Air Commando!: 1950-1975 - Twenty-five years at the Tip ... - AFSOC

By attacking at extremely low altitudes their accuracy on the convoys was
phenomenal. Best of all, they discovered something they could never have
guessed until then.
North Korean and Chinese fire discipline was impeccable. Ordered by their
commanders to avoid detection at all cost, even after being fired upon, the
truck convoys took the napalm attacks without response. Later, Aderholt recalls
being one of the first Americans to sight the huge, nighttime Chinese
infiltration that changed the course of the war
We saw thousands and thousands of troops, trucks, bumper to
bumper! It was a moonlit night, snow on the ground .. . We flew
right down, turned our landing lights on, and they wouldn't fire.
We came back and reported and were told "Well, the B-26s will get
them. " 6
As history shows, the B-26s didn't get them, Det 2's pinpricks were shrugged
off, and the massive Chinese attack took the UN headquarters by bloody
surprise. 7 Det 2 's "born ber" operations were ordered shut down when
headquarters became aware of their existence, as was a later FECOM/Det 2
.------------------------------------. plan to raid the headquarters of
the Russian Advisory staff in
North Korea.
As the UN forces retreated
from the Chinese attack that
winter, contact was lost between
Returning from a mission a Det 2 aircraft
lands at a captured enemy airstrip. For
the time-critical mission to locate
advancing Chinese units, special
identification stripes were painted under
the wings of the Air Commando C-47s to
identify the low-flying planes to agents
using colored smoke signals for
communication. (USAF photo)
the two armies . The urgent
question for the UN became,
where will the Chinese strike
next? From FECOM-Intelligence
the mission went to CCRAK/Det
2: Find the Chinese, and fast!
In response, Det 2 parachuted
an "early warning line" of
Rabbits at various distances
along an east-west axis across the
Korean peninsula. Because the
SCR-300 radio frequently took
too long to set up, or terrain
blocked its signals, the agents on
this mission were given red,
green , and yellow smoke
grenades. At the same time Det
2 had large black and white
stripes painted underneath its C-47s' wings for identification purposes.
In the following days Det 2 aircraft flew at 3,000 ft over the terrain along
the line of agents. Upon spotting the conspicuously marked Det 2 aircraft,
the Rabbits communicated with a simple system. If the Chinese had crossed
the point, red smoke was put out; green if South Korean troops were near the
area; yellow if no one had crossed the line. Crude but effective, the fieldexpedient
detection system worked.
4
Extensively documented elsewhere, the refusal of the United Nations Command headquarters to
believe front-line and intelligence reports of the massive Chinese infiltration led to horrific UN
casualties in a number of subsequent defensive battles.
14