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

Taking off from Cho-do in the early
morning hours, Captain Frank Westerman
and Lieutenant Robert Sullivan flew lowlevel
through the darkness for two hours,
guided north by an Air Rescue SA-16
pathfinder aircraft flying overhead at an
altitude of 100 feet.
First light found their helicopter 16
miles south of the Chinese border . . . and
within ten minutes flying time of Antung,
the biggest Chinese MIG fighter base in
the region . Racing inland they
discovered the valley the downed pilot
was reported to be in ... and something
much worse, as Lt. Sullivan recalls:
This valley in which
intelligence had told us we
would find nothing but
farmers, contained at least a
regimentof troops . . . all
armed and all firing as fast as
they could ... the hills looked
like a bloody warehouse, piles
of stuff under camouflage nets
.. . it was damned evident no
(evader) was walking around
loose in that place. 24
The Air Commandos fled for their
lives, urging the SA-16 orbiting offshore
to do the same. Perhaps an evader was
in the valley, but the more likely
explanation is that the survival radio
emission that generated the rescue
attempt was in fact the bait for a Chinese
trap. A very long "day at the office"
indeed for everyone involved.
Individual combat tours in Korea
lasted one year. By the summer of 1953
however, the Armistice negotiations had
ended the agent insertion missions, and
the Flight's four H-19s were integrated
with the 2157th ARS. For most people
the end of the Korean War meant a return
to family and civilian careers. For the Air
Commandos however, the war changed
but never really ended, as the following
Cold War stories reveal.
Home base for the Air Commando helicopters was Seoul
City Air Base, designated "K-16" by the United Nations
Command. Clearly showing the signs of war, K-16 was
an hour's flight from the agent launch site on Cho-do
Island. (Joe Barrett)
26