During the Korean War CAG19 aboard USS Princeton kept busy knocking out railroad and highway bridges. They strafed and rocketed truck convoys and trains loaded with supplies that moved along confined roads and rail-lines through narrow snow covered mountains and frozen valleys. The North Koreans moved mostly at night and remained hidden as much as possible in daylight. While supplies were transported under the cover of darkness, hundreds of North Korean and Chinese workers laid rail-lines over frozen river beds where large steel bridges had been bombed the day before.

VC-35 was tasked with night interdiction. Using the naked eye and helped by radar, the squadron's OinC, LT Frank Metzner, and his pilots sought targets and when they found them they lit the sky with tracers, rockets and exploding bombs.

At first light one morning VC-35 pilots, flying AD-4Ns, spotted several trains in succession making a dash for the mouth of the nearest tunnel into a mountainside - LT Metzner and his flight waited but the trains did not emerge from the other side. Discussing this back on the carrier the flyers came up with an idea and proposed it to RADM Ralph Ofstie, who commanded TF77. Why not drop a large bomb with a delayed fuse into the mouth of a railroad tunnel?

The admiral was skeptical because the bombing aircraft would have to approach the target low and slow, susceptible to ground fire. Secondly, the largest of the North Korean tunnels were only 17 feet wide so the bombers would have to be extremely accurate. It was decided that a division of F-4U Corsairs from VF192 or VF-193 would roll-in and strafe the area surrounding a tunnel to suppress enemy fire as the Skyraiders followed shortly thereafter, carrying up to three 2,000 pound bombs which they would release one at a time.

RADM Ofstie agreed to try the concept. I was in VA- 195 at the time and we had been asked to contribute our ideas. We agreed with VC-35's tactical plan. We would fly low along the tracks that led to the tunnel, release a bomb, then climb up and away to clear the mountain. On our first hops some of us dropped too soon and too fast. The bombs hit short, tumbled into the air and exploded without doing any damage. Thereafter we slowed our run-ins, sometimes using partial flaps and in effect, made wheels-up carrier landing approaches to tunnels.

From March to May 1951, VC35 and VA- 195 flew many tunnel strikes. LT Atlee Clapp, an outstanding pilot, lead my division most of the time.. He was the first to put a 2,000 pounder directly inside a mountain tunnel. The explosion drove dirt and debris out the other side so far that from our ringside seat it looked like the world's largest cannon shot. After nearly 50 years I still have a vivid image of that hit and of our other tunnel busting experiences.

One day, flying with ENS Bob Bennett and two others from VA195, we spotted a locomotive, seemingly out of control, speeding out the end of a tunnel after we had exploded a bomb inside. We chased and strafed it until someone in the flight radioed, "Hold up! Check ahead!" The runaway locomotive was heading into a rail yard. We gained altitude and watched and the locomotive rammed into parked box cars, sending twisted metal and debris in all directions.

After a time we were able to place nearly half of our bombs into the mouths of the tunnels and since we flew in four-plane divisions with three bombs each, that meant six 2,000-pounders found their mark on a typical tunnel-busting flight, knocking out two to three tunnels per four hour mission. The Skyraiders and Corsairs sustained only minor damage and we suffered no casualties on tunnel busting flights.

I received the following comments on tunnel busting in a letter from VC-35's John Ness, a LTJG during the Korean War: "In tunnel bombing, I personally don't remember ever getting slow or using flaps in the approach. I kept my speed up (170 180 knots) and flew 100 feet over the tracks. Close to the release point, I started a slight descent in order to "fly" the bomb into the tunnel opening. It seemed to work. I had watched others precede me in trying to skip the bomb in, and it really got scary as to how high those bombs went when they hit short and bounced. "We carried smaller bombs which we dropped to get the feel before releasing the 2,000 pounders. This added to one's vulnerability as you were climbing the mountain on pull-up with a heck of a lot of ordnance still attached to the plane. "In view of the bomb stations for the heavy bombs, I always released the center station first (aiming high because of the center bomb cartridge ejection system). On subsequent approaches, if I was releasing a bomb on the port wing, I aimed for the right edge of the tunnel and vice versa for the bomb on the starboard wing.

"I also recall that Gene Sizemore and Tommy Thompson were pretty good tunnel blasters. I think all of us were pretty lucky in that the ground fire was not all that great and the bomb fusing worked as advertised." We would fly low along the tracks that led to the tunnel, release a bomb, then climb up and away to clear the mountain."

Copyright Association of Naval Aviation Winter 1999 Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Note: Cdr Tex Atkinson authorized the use of this article in our web site on 5 JAN 2009. Web Chairman.