bergerac from the shattered instrument panel, and started to open the canopy.

  Then he laughed at himself as he remembered there was no need to open it; the canopy was already gone. Climbing out of the ship, he found where at least one piece of that canopy had gone: a chunk of plexiglass had penetrated the hard shell of his flight helmet, standing straight up from the top like the spike of a Prussian pickelhaube.

  Had the sharp plastic penetrated the helmet another half an inch, it would’ve pierced his skull.

  Several GIs in a jeep were shouting at him from the edge of the marsh. He was too far away to make out a word they were saying but started slogging toward them. Once within shouting distance, a sergeant yelled, “Holy shit, sir, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just swell. Who the hell shot me down?”

  “The guy who Sergeant Moon’s killing right now.”

  “Sergeant Moon? Sergeant Sean Moon?”

  “That’s the guy, sir.”

  “Can you take me to him?”

  “I don’t think he’ll need your help killing that idiot, Major.”

  “No, that’s not the reason, Sergeant. He’s my brother.”

  *****

  The first thing Sean said to his younger brother was, “We gotta get you outta here, Half.”

  Half: a nickname Tommy hadn’t heard in quite a while. Friends and family had called him that most of his life, with never a hint of negative connotation about it. It just seemed preordained that a very short kid—and now a short man—named Moon would have it hung on him.

  But friends and family had been scarce the last few years. He wasn’t as close to his peacetime squadron mates as he’d been to those during the last war. Trips home to visit family in Brooklyn were few and far between when stationed in the States and impossible while overseas. Sean had stayed on in Europe until Forty-Eight, three years after Tommy had left, and they’d only crossed paths once, very briefly, in those ensuing two years before this chance encounter on an airfield in South Korea.