The Graybeards - KWVA - Korean War Veterans Association

LUCK’S THIN THREAD
Close only counts in horseshoes...
August, 1950
On August 29th, 1950, while our
ground troops were still locked in
the battles around the “Pusan
Perimeter” I was assigned to fly another
long five and one-half hour ‘ass-buster’
from Ashiya, Japan, to the area north of
Pyongyang, the heavily-protected capital
city of North Korea, but despite the
tedious, long hours in the cramped little
cockpit of the F-51 Mustang, it turned out
to be an exceptionally good mission; I was
able to destroy two locomotives, one howitzer
on a flatcar, several boxcars, four
trucks, and about twenty enemy troops.
But the troops almost got to me in the
process.
It happened near Chorwon as I flew
south looking for targets of opportunity.
I’d found the four trucks heading out of
Pyongyang and was able to destroy them
all with just my machine guns, saving my
rockets for something more lucrative. And
a prize it was... a locomotive with a half
dozen boxcars about to enter a short mountain
tunnel. There was little room to
maneuver in the narrow canyon, but as I
dove to intercept I knew that I could get a
fairly straight shot into the tunnel from the
far side, by flying down the railroad
approach, then pulling up at the last
instant, to just clear the hills above ...and
that’s just what I did.
I got a beautiful six rocket launch right
into the tunnel to destroy the locomotive,
but as I pulled up I could see a machine
Unsung Heroes of the Korean Air War
by
Duane E. ‘Bud’ Biteman,
Lt Col, USAF, Ret
gunner on the ridge above, peppering away
at me the whole time I was coming down
over the track. I didn’t feel any hits however,
and, since I was almost out of ammunition
and fuel, decided to head back to
Taegu, rather than challenge the machine
gunner on the spot.
The thirty minute flight back to our
staging base at Taegu was uneventful, and
upon taxiing up to the rearm-refuel parking
area, the line crewman chocked my wheels
as I shut down, then climbed up to help me
unstrap and climb stiffly out of the cockpit.
Our ‘old time, old reliable’, line chief
met me and was already starting to remove
the engine cowling on the left side of the
nose. I promptly told him not to bother...
that the airplane was in good shape; that it
was ... “running like a fine Swiss watch.”
With a friendly, knowing smile, he
motioned me to come down by the nose to
take a look at my “fine Swiss watch”, and
when I’d stepped down from the leading
edge of the left wing onto the tire, I could
then see a very long, narrow-angle slit in
the cowling, which when projected by the
angle of its penetration, was found to be
aimed just slightly forward of the cockpit.
With the cowling panel removed, we
could see where the slug, a steel armor
piercing fifty caliber bullet, had missed my
coolant line by a scant fraction of an inch,
but had gone through and shattered a large
section of the heavy aluminum “I” beam
bracing which supported the left side of the
engine, then had struck the engine block
and penetrated to a depth of almost a quarter
of an inch, before stopping to drop into
the cowling below.
We found two of three shattered pieces
of the enemy’s projectile still resting in the
lower cowling. We never did find the third
piece, the tip. We assumed it must have
shattered into several smaller bits when it
hit the engine block.
I had been very, very lucky. Had my
speed been just a fraction faster as I
pressed my attack against the locomotive,
that single bullet would have come into the
cockpit at an angle that would have hit my
chest. Had it’s angle been a bit steeper, it
would have probably had force enough to
penetrate and destroy my engine. And, if it
had been but a fraction of an inch lower, it
would have gone through my coolant line,
causing the engine to quit before I could
reach friendly lines, or it could have
destroyed the engine mount “I” beam...
any of which would have put me down
behind enemy lines in short order!
Since there was no way to make a permanent
repair to the engine mount at
Taegu, the maintenance people riveted a
steel brace to cover the hole in the structural
beam, and I flew very carefully, at
low power settings back to Ashiya.
I have saved those two broken pieces of
that .50 caliber armor piercing bullet, ‘had
them mounted on a key chain ...they serve
as a constant reminder to me of just how
thin and fragile is the thread of “Luck”,
and just how close I came to using my
entire allotment on that day near Chorwon.
Upon returning to Ashiya with my
‘wounded’ Mustang, I found that we had
‘adopted’ a squadron of Marine F4U
Corsair fighters ...twenty planes and pilots,
from an aircraft carrier which had put into
port for fuel and supplies. It meant that our
little Intelligence office would take on a
30% increased workload, and that I’d have
to spend a few more days on the ground
helping with their mission briefing and
post flight interrogations.
I stood-down from flying on August
30th, making good use of the opportunity
to meet the pilots of the Marine squadron
during their briefings and critiques, and to
compare notes on combat tactics, equipment
and the policy differences of our two
services.
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The Graybeards