2007 KWVA Election Results - Korean War Veterans Association

Tragic Day at K-13 ©
56
By Kenneth L. Moll
It was bright, clear and 69° with a sixknot
breeze that afternoon of October
1, 1952. The day’s flying had passed
uneventfully at K-13 airfield in Suwon,
Korea. I had “Runway Control” duty in
8th Fighter-Bomber Wing’s radioequipped
trailer at the landing end of the
runway. My main job was to warn away
any F 80 pilot approaching to land with
landing gear still up, but that never
occurred when I had Runway Control.
Still, the duty was interesting. It
offered a ringside seat for airfield activities
and sometimes the radio chatter was
riveting. But now it was after 5:30, and F-
80 operations had slowed.
Then I noticed two distant F-86
Sabrejets approaching from the south.
Their sooty exhaust trails signaled a
straight-in landing approach, often used
for a precautionary landing. Ordinarily, jet
fighters would approach overhead at
1,000 feet and “break” left to circle and
land. F-86s belonged to the 51st Fighter-
Interceptor Wing across the runway from
the 8th Wing; they had their own radio
frequencies, so I heard nothing on my F-
80 channel.
The two F-86s circled once, then one
flew aside and the other continued its
descent toward the runway. Everything
looked fine until he was down to about
300 feet altitude and nearing the paved
runway overrun. Suddenly he slowed,
nosed over into a slanting dive and, to my
shock and horror, crashed into the overrun
less than a quarter mile away. The aircraft
blew up like a napalm bomb.
Boiling flames mushroomed over a
wide area, while black smoke spiraled to
hundreds of feet. The F-86 was demolished;
clearly, the pilot could not possibly
have survived.
Quickly, fire trucks and emergency
vehicles rushed to the scene and, with difficulty,
slowly put out the fire. Operations
were suspended for the day and I left the
scene, knowing I could be of no help.
The next day I learned more details,
which were as startling as what I’d seen.
The F-86 pilot who’d crashed turned out
to be a close friend, 1st Lt. Tom Casserly.
We’d graduated from West Point together
in 1950. He was a “star man” (top 5%),
F-80s taking off at K-13, 8th Fighter-Bomber
Wing, Suwon, Korea
handsome, highly capable and personable.
I’d seen him frequently at the K-13
Officers Club. But I’d never suspected he
was the one killed. There were about 100
pilots in the 51st Wing, and I only knew
two of them: Tom and another classmate,
Charlie Gabriel (later USAF Chief of
Staff).
Rumors circulated that Tom had experienced
“runaway forward trim,” meaning
the control stick’s elevator trim button
was stuck in the full nose-down position.
When this happened, the pilot had to pull
back heavily on the control stick to keep
the nose up.
Lowering flaps for landing induced
still more nose-down forces. This was
fairly easy to overcome with the F-80’s
control stick because the trim button controlled
only a small “trim tab” on the horizontal
elevator.
But the trim button on Tom’s new F-
86E moved the entire horizontal “flying
tail,” which was an innovation for better
elevator control when pushing through the
sonic barrier. This made the pilot more
dependent on a functioning trim system.
The rumors guessed that Tom, with runaway
forward trim in the F-86E, could
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