I can't speak for all VAN Team crews, but the favorite target for our Team was locomotives. We just loved to help eliminate, as much as we could, that form of transportation in North Korea. We were fortunate enough to find and destroy seventeen locomotives during our tour, and some thirteen of those were credited to one man, a young and personable Ensign named John Ness. Ensign Ness had a rare talent. He was our designated Tunnel-Buster, and though some of our other pilots could, and did, perform the same evolution, Ness was usually the one called for when there was a tunnel to be taken care of.

All of our crews made a habit of carefully checking out all of the railroad tunnel mouths they could find when returning to the ship after completing pre-dawn heckler missions. Fairly often, someone would spot a tunnel which was leaking steam, a dead giveaway to the locomotive parked inside. The location was recorded, and the flight would continue back to the ship. Once aboard, arrangements were made to launch another two VC-35 aircraft, one with a normal strike load and the other hung with a 2000 pound, delay fuzed GP bomb, an assortment of other hardware, and with Ens. Ness in the cockpit. When they got back to the tunnel, Ness went to work. Flying at a very low altitude, he would " ride the rails " to just short of the tunnel mouth, release the 2000 pounder and stand the aircraft on its tail to fly up the side of the mountain. The bomb would skip off the ties between the railroad tracks and sail through the 14 (?) foot tunnel mouth and rattle around inside for awhile. What happened next had to be seen to be believed. There was a thump that jarred us, even at 1500 feet above, and a column of flame, smoke , assorted locomotive parts and other debris came roaring out of the tunnel for a distance of, at a guess, about a hundred yards. If you have ever seen the blast from a battleship's 16 inch guns, you might be able to imagine the blast from a 168 inch gun. It's awe-inspiring, and thoroughly homogenizes everything inside the tunnel, from one end to the other. There was a day when Ness and company arrived at a tunnel that turned out to have a large curve in the tracks right at the point where Ness needed a straight shot for any chance of success. Our unflappable Ensign simply flew over the mountain to the other side, located the other end of the tunnel and, since it proved to be inviting, skipped his package in through the back door. The resulting blast blew the train out of the other end like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Traveling much too fast, the locomotive careened into the bend of the track and proceeded to snap-roll into the dry wash alongside the track. Chalk up another one for the good guys.