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I Fly The Night Skies Over Korea
Lt.Comdr. Franklin Metzner, USN
Night after night, often flying blind, our pilots hunt the Reds, dodge unmapped mountains, sweat through flack traps. The author, who himself has destroyed enemy trains and convoys, tells what air war is like in the pitch dark.
I am a Navy night flier. Professional men may respect and even admire the night flier, but most aviators shy like a frightened rooster when asked to volunteer for night work. To the average pilot, the night flier is a cross between a Kamikaze pilot and a hoot owl, and he wants no part of either.
Combat flying in the daytime is dangerous enough, but at least you can see what's coming. Add the inky blackness of a Korean night, steep sided mountain passes where instinct is your only road map, flying at treetop level winding mountain roads, and you get a few of the dangers that a night pilot has to face.
My introduction to the Korean brand of night flying was abrupt. A few weeks before, I had sailed from San Diego with Carrier Air Group 19, I was in charge of the small night-attack team assigned to the USS Princeton. We arrived off the Korean coast in December 1950, just in time to help bail the Marines out from around the Chosin Reservoir. Two nights later I sat above the evacuation forces at Hungnam watching the star shells burst over the beachhead as our troops poured into the seaport.
We learned a lot in those first few nights. To the average carrier pilot, mountains are something to admire as he flies past. To the night pilot, who gropes through the darkness placing his trust in an obsolete Japanese chart, mountains are crafty enemies that hide in clouds and ambush you.
Almost every night flight had its share of terrain-produced thrills. Before each flight I would pick out the best altitude for flight, considering the terrain and weather, and would blue pencil a circle around the highest mountains appearing on the chart. In that way I could climb up to avoid the peaks and coast down on the other side after I went past them. It was a good system except that at night my navigation was often five to ten miles off.
One night I sat above Chorwon, watching hundreds of communist trucks snake their way down a major road network. It was dark-not he normal darkness but the sticky, inky darkness that is all too common in Korea. This was my second hop of the night, and I could feel the fatigue creeping through me. I lined up on the headlights of the trucks below and planned my flight path so that I would finish up over the low range of hills my chart showed on the far side of the road.
I pushed over and began firing my 20-mm cannon. At 3000 feet I steepened my dive and began releasing bombs, then finished off the run with another burst of cannon fire. I pulled back on the stick and began to climb. As soon as my instruments showed I had enough altitude to miss the hilltops, I eased off on my rate of climb started a turn to see what I had bagged.
As I looked out, my heart misfired. Treetops loomed up not more then twenty feet off my left wing tip. The "low hills" on the chart were actually steep mountains and I was flying directly into them. Sheer panic grabbed me. Somehow I stopped my turn and did the only thing left to do-I poured on emergency power, pulled back on the stick and climbed the plane through the first half of a loop. Then as soon as my intuition told me the plane was on its back, I rolled over to a right side up position. But my intuition was wrong; I had waited too long and was now in a steep dive down the mountain. I pulled back on the stick again; zoomed skyward-this time away from the mountains-and flew out into the clear.
Except for troubles with the terrain, however, surprise always works in favor of the night flier. With one of my teammates, LT Atlee F. Clapp USN of Azura, California, I was flying under a low
layer of clouds one night when we spotted a series of truck convoys converging on a bridge at the edge of Chunchon. Each plane was loaded with two 1000-pound bombs, eight 250-pound bombs and four long burning million candlepower flares.
Clapp broke off and flew south to drop a flare. I orbited just north of the bridge. Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light as the flare ignited and began floating slowly earthward on its self-contained parachute. The trucks began scattering, I peeled off in a forty-degree dive, picked up the bridge in my bombsight, and dropped a 1000-pounder. Behind me, Clapp had circled in and was peeling off. I pulled out and began scrambling for altitude. My bomb hit in a group of trucks beyond the bridge. Clapp's took the end of the bridge with it. The first flare went out and the darkness closed in again, so I circled and dropped another.
This time the communists answered back with antiaircraft batteries at both ends of the bridge. Antiaircraft fire at night is a sight you ought to see. Shells are easy to spot as they reach out for you, and one of the things a pilot has to guard against is getting so interested in the Fourth of July exhibition that he forgets to dodge. The shells look harmless and seem to travel slowly, but once they begin exploding around the plane, it's like getting caught under a tin can with a bunch of lighted firecrackers.
Since the AA fire was aimed at me, Clapp went after the guns beneath us. His stick of bombs disrupted the gunners and I broke loose from their aim, then slid into position for another run and peeled off, aiming for the AA batteries. Of the four bombs in my stick, two hit in the revetments, and the volume of fire lessened.
We moved over to the road and dropped more flares. The trucks were still there and we strafed up and down the highway. Within seconds fires marked the end of five communist trucks. The rest of the vehicles were hidden by now, so we dropped more still more flares and searched low over the ground. Spotting a warehouse surrounded by trucks, we gave it the rest of our loads. The blast and fire were a trifle ostentatious. We had hit an ammunition dump, and the entire surrounding area lit up in a series of secondary explosions. We could still see the fire thirty miles away from us as we headed out toward the carrier.
Whenever possible we waited until morning to finish off crippled targets, since it meant that much less work done in darkness. There is nothing so tiring as flying on instruments in combat. The day pilot keeps his airplane in position by watching the ground and horizon, but at night the information needed to keep the plane flying correctly is furnished by the dials in front of you. An artificial horizon duplicates the planes movements with reference to the real horizon. It consists of a miniature airplane from a tail-on view, and a gyro-stabilized line that represents the horizon. As the nose of the airplane moves, the line moves. When the airplane's nose moves above the real horizon, for instance, the horizon line on the instrument moves below the nose of the miniature airplane.
Sweating it out in a Hooded Cockpit
With this instrument and others such as the altimeter, the air speed indicator and a turning needle to indicate direction of turn, night pilots fly without looking at the ground. You sweat out many flights in a hooded cockpit learning the technique.
A night flier has the most lonesome job of any aviator aboard ship. On a typical strike night I getup at six p.m., eat breakfast when everyone else is at dinner, and wander down to the ready room for briefing. A carrier ready room is a friendly place in the daytime, but at night it takes on a somber air. Night fliers have too much on their minds for any of the usual horseplay and ribbing.
The room is long and narrow, with a low overhead, and is lined with of large leather-padded metal armchairs. In an open space in front are huge charts of Korea mounted on cardboard, transparent panels with flight information, an outline of the flight deck showing the location of our planes, and several large plastic display sheets, each with a particular type of information written on it.
As you enter the room it is in semidarkness. Dim red lights supply the only illumination. The metal door slams behind you and you grope your way to a seat. After half an hour under the red lights, your eyes will adapt to the darkness outside so that when you climb into your airplane, you will be able to see comfortably. The charts and displays are lighted by shaded amber lights, and fluorescent pencils have been used to record the information on the panels.
For the next hour you hear a series of talks, each by an expert: on the general battle conditions, on reported enemy rail and road traffic, and on your specific areas, the weather and available rescue facilities. As the briefing ends you copy the new battle lines and the latest codes on your knee pad and begin dressing. Once dressed, you sit quietly in the ready room and wait for time to man planes. The layers of heavy flight gear drawn on over a rubber waterproof exposure suit make walking difficult.
The ready-room door opens and the aircrewmen file in. Mine are Chief Radioman Richard K. Green USN, of Los Angles, California, and Kenneth Alred, Aviation Electronicsman, airman, USN, of San Diego, California. Combat aircrewmen are the bravest men I know. Each plane carries two enlisted men who huddle in a tiny closed-in space in the rear of the attack plane, unable to see out, unable to exert any control over their own lives or deaths. Jammed side by side into their compartment, they operate the complex radar equipment.
My crewmen droop into seats beside me and we wait quietly together. Waiting is the hardest part of combat. Then a light on the voice box starts to flash and a harsh voice calls out, "Pilots, man your planes."
I slip on a pair of red goggles, gather up a collection of loose equipment and climb up three flights of twisting iron ladders to the flight deck. As we pass the hangar deck we catch a glimpse of a movie in progress. The rest of the ship is relaxing; we are going into combat.
The flight deck is dark, the wind sings a ghostly tune through the island structure, and salt spray dampens the air. Above me, the sky is unfriendly as I climb into my Skyraider and the crewmen disappear into their compartment behind me. From a bullhorn on the island structure comes the order, "Start engines!" I press the starter button; the engine coughs to life, spits, and settles down to a steady roar. Loneliness sets in-the loneliness that is the constant companion of a night pilot.
The flight-deck handler motions to me with his red flashlight and I taxi my plane forward to the catapult. The catapult is a hydraulic slingshot that throws a plane into the air by kicking it from a standstill to 150 miles per hour in less than 200 feet of deck run. When the bridle is hooked on the catapult officer begins to rotate a small red light and I add power until is singing the deep throated roar that means full power. I check my instruments, call a warning to my crewmen and brace myself securely in the cockpit.
The catapult officer gives the firing signal. With a rush that pins me hard against the back of my seat, we roar down the track and pitch smoothly into the air. The blackness engulfs me now; I go on gauges, climb for altitude, circle to pick up the rest of the planes in my flight, and set out for Korea.
Behind me the crewmen are beginning their familiar chatter on the intraplane system.
I slip my lip mike down into position. "Radar from pilot: fire up the radar and knock off the chatter."
"Pilot from radar: Roger. Course to target 344 degrees, distance 96 miles. Sir is this trip really necessary?"
I grin and relax a little. Flying over a hostile ocean into a more hostile land is no picnic, and the mixture of radar information and the idle banter helps relieve the tension. As we cross the coastline I see the blackness in the valleys and realize that in just a few minutes I'll be flying in their depths.
Valleys are always trouble. They have booby traps in them. One night when I was road-running near Tanchon I spotted the lights of a truck, began a long sloping dive and picked up the truck headlights in my gunsight. Just as my finger tightened on the trigger, I felt a slight jolt, something swished past me in the darkness and my crewmen began calling frantically. I had flown into a set of heavy copper cables stretched across the valley. Actually I had flown over one and under another. The only damage was six inches of metal clipped off the airplane's tail, but I aged ten years.
As our night forays increased, the Reds proved clever and quick to improvise defensive measures. A favorite trick the communists use is to rig a series of headlights on a road, simulating a truck convoy. When the attacking planes dive down from out of the darkness they find that both sides of the road are lined with 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, We never know whether the trucks are diving on are really trucks or a trap.
Ahead of me now I can see an enemy truck convoy creeping through a mountain pass. My wingman and I confer on the radio and he takes station for the attack. I wait a few seconds and then push over, aiming into the headlights of the lead truck and diving down the length of the convoy. As I reach the bomb release point the darkness is wiped away by the wingman's flare. My bombs begin bursting down the line of vehicles.
My wingman comes from the darkness behind me. Flying at tree top level, he races down the road directly toward the trucks. As he passes over the convoy he releases his napalm tank and burning gasoline jelly sprays the length of the column, billowing greasy red flames against the black backdrop of the night. By now I'm in position for a napalm run, and I drop on the vehicles that remain undamaged. We mark our position on a chart, estimate the number of vehicles damaged or destroyed, and go looking for more targets.
It was April that my team made it's biggest haul. With Ens. John Ness, USN, of Albert Lea, Minnesota, I had been launched early one morning to scout the rail lines near Wonson. In a valley west of Wonson we could see lights flashing on and off, so we ambled over for a look-see. Barely distinguishable in the gray dawning was a long train pulled by two locomotives winding it's way up a mountain slope. Behind it came a second train, and behind that a third. Passing the three trains in the opposite direction was a shorter string of boxcars pulled by a switch engine. I released all my flares on the first run and began bombing the track ahead and behind the group of trains. Luck was with me, the first bombs hit and the trains were stalled. Ness strafed the engines and we watched the steam billow skyward from each in turn as the boilers blew up. The Douglas Skyraider carries a massive bomb load, but nowhere near enough for the job ahead. Leaving Ness to watch the trains, I climbed for altitude, radioed the task force for help, and then went back to the target area.
Dawn was beginning to break when four sleek Panther jets came thundering into the area. They were the vanguard of a continuous stream of airplanes dispatched by the carrier force which not only completed the job Ness and I had begun but ferreted out two additional locomotives and thirty cars.
You just haven't lived until you've seen an ammunition train blow up at night. Ness and I were nosing around a railroad yard just north of Hungnam one midnight when we saw the glare of a locomotive fire box. We hadn't shown ourselves as yet, and the engineer was moving forward openly as we both swooped down on the train. But the commies were on their toes. Antiaircraft fire poured up at us from every hill and high point. The streams of tracer crossed and recrossed ahead and behind me, while I ducked and dodged, twisted and turned. Pretty soon the heavy stuff began to break around me with blinding flashes and the plane pitched and tossed, as the blast got closer. I wanted the train all right, but not that badly. Pouring the coal to my engine, I steamed back into the darkness.
About that time we were joined by two other pilots who were working in the area, and they began strafing the flak positions while Ness and I made bombing runs. At the height of our attack, with bombs exploding and flares burning brightly overhead, we amazed to see a second train come puffing into the yard out of the darkness and stop directly alongside the first.
Now we had two trains to work over. The other planes each had an unused 500-pound bomb so we moved aside for them. One peeled off and dropped his bomb. The whole yard moved skyward! A billowing pillar of smoke and flame rose 6000 feet in the air and lighted the countryside for miles around. We could see the fires springing up all over the yard. In a few seconds the place was an inferno.
Next morning after the area had been photographed, we pieced together what had happened. The engineer had parked a trainload of gasoline along side an ammunition train. The resulting blast dug a hole forty feet deep where the trains had stood. Tank cars split open like peeled bananas, had been blown hundreds of feet; one boxcar had smashed completely through the railroad station, and the yard itself was a shambles. Two weeks later, rail traffic was still at a standstill in the area.
You never know how a night flight will turn out. Sometimes everything goes right; sometimes things go wrong. The only sure thing in the night flier's book is that right or wrong, wounded or sound, damaged or undamaged, he's got to land back on the carrier at the end of his flight. And a night carrier landing can be a very sticky thing.
After three hours over enemy lines I am usually physically and mentally exhausted. Only one more obstacle lies ahead-getting back aboard my floating home. The radarmen have directed me to the task force; now they tell me we are almost over our home carrier. Below me I spot a ship's wake, and then another. I circle the force and pick out the tiny blinking white light that marks my carrier. Home is beneath me. Holding my altitude steady, I turn on my lights and close in toward the carrier. A shaded blinker light on the bridge sends "Prep Charley"-prepare to land-and the ship's wake describes a half circle in the inky water. The carrier is still visible, but I know from watching the wake that it has turned into the wind and that the flight deck is being readied for landings. Above me I see the wing lights of other night fliers joining the landing pattern. I spiral down lower my wheels and tailhook, and set my course parallel to the wake.
A black shape looms in the darkness to my left as I pass a destroyer pounding along in the wake of the carrier. If I should wind up in the water instead of the flight deck, the destroyer will pick me up-unless I freeze or drown first.
I am coming up on the carrier rapidly and as I pass the starboard side I catch a glimpse of flashlight-equipped crewmen taking a last look at the wires strung across the landing area. I am ahead of the carrier now, watching my compass and holding my present heading exactly. I peer out into the black void ahead and then see it-a tiny red light on a destroyer's mast, the "streetlight" that marks my first turning point.
I slow the plane down to a few knots above stalling speed and the destroyer looms up in the darkness and is gone. Gently I ease my plane to the left in a precise rate of turn. When I have turned to the exact reverse of the carrier's course I level my wings. I drop down to ninety feet from the water now and concentrate on my gauges. This is instrument flying at its toughest-one slip and I'm in the drink.
Suddenly there is a flash of yellow light from the carrier-my signal to turn left again. Aboard the carrier they can see me even though I can't see them, so I depend on their judgment to locate my turning point. Again I drop my left wing in a turn and begin timing. As I approach the carrier's heading there is a burst of light and the flight deck is outlined for me in tiny red lights.
On the stern of the ship and to my left is the Landing Signal Officer. At night the LSO wears a suit of fluorescent green and orange alternate stripes and carries two fluorescent paddles, like oversize tennis rackets. As I watch, he steps into the ultraviolet rays that bathe his platform and make the suit and paddles glow brilliantly.
I level the wings, come off the gauges and concentrate on the LSOs arms. From now on I will depend entirely on his signals to make my landing. Any other impressions I get from my eyes, ears or the seat of my pants are idle rumors. Slowly he raises his paddles. "You are climbing slowly," they say. I adjust my throttle and lose off a few feet of altitude. As I drop down, his arms lower, and when his paddles form a straight line, I add throttle and hold my position. I am coming up to the carrier rapidly, too rapidly, and the LSO drops his left arm to indicate "fast." I ease the throttle slightly and lift the nose of the plane. Suddenly the LSO flashes past on my left side, and in that split second he makes a throat-cutting gesture with his right hand. It is the "cut."
I pull off the throttle completely, dump the nose toward the deck, then pull back gently on the stick to flare out. This is it. If I dump the nose too hard I'll bounce my wheels on the as-yet-unseen flight deck, skip high into the air and crash among the parked planes forward. If I pull back too hard or too soon, the plane will stagger back into the air and settle into the airplanes ahead. If I do it just right, the tailhook will snag an arresting wire and the plane will be yanked to a stop.
I wait tensely. There is a powerfully controlled tug on my tail and I know that my landing was a good one. I turn off my lights, they douse the deck lights and I taxi my plane forward in the darkness and park it. Other planes are landing as I go below to debrief, eat dinner and sleep.
Note: This article was copied from "The Saturday Evening Post" December 27, 1952 Edition.
Used and reprinted with permission of the Saturday Evening Post c 1952 Renewed
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