The Graybeards - KWVA - Korean War Veterans Association

Fuselage Tank Fiasco
South Korea is a truly beautiful country,
especially in the springtime ... with the
trees just turning green and a few blossoms
beginning to pop out.
From the vantage point of our rear support
base at Chinhae, (K-10), on the
water’s edge at the South coast, in mid-
May, 1951, it proved a real study of contrasts
... it was so hard to realize that just
an hour’s flight time to the north, the
Communists were in the process of
launching their new attacks, the start of
the major Chinese Spring Offensive. The
new attacks were not unexpected ... only a
question of which sector they would strike
first.
I was not concerned whether there
would be enough missions to keep me
busy when I returned to K-16, Seoul City
Airport after just a day’s rest at Chinhae,
but I did begin to wonder what we might
expect with the more frequent contacts
with the Russian-built MiG-15 jet fighters.
They had recently been encountered
along the Yalu River, close to their sanctuary
in Manchuria, where our F-86 Sabres
had been meeting and beating them in
high-altitude dog-fighting for several
weeks, but in May, 1951, they had also
begun to show up as far south as
Pyongyang ... in the area where many of
our F-51 Mustang interdiction attacks
were taking place.
A Switch in Time
May 1951
Unsung Heroes of the Korean Air War
by
Duane E. ‘Bud’ Biteman,
Lt Col, USAF, Ret
The MiG-15s had made a few brief, but
thus far unsuccessful attacks against some
of our low-flying Mustang flights, but at
that time they had not ventured as far
south as the front lines, nor had they yet
made any attempt to harass our ground
troops. But if they should, the air war in
Korea would immediately turn out to be a
“whole new ball game”.
We kept the North Korean airfields in a
continual state of disrepair by bombing
them each and every day, but, still we
could see evidence of their use.
Pyongyang East, our short-term advanced
base during November ‘50, and Sinuiju,
specifically, showed definite evidence of
use, but we could never find any sign of
mechanical equipment or aircraft in view.
On Saturday, 19 May ‘51, I was off
very early flying Lead in a flight of two,
heading for the central sector, where we
were to search about 50 to 75 miles behind
the lines for signs of resupply movement.
We left before dawn, loaded with two
napalm bombs, six rockets and full fuel
and ammo.
Our F-51D model Mustangs had an 80
gallon internal fuel tank mounted inside
the fuselage behind the pilot’s seat; when
full, this tank’s five hundred twenty-five
pounds moved the airplane’s center-ofgravity
(CG) so far aft that the aircraft
became dangerously tail heavy. Any sudden
rearward movement of the control
stick could make the tail ‘tuck under’... go
further down than intended.
Our normal procedure to alleviate the
tuck-under hazard while in the combat
area, was to plan our flights to either
short-fill the fuselage tank if the extra
range was not required or, on longer missions,
to first use about sixty gallons of the
fuel from the fuselage tank on the way to
the combat zone ... getting rid of approximately
400 pounds of aft-CG weight,
leaving the fuselage tank’s fuel level at
about 20 gallons, which, in turn, would
allow the CG to move forward to the ideal
‘over-the-wing’ position. We would then
switch to our external drop tanks, if carried,
or to one of our two internal wing
tanks, saving the remaining twenty gallons
in the fuselage for a final Reserve’.
On this particular early dawn mission,
carrying napalm fire-bomb tanks instead
of external drop tanks, we found ourselves
in the steep mountain valleys around
Chorwon just as the sun was coming over
the horizon. We slowed our speeds to
about 200 mph for better visibility, and
descended quietly onto the flat valley
floor, criss-crossing in loose combat formation
to look for truck traffic. As we’d
near a ridge of hills, we would add just
enough throttle to maintain our slow speed
as we topped the summit and drifted back
down to the adjacent valley floor.
We’d been doing this for perhaps twenty
minutes, hopping over the hills from
one valley to the next, without finding
much in the way of targets, when finally,
as I neared the end of a long, deep and narrow
valley, ‘just ready to add power to
climb over the oncoming ridge, my wingman
called to say that we were being fired
upon by troops from under a clump of
trees.
I was too close to the ridge to make a
turn back, and traveling too slowly to do
anything but continue straight ahead, so I
called the wingman and told him to go
back and hit the troops; I’d meet him over
the next ridge of hills.
With that, I pushed my throttle forward
but, instead of the expected surge of
power, all I heard was the ‘spit’ and ‘sputter’
of a dying engine... then silence, as my
engine quit at that most inopportune time.
I reviewed my uncomfortable situation
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The Graybeards