Air Commando One (Hardcover)

Chapter One

THE CALL TO ARMS

When the Korean War broke out in late June 1950, Captain Aderholtwas in the Canadian backwoods vacationing with his wife andmother-in-law. They had driven leisurely up from Alabama to Ontario's scenicAlgonquin Park to enjoy the great outdoors and fish the freshwater lakes forperch and trout. Upon returning to their cabin at dusk one evening, he turnedon a shortwave radio and heard the news that the North Korean Communistshad invaded South Korea. General Douglas MacArthur's Far East Commandheadquarters in Tokyo had deployed a holding force to engage the aggressors,while politicians at home negotiated a combined military response under theflag of the United Nations. The captain told his family to pack their bags. "I'vegot to report back to Maxwell Field," he said. "And we'd better step on it, orthe war will be over before I can get there."

    The rush home in the Aderholt's 1949 Ford contrasted sharply with the relaxedtwelve-hundred-mile drive the family had made a few days earlier. Theystopped only for brief rest periods, once in Tennessee to purchase and eat a watermelonalongside the road, and arrived back at Maxwell Field the followingnight. After a few hours' sleep and an early-morning run, the refreshed captainreported for duty and volunteered for an immediate combat assignment flyingP-51 fighters. Like most Americans, he believed the war would end quicklywhen the mighty armed forces of the United States stormed ashore on the Koreanpeninsula. Few people realized the extent of the postwar drawdown inU.S. military might, or foresaw the ramifications of a limited war being foughtunder the auspices of the United Nations. It was to be a wake-up call for the nationand for its unprepared fighting men who slogged through that first year ofbitter combat on the Korean peninsula.

    A few days after Captain Aderholt's return to duty, a personnel officer calledto inform him that a combat tour in fighters was out of the question because ofan overage in fighter-qualified volunteers and to alert him that a quota fortransport aircrews was on its way. Near the end of July, he received orders toform a crew (comprising a copilot, a navigator, a flight engineer, and a radiooperator) and to pilot a C-47 Skytrain (the indomitable "Gooney Bird") to theWest Coast, where the plane would be modified with eight one-hundred-galloninternal tanks before departing on a transoceanic flight to the Far East. Disappointedat having missed another opportunity to fly fighters, Aderholt consoledhimself with the reality that he had "to play with the hand that was dealt him."He looked forward to the challenge of combat in Korea, but was nostalgicabout leaving. Over the coming months, his thoughts would return often to theyears at Maxwell Field and their influence in his life.

Interlude at Maxwell Field

The nearly five years that he was stationed at Maxwell Field were formativeones for the young captain. Upon coming home from Italy in the summer of1945, he was uncertain about pursuing a military career but was in no hurry toreturn to civilian life. When Captain Edward "Eddie" Rickenbacker, the famousWorld War I ace, approached returning "military pilots with Gooney Birdtime" about going to work for his Eastern Airlines, Aderholt turned him down.With the war over in Europe, he longed to get into the fray in the Pacific beforeit ended. So he volunteered for any combat assignment flying the B-29 Superfortress."I knew damned well I couldn't get a fighter job this late in the war,"he said, "but I figured they would lose enough B-29s that I might get in those."In August he was in B-17 instructor training at Lockbourne Field, outsideColumbus, Ohio, awaiting a B-29 assignment, when the war's two most historicSuperfortresses, the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, dropped atomic bombs onHiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese surrendered.

    Upon completing B-17 instructor training in September, Captain Aderholttransferred to Maxwell Field as a staff pilot with the Army Air Forces EasternFlying Training Command. The assignment to Maxwell, which was only onehundred miles from his hometown of Birmingham, soon convinced the Alabamanative that he had "found a home" in military aviation. "The pay wasgood and I loved to fly," Aderholt recalled in later years. "When I got toMaxwell, there were more than one hundred airplanes (a B-17, B-25s, B-26s,C-45s, a couple of C-47s, a C-46, a couple of T-6s) on the ramp. I flew themall. Often on local flights I flew the B-17 alone. It was great. I loved it." Nowthat he knew he wanted to stay in the Air Force, however, he was faced withthe problem of postwar retrenchment having drastically reduced career opportunitiesin all branches of the armed forces.

    In the young captain's favor, he was well liked and admired at Maxwell andhad won the backing of senior officers there. In addition to serving as the assistantbase operations officer and running the instrument school, he comanagedMaxwell's world-champion baseball team. Sports had been his first loveand he had briefly been player-manager of a semipro baseball team before joiningthe Army Air Forces in 1942. All of his fellow officers knew him as Heinie,the nickname he had answered to since his glory days of football and baseballat Woodlawn High. Near the end of the 1946 baseball season, the base commander(Colonel William E. Covington) called and told him that Maxwell wasfacing drastic manpower cuts and would lose a lot of pilots. The colonel advisedhim that he had "to get a real important job," if he wanted to stay in theAir Force. "Have you ever handled black people?" Covington asked. "Hell, Igrew up with them," Aderholt replied. The colonel then explained that he washaving "all kinds of problems" with the black squadron on base. Assuring thecolonel that he could resolve those problems, Aderholt became the newsquadron commander in September 1946, the same month that the Air Universitywas established at Maxwell Field.

    Meanwhile, Aderholt's military career got a boost from another direction.Explaining how this came about, Aderholt recalled that he "was a pretty gooddrinker" in those days. He and other junior officers used to "hang out" with aline officer who was greatly admired at Maxwell. That officer was ColonelJohn M. Price, who was known to the men as "Big Jack" and described byAderholt as "an All-American, a West Pointer [class of 1932], and a legend."When they were holding forth at the officers' club bar one evening, Big Jacksuggested that he should think about applying for a Regular commission. "Ihave no college education," Aderholt replied. "I haven't a chance." Big Jackgrinned and said, "I'm going to be on the board. You've got a good chance."

    Soon after submitting his application to the board, presided over by ColonelPrice at nearby Fort Benning, Georgia, Aderholt married Jessie Reid of Montgomeryin December 1946, adding a new sense of purpose and direction to hiscareer plans. The popular newlyweds were overjoyed the following Octoberwhen he was awarded his appointment in the Regular Army. The news wastimely because the appointment coincided with the transfer of the Army's aviationresources to the newly established United States Air Force, created inSeptember by the National Security Act of 1947. From this point in time, therewas never any doubt about Aderholt's resolve to be a career Air Force officer.Two of his brothers also became career military men: Warren, an Air Forcefighter pilot who also flew and fought in three wars, and Robert, who was achief petty officer in the Navy.

    Warren had gone through flying training a year after his older brother andjoined a fighter group in Italy while he was there. "My younger brother comesover as a hot-shot fighter pilot, and there I was driving B-17s and air transportsaround in noncombat roles," Aderholt said, laughing. He recalled that on Warren'stwenty-third combat mission, his P-51 experienced a vapor lock over thePo Valley and he had landed on a German airfield rather than bailing out andexposing himself to enemy fire. Intentionally overshooting and sliding his crippledfighter down to the end of the runway, Warren jumped from the plane andescaped into tall grass surrounding the airfield. Italian partisans reached himbefore the Nazis did, and he made his way back to the American lines. He returnedto a sector that was controlled by the famed Japanese-American unit,the 442d Regimental Combat Team. When a sentry asked where he had comefrom, Warren pointed to an open area behind them. The sentry exclaimed,"Goda'mighty, Lieutenant, you just walked through our minefield!"

    The brothers spent a few days in Naples together before Warren returned tohis group. A "canned" message that Aderholt sent to his mother informing herthat Warren was alive and well arrived two days before she received officialnotification that her son was missing in action. "The war ended, he went backto his unit, and I caught a boat home," Aderholt recalled, proud of the way hisbrother stood up to the rigors of combat. There was a tinge of envy in his voicewhen he said, "I had served twenty-one months over there ... mostly flyingand not getting shot at a hell of a lot. That was my only regret ... that I didn'tgo over there and shoot somebody or drop bombs on them."

    Aderholt's "tough, but caring and fair" brand of military leadership—temperedby the challenges and the camaraderie of war—had a telling effect onSquadron F at Maxwell. The inroads that the segregated black squadron madeunder his command remained a source of great pride and satisfaction throughouthis life. He often said that he had "really learned more there about leadershipand about people" than at any other time in his career. The squadron consistedof himself, an adjutant, and five hundred black troops who werecompletely demoralized by the government's failure to redress their plight assecond-class citizens in the aftermath of World War II. Not only denied equalopportunity and treatment, black troops throughout the armed forces lived insegregated conditions both on and off base and were assigned to perform onlymenial tasks. Aderholt recalled that Squadron F's men were used "as nothingbut service troops," worked in the motor pool as "drivers" and "tire changers,"and "did all the janitorial work" for the Air University after it started classes atMaxwell. He said his superior officers just wanted him to keep the black troopssatisified, to keep them on their side of the base, and to keep them from causingtrouble. But the troops wanted more, and Aderholt wanted more for andfrom them.

    Determined to make a difference as the squadron commander, Aderholt setabout trying to improve his troops' military performance and their quality oflife on the segregated base. He had not anticipated that his greatest obstaclewould be the squadron's black first sergeant, who stood between him and thetroops and resisted efforts aimed at improving the situation. "The first shirt hadbeen there forever but made a bad mistake when he told me that commanderscome and commanders go, but he stayed put," Aderholt said. "He implied thathe was there when I came and he would be there when I was gone." After lookinginto the situation, Aderholt learned that the first sergeant (who had nearlythirty years' service) was using his position for personal gain. Among otherschemes, he was in charge of slot machines in the club and split the profits withowners downtown. Aderholt confronted him. "Sergeant, I'm asking you to volunteerfor reassignment, and if you don't, I'm going to court-martial you,"Aderholt said. "He went. I stayed."

    "I replaced him with a Tuskegee graduate named Earl Garrett, a fantasticfirst soldier," Aderholt continued. Garrett said, "Captain, you tell me what youwant and we will get it done." Aderholt said the first priority was "to establishcontrol" of the squadron, to get "discipline straightened out," to instill militarypride in the men, and to motivate and move them in the right direction. Assquadron commander, he had the authority to appoint duty NCOs and givethem spot promotions. He asked Garrett to pick out six or eight men to be appointedas duty NCOs. "I want you to get the best soldiers in the outfit, the bestdressed, the best disciplined," he said, "and I want you to issue them a nightstickand give them three stripes. Explain the rules and the dress regulations,and I want you to start implementing them."

    That the root problems of segregation between black and white America precludeda full measure of reconciliation at military installations was truethroughout the postwar armed forces, however. Mutinous riots by some blackservicemen—the largest occurring at MacDill AFB near Tampa, Florida, themonth after Aderholt became squadron commander at Maxwell—created fearsthat racial unrest might spread to military installations nationwide. The basecommander raised the subject at his weekly staff meeting, and Aderholt assuredhim there was no problem with his squadron. Late that evening FirstSergeant Garrett called and said, "Captain, you'd better come down here.We've got a riot."

    Aderholt and his adjutant Lieutenant Harold Poole drove to the orderlyroom, where Sergeant Garrett and the duty NCOs were waiting. Retrieving aColt .45 from his office safe, he turned on the floodlights in the squadron area,then strode to a line of unlit barracks with First Sergeant Garrett at his side.Their demeanor suggested a great deal of mutual trust and respect between theyoung white captain and the older black first sergeant, whose impeccable militaryrecord showed in his beating and in the firm set of his jaw. Stopping at theentrance to the first barracks, the captain barked, "We're coming in, and if anyson of a bitch has his head above the covers, I'm going to shoot him right betweenthe eyes." He later admitted he was not that good a shot, but it seemedlike the right thing to say at the time. The way he recalled the event, "Wekicked open the door ... it was summertime ... and I flipped the light switch.There were sixty-four sheets up over sixty-four heads. We went right onthrough—it was the same in each barracks." The night was eerily quiet as theycompleted the walk-through and departed the squadron area.

    At muster the following morning, the commander reassured the troops thatno official action would be taken against them, individually or collectively, forany unruliness the evening before. He promised to deal quickly and severelywith any future refractions, however. When he told the men that if any of themwanted out of the service, they should just tell him and he would have them out"in a very short time," Aderholt said there were "no takers." Then vowing to doall within his power to address their grievances, he said, "I want to know whatthe hell your problems are. You can speak off the record. Nobody is going todo anything against you."

    Over the ensuing months the commander worked against the grain to improvethe living and working conditions of his troops. He gained the confidenceof the base commander and the troops for his efforts, but deep down heknew the real solutions were "above his pay grade." Some of the white officersat Maxwell were supportive of his actions; others were not. He received helpfulinsights from Colonel Noel Parrish, who had been a wartime commander atTuskegee and was one of the few senior white officers advocating integrationof the armed forces. In a thesis submitted to the Air Command and Staff Collegein May 1947, Parrish recognized that segregation not only was morally indefensible,but "was the prime cause of low morale among blacks."

    Help finally came from above in the spring and summer of 1948. The AirForce was concerned "about the impact of segregation upon its own effectiveness"and announced a decision to integrate during the spring. This was followedin July by President Truman's Executive Order 9981 to foster equal opportunityin the armed services. Well before then Aderholt had begun to instillpride in the squadron by insisting on their inclusion in base activities. "Westarted molding that place over," he recalled proudly. "We won every damnedparade. Every time we had a review, Squadron F won it hands down."

    He fought to include black athletes in Maxwell's sports programs whilecommanding the squadron. When he took charge, the black troops were not allowedto play on white baseball teams, so he organized and managed a teamthat played against other black teams. He was the only white person at thesegames. The squadron faced similar discriminatory practices when basketballseason came around, but Aderholt overcame opposition from white players toschedule his team against others at Maxwell and nearby Gunter Air Station. Hemet with the base commander and said, "I'm going to have a basketball team,and I want us to play in the league." The other teams threatened to withdrawfrom league play, but he called their bluff, telling the airmen in charge toschedule the squadron against the best team on base. "We went up there, andwe just kicked the living hell out of them," he said. "We never lost a game, andwe played all year."

    He recalled with a thin smile "the unenviable task of integrating theMaxwell USO Club there in the heart of the Confederacy." The top men inthe squadron were singled out and groomed for the task. They were bused tothe USO on Saturday evening with orders not "to get drunk," but to be on theirbest behavior. "When the black airmen went in, all the Montgomery belleswent out," Aderholt recalled. They eventually trickled back when the shockwore off and when the squadron continued to send its airmen to the USOweekend after weekend. Pride in this "grassroots" involvement toward racialequality sparkled whenever he discussed the early days of integrating the AirForce. Laughing, he told about using the experience, years later, to punctuatehis remarks on the Air Force's rejection of counterinsurgency warfare in Vietnam."You think it is hard to get the United States Air Force to accept its rolein counterinsurgency, low-intensity warfare," he said at an Air University dining-inin the late 1960s. "You ought to try to integrate the blacks into Montgomerysociety at the USO club on the base here. Hell, it is nothing comparedto that."

    The distinguished black leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, Colonel BenjaminO. Davis, reported to the Air War College as a student in 1949. The assignmentof a black student to the Air War College—unthinkable when the Air Universitywas established at Maxwell three years earlier—was a first step towardbreaking down the color barrier to professional military education within theAir Force. Davis had endured exceptional racial prejudice as the U.S. MilitaryAcademy's first black graduate of the twentieth century, but rose above bigotryand discriminatory treatment to become the Air Force's first black three-stargeneral. He was proud that the Air Force took the lead in integration in 1948and reassigned the men formerly "grouped on predominantly white bases inall-black `F squadrons' ... worldwide into white units." He spoke less favorablyof the year spent as a War College student at Maxwell, however, observingthat the base "was guilty of some of the worst foot-dragging" on integration.The only black officer on Maxwell at the time, Colonel Davis said he andhis wife "had no social life of any kind off base, and Montgomery was like aforeign country."

    Aderholt remembered Davis being at the Air War College as a colonel anddescribed him as "a real gentleman." He later served under Davis, who assumedcommand of Thirteenth Air Force in the Philippines while Aderholt ledthe Air Commando Wing at Nakhon Phanom in 1967. General William W.Momyer, the Saigon-based Seventh Air Force commander whose heavy-handedleadership style made life miserable for Aderholt and the air commandosat Nakhon Phanom, also studied at the Air War College in 1949, staying onas a faculty member after graduation. Ironically, while commanding the 33dFighter Group in North Africa during World War II, Momyer filed a report rebukingthe performance of the group's 99th Fighter Squadron—the famedTuskegee Airmen led by Benjamin Davis. Momyer recommended thesquadron's removal from combat. Davis successfully refuted the allegations,and after receiving the new P-51 long-range fighters, the black airmen went onto compile one of the most impressive combat records of the war. No bomberformation escorted by the black pilots ever lost a plane to enemy fighters.

    As a company grade officer who was not part of the Air University faculty,Aderholt did not interact socially or professionally with either Colonel Davisor Colonel Momyer while they were at Maxwell. He had no way of knowingthe contrasting roles that both men would play in his life nearly two decadeslater in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, his forceful and fair-minded leadershipwhile commanding the black squadron at Maxwell caught the attention of hissuperiors. His efficiency report for the period highlighted his special qualities"as a commander of men," describing him as "a morale builder, firm in his convictions,and respected by officers and men alike."

    In his final days at Maxwell, he did a favor for a senior officer who wouldbecome an important influence on his career. Aderholt and the newly formedcrew were getting ready to leave for California when Colonel Cecil H. Childre,a chief instructor at Air Command and Staff College, came to them and said hewas told they were on their way to Korea and had a layover in San Bernardino."Captain, I'd like for you to take my dog to San Bernardino," the colonel said,explaining that he would be following them to Korea in a few weeks and thathis wife was staying in California while he was gone. Aderholt describedChildre as "one helluva good guy," whom he had known slightly at the officers'club and elsewhere on base. He did not think twice about taking the family'spet dog to San Bernardino, an act that unwittingly stood him in good steadwith the man who would be his new boss in Korea.

To Korea with the Kyushu Gypsies

The runway was steaming when Captain Aderholt and his crew lifted off fromMaxwell Field in late July. Their flight suits were drenched but would dry asthey climbed to cruising altitude and leveled off. Jessie and the other wiveswere at the flight line to bid them Godspeed. Viewed from the cockpit and thewindows of the C-47, the waving arms of the well-wishers faded rapidly intothe vaporous landscape below. A popular country-and-western tune—"I'mMoving On," by Canadian recording star Hank Snow, destined to be a KoreanWar classic—crackled through the static on the plane's radio. Aderholt smiled.They were on their way.

    The ground patterns below were as familiar as his reflection in the windshield.He had flown religiously while at Maxwell. After completing his tour asSquadron F commander in August 1948, he had gone on temporary duty toTyndall AFB, Florida, as a student at the Air Tactical School—the only formalclasses of his career other than pilot training. Returning to Maxwell in December,he was assigned to base operations managing a variety of activities, includingflying training, the instrument training school, the checkout program,and flying safety. He was current in at least six airplanes at Maxwell and oftenflew alone. He said that flying the large multiengine planes with no one else onboard "got lonesome," but he loved it. "I was having a helluva good time," herecalled.

    Making two refueling stops in Texas (Fort Worth and El Paso), the C-47touched down at San Bernardino late the same day. Colonel Childre's wife metthem at base operations to take the canine passenger off their hands. CaptainAderholt and the crew "twiddled their thumbs" for nearly a week at SanBernardino, waiting for their plane to undergo engine maintenance and haveeight one-hundred-gallon fuel tanks installed in the fuselage. Then on a balmysouthern California morning, the captain and his crew departed for Hawaii, thefirst and longest leg on their flight across the Pacific. They were carrying sixteenhundred gallons of fuel, enough to last them twenty-three or twenty-fourhours in the air, more than sufficient for the Hawaii leg, which took about nineteento twenty hours. It was a long, wearing journey, wrapped in a Plexiglascocoon of flight instruments, sky, and ocean.

    Just past midnight, a light appearing in the darkness ahead broke the monotony.Only Aderholt was awake, flying the plane on automatic pilot. Seeing thelight grow larger, he rubbed his eyes and nudged the sleeping copilot. "Is thatlight another plane, or what?" he asked. "Jesus Christ, I think that's an airplane,"the half-awake copilot responded. They were surprised to be overtakinganother plane, since the Gooney Bird was on cruise control with a zerowind factor and was "going along at about 110 or 115 miles per hour." Theycrept up on the other craft, flying at the same altitude, and slowly flew pastwhat they recognized as a Martin PB2M Mars, a mammoth four-engine sea-planethe Navy had acquired for transporting cargo in World War II. Cruisingat about 105 miles per hour, the lumbering behemoth was on a milk run betweenAlameda and Honolulu.

    Arriving at daybreak, Aderholt and his crew stayed at Hickam AFBovernight and departed for Johnson Island the following morning. From Johnstonthey flew to Kwajalein, to Guam, and on to Tachikawa Air Base, on theoutskirts of Tokyo. "Everywhere we went we spent the night," Aderholt said."It didn't seem like anybody was in a big hurry." The aura of Mount Fuji—agreat oriental shrine breaking through the clouds—rose to greet them as theyturned for the descent into Tachikawa. Reporting to the 374th Troop CarrierWing, they were put on crew rest awaiting further orders. Nearly a week hadgone by since they left California, and they "sat and waited" another week atTachikawa.

    Just after the Korean War erupted, Far East Air Forces (FEAF) beefed up the374th Wing's two squadrons of C-54 transports at Tachikawa by stationing asquadron equipped with C-47s at Ashiya Air Base in southern Japan. Therugged Gooney Bird was ideal for airlift operations supporting the hard-pressedU.S. and South Korean defenders because the small, unimprovedairstrips on the war-torn peninsula would not accommodate heavier planes.The squadron initially flew some C-46s into Korea but discontinued usingthem because the runways could not support their landing weight. The initialbuildup of C-47s at Ashiya was accomplished with planes borrowed from otherFEAF bases—a temporary measure until additional C-47s arrived from theUnited States. The planes were assigned to the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron,better known as the Kyushu Gypsies, a former C-54 unit that had moved sansaircraft from the Philippines to Ashiya in early July.

    Because Kyushu was the southernmost of the main islands, Ashiya and itsneighboring installation, Itazuki, were two of the more strategically situatedbases available to FEAF at this desperate stage of the ground war. When theNorth Korean onslaught drove defending forces back to the southern tip of thewar-ravaged peninsula in July, General MacArthur ordered Eighth Army CommandingGeneral Walton H. Walker to hold the Pusan perimeter at all costs.MacArthur did not want another Dunkirk on his hands, and preserving afoothold on the peninsula was vital to his plans for an amphibious assault onSouth Korea's waistline at Inchon. His daring maneuver to cut off the enemy'smain line of advance and drive the aggressors back across the thirty-eighth parallelwas contingent upon the arrival of essential reinforcements by September.Meanwhile, the C-47s flying out of Ashiya, sitting across the narrow strait fromthe Pusan perimeter, were a primary source of resupply and emergency evacuationfor General Walker's besieged Eighth Army. Similarly, the 8th FighterBomber Group and other fighter units at nearby Itazuke assured Eighth Armyof readily available tactical air support.

    Impatient to end the delay and join the airlift action into Korea, CaptainAderholt exploded in frustration when finally told why they were being heldover at Tachikawa. The 374th Wing would not let him fly the C-47 to Ashiyabecause local procedures prohibited pilots from operating in Japanese airspaceunless they were flight-checked and qualified by Fifth Air Force. "Boy, was Ipissed," Aderholt said. "Here we were ready to go to war, and they made us siton our hands at Tachikawa." There was no one else available to fly the C-47.The group had only C-54 pilots assigned at Tachikawa, so Aderholt and hiscrew had to wait for a "qualified" pilot to arrive. "It was Catch-22," he recalled."They sent us a second lieutenant who had a total of about seven hundredhours in the air. He got us to Ashiya all right, but then taxied my perfectlygood airplane that I'd nursed across the Pacific into a damned utility pole andtore the right wingtip off. That was my introduction to Far East Air Forces."

    The squadron singled out Aderholt to be operations officer, but he beggedoff with the explanation that he had come there "to fly." So he started "flyingthe line" into Korea, night and day. The airlift of cargo into Korea was a continuousoperation. Base operations scheduled the flights. "The planes were alllined up in a single row," he explained. "They were ready to go, and you justtook the first aircraft in line and flew to Korea. When you got to Korea andsomebody wanted you to do something, they sent you around. When you decidedyou'd had enough, you came home. You put your airplane at the end ofthe line, and they checked it. It was pretty well organized." The aircrews, consistingof a copilot, flight engineer, and radio operator, were never the samepeople. "Since we had pretty good nondirectional beacons, we didn't reallyneed a navigator," Aderholt noted. He recalled that he spent most of his time inKorea. "They always kept one or two planes in Korea," he said, "and we oftenstayed two or three days before returning to Ashiya. When we couldn't find abunk, we slept in the planes."

    The squadron's name, the Kyushu Gypsies, was an appropriate one. "Wewere gypsies," he recalled. "It wasn't like being in a squadron. We never sawanybody. We just flew. We did a hell of a lot of flying. The guys who wanted tofly got to fly, and those who didn't push didn't have to do too much." Thesquadron airlifted thousands of tons of urgently needed arms, ammunition, rations,and supplies from Ashiya to Eighth Army units through early September,while transporting endless manifests of passengers, including the evacuation ofwounded troops to hospitals in Japan. Aderholt started flying with the squadronin early August, and by the end of the month he had chalked up seventy-twosorties and nearly two hundred flying hours—a feat that put him in the top 10percent of the 130 pilots assigned to the squadron at that time.

    Recounting these early missions, he said there was "such a confused frontwhen we had the Pusan perimeter" that pilots never had a clear picture of theground battle. When Army troops were being resupplied, they normally laidout panels and the pilots dropped on those panels. Many times the pilots had toland on airfields that were under attack, and these missions "could get hairy."Flying emergency resupplies into Pohang (K-3) when the field was under siegewas one such mission. "We were flying ammunition in, and the artillery was allaround the perimeter," Aderholt said. "I just taxied around and off-loaded itwhere the artillerymen were firing." They were "shooting it up" as fast as thepilots could bring it in. "We spent two days doing nothing but hauling ammofrom Taegu (K-2) to Pohang," he said. He also recalled that the enemy was on"the hill above Taegu (K-2) and stayed there" until the North Korean forceswithdrew from the Pusan perimeter. "We didn't know whether the field wouldstill be ours when we came in some nights," he said, adding, "Some peopledon't know how close we came to getting our ass kicked off that peninsula."

    While Aderholt was away in early September, his squadron moved fromAshiya to nearby Brady Field. The mission did not change, but the squadroncame under operational control of the newly formed FEAF Combat CargoCommand after relocating to Brady. The move was part of a larger realignmentto centralize all theater air transport under Major General William H. Tunner(architect of "Over the Hump" airlift in World War II and the Berlin Airlift) initiallyas commander of FEAF Combat Cargo Command, later of the 315th AirDivision. Colonel Cecil Childre arrived in the theater about the same time andbecame deputy commander of the 21st Squadron's parent unit, the 374th Wingat Tachikawa. In October, Childre moved to FEAF's forward headquarters inSeoul and established the air terminal units of the Combat Cargo Command. Onthe first of the month, Aderholt activated a special air missions detachment inKorea, operating briefly out of Taegu (K-2) and then from Kimpo (K-14) on theoutskirts of Seoul. Upon relocating to Kimpo, the detachment worked for and gotits instructions from Colonel Childre, a rugged, soft-spoken Texan who rose tothree-star rank after the war and took a personal interest in Aderholt's career.

    The shake-up in combat airlift coincided with MacArthur's amphibious assaultat Inchon in mid September where Marine landing forces "backed bydevastating naval and air bombardment ... readily defeated the weak, stunnedNorth Korean defenders." The enemy's main invasion force had advancedsouth of the thirty-seventh parallel, well below Seoul, where it stalled becauseof Eighth Army's stubborn defense of the Pusan perimeter. The North Koreans'"long, exposed lines of communications" were overextended and under constantattack by air and naval fire. Their "logistical problems worsened daily."On the heels of the Marine landing, the Army's 7th Division came ashore andstruck south toward Suwon, helping to facilitate Eighth Army's breakout at Pusan.By the twentieth, the Marines had taken Kimpo airfield and "were poundingat the gates of Seoul." Nine days later Seoul had been recaptured and theNorth Korean Army's withdrawal "had turned into a rout."

    During preparations for the Inchon landings, pilots from the 21st Squadronwere brought to Tokyo for training in airborne operations. MacArthur's headquartersplanned to drop the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team intoKorea at the time of the Inchon landings. The 21st was designated as one of thesquadrons to support the airborne assault. Having flown paratroopers in trainingat Fort Benning and in Sicily, Aderholt was one of the few pilots in thesquadron who had airborne experience. All of the pilots needed to hone theirskills in formation flying. After completing the training, they were told that theairborne assault had been put off because the 187th RCT would not arrive inJapan in time for the Inchon landings. Aderholt learned that he was going to establishthe special missions detachment working for Colonel Childre in Koreawhen he returned to the squadron with the other pilots.

    "Our mission was a little bit of everything ... strictly combat support andcombat operations," he said, "and we supported nearly everybody ... Fifth AirForce, Far East Command, Army G2, and anybody else that needed us." Whenthe detachment moved from Taegu to Kimpo, Aderholt asked Colonel Childrewhat he wanted him to do. The colonel's matter-of-fact response: "Your job isto keep everybody in Korea off my back." The detachment never had morethan a dozen pilots available to fly five or six planes, and they flew night andday. "We flew all kinds of missions, even taking the frag order around atnight," Aderholt said. "It was terrible for the pilots. We just flew the pilots intothe ground." When not flying, they lived in conditions that were "about asprimitive as they could get." "We had about sixteen to eighteen officerscrammed into a quonset hut," he said. "No toilet facilities. No bath facilities."Then he paused for a moment and reflected, "But we had it better than thosepoor bastards slugging it out on the ground."

    Participating in the long-delayed airdrop of the 187th RCT, which hadshipped to Korea and was in GHQ Reserve around Kimpo, afforded a break inthe routine. In October, after President Truman and the UN Security Councilassented, General Walker's reinforced Eighth Army and other UNC forceslaunched an all-out drive across the thirty-eighth parallel (including an amphibiousassault at Wonsan) to punish the retreating aggressors and to takeNorth Korea. When Eighth Army troops captured Pyongyang on the nineteenth,MacArthur ordered the airdrop of the 187th the next day near the townsof Sukchon and Sunchon to entrap the North Koreans and keep them from fleeingacross the Yalu River to Manchuria. Approximately fifty C-47s from the21st Troop Carrier Squadron, and an equal number of C-119s of the 314thTroop Carrier Group, carried out the airdrop. Aderholt flew deputy lead to the21st Squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Phil Cage. "It was just anotherday at the office," he said. "We had total air superiority and got no flak from theNorth Koreans."

    All hell was about to break loose "in the Land of the Morning Calm," butnobody believed it. General MacArthur reported that the airborne landing ofthe 187th had been a complete surprise and spelled the end for the North Koreans.From Tokyo he confidently predicted the war would be "coming to anend shortly." "The troops thought they'd be home for Christmas," Aderholt recalled.This optimism faded quickly, however, when U.S. and ROK forcesclashed with Chinese troops below the Yalu River at the Changjin Reservoirand at Onjong in late October and early November. While UNC forces wereengaged in defeating the North Korean Army, intelligence reports estimatedthat as many as 180,000 Chinese troops had crossed the border undetected. TheChinese abruptly broke off the encounter on 6 November, allowing UNCforces to fall back and regroup. Although the enemy's intentions were unclearat this point, it would soon be evident that the fog of war settling back over theravaged land was the harbinger of a harsh and savage winter.

Flying the Dark of the Moon

The threat of Chinese intervention changed the outlook of the war, imposingurgent new mission requirements on Aderholt's detachment. Around the timeU.S. and Chinese forces first clashed near the end of October, Colonel Childrecalled to tell Aderholt he was sending an Army captain out to see him. "Whateverthis guy wants, give it to him," Childre said. The Army captain was BobBrewer, a case officer assigned to special intelligence within Far East Command'sforward headquarters. He was responsible for collecting "essentialelements of information" about opposing military forces, a highly classified projectinvolving clandestine operations deep inside North Korea. Brewer was one ofthree case officers charged with collecting and analyzing this information,known in the trade as human intelligence (HUMINT). He had gone to ColonelChildre seeking Fifth Air Force's help airdropping agents over the north.

    Constraints imposed by MacArthur's headquarters prior to the Inchon landinghad limited Brewer's project to using boats for inserting agents behind thelines—an option that he found "unsatisfactory." Meanwhile, he prepared forthe eventuality of parachuting agents into the north, by carefully choosingseven (three women and four men) of his "best Korean spies," training them"in a safe house how to jump out of an airplane," and keeping them in goodphysical condition. After successfully parachuting these operatives into NorthKorea at the time of the Inchon landing, Brewer developed a continuing programof insertions by air and gained approval to implement it. When he raninto problems finding regular, qualified air support for the project, he turned toColonel Childre. "You go out to Kimpo and talk to Captain Aderholt," Childresaid. "He is the man you are looking for."

    Despite Childre's assurances, Brewer's disappointing experience with earlierair support had him primed "to expect a little trouble convincing my AirForce counterparts to fly the kind of mission that would get the job done." Forsuch clandestine missions to be successful, the agents had to be dropped withpinpoint accuracy without being detected by the enemy. This meant that thesupporting aircraft had to penetrate at low altitude and at night, "flying by thedark of the moon and below the rim of the mountains wherever possible," toavoid detection and to navigate with precision to the objective. If radar trackedthe plane's penetration, the enemy could plot the probable drop zone and zeroin on the agent. Likewise, an agent who landed outside the zone had to movethrough unfamiliar territory to the objective and was susceptible to capture. Itwas a mission demanding "the utmost in skill and guts" by all concerned.

    Brewer was pleasantly surprised when he got to Kimpo and found that"Aderholt and some of his assistants were all ready for me." Aderholt lookedback on the meeting as the start of "a lifetime friendship with Bob Brewer." Herecalled Brewer explaining his mission and complaining that he "had all theseagents to drop and the Air Force hadn't given him any qualified flying crews.""Well, you just tell us what you want us to do, and we'll take care of that,"Aderholt told him. Brewer agreed that they "immediately hit it off" and becamethe best of friends. He noted that Aderholt's strong points—"the abilityto innovate and to communicate"—were ideally suited for the heat of combatand the exceptional risks of clandestine operations. "He communicated witheverybody and everybody knew exactly where he stood," Brewer said.

    Aderholt's terse account of the detachment's first flight supporting Brewer'soperation could not mask his thrill in the mission:

He had about eighteen or twenty Korean agents all parachuted up and a big map on the wall, and he pointed out where we were going. I looked where he was pointing, and we were going up on the Yalu River. I remember thinking, What in the hell are we going up there for? We got on the airplane, and he became the damned navigator. He took my ass all the way on the deck up to the Yalu River and down the Yalu River, and we were dropping these poor sons of bitches out. My navigator was this second lieutenant, just commissioned, and he kept saying, You are going to let this Army captain get us killed. When we got back, that was the last time we ever saw the navigator. He went back to the squadron in Japan and he never returned.

The operatives they dropped that night were part of a growing pool of trainedKorean spies known as "Rabbits" in the intelligence community. "These guyslooked tough, and they were tough," Aderholt said. Some were North Koreanrefugees "who had a score to settle with the Communists." They parachutedinto the heart of enemy territory, carried out the assigned mission, and madetheir way back to prearranged rendezvous points inside friendly lines. Often allowingthemselves to be captured and interned by friendly forces, agents thenused prearranged signals to gain release from prisoner of war (POW) cages. Intelligenceofficers immediately debriefed them and reported the informationobtained from their mission.

    Taken on as a recurring mission, the detachment's support for Brewer's operationgrew in importance. Entailing more than just airdropping the agents,the mission included monitoring signals by some agents and resupplying themwhen required. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had developed radiosand other equipment for clandestine work during World War II, but these itemswere not available in Korea. Some agents carried heavy SCR-300 backpack infantryradios and relayed information to a detachment aircraft orbiting overhead.Aderholt's radio operator, Staff Sergeant Robert Gross, rigged "a longcoaxial reception antenna trailing behind the aircraft," where he could communicatewith agents on the ground ten miles away. As operations progressed,they developed other innovative means of communicating with the agents.Brewer emphasized how important communications were to the success of amission. "When you told agents you would be back the next night at a certainhour and they could hear that plane wandering around the sky, they wouldbreak their backs for you," he said, "but you could kiss the mission good-byeif you failed to keep your word or they thought you didn't care."

    According to Brewer, during the ten months or so that he and Aderholt's detachmentworked together, they averaged about twenty missions a month forFar East Command—all at night and many of them flown "in the dark of themoon." They airdropped approximately one thousand agents in all, with overseven hundred of them either returning on time or coming up over the radio ontime. Brewer interpreted a delay of more than two days to mean an agent hadbeen compromised. He claimed their success rate of above 70 percent far exceededthat of other wars. "It was because we were accurate," he said. "We putpeople in exactly where we said they were going to go, and once they were onthe ground, they knew where to go and carry out their mission."

    Meanwhile, the detachment continued to carry out its regular air transporttasks, providing routine and emergency airlift, flying the ambassador and otherVIPs around, and making the frag run each night to a growing family of Alliedbases. Another part of its regular mission was psychological warfare, which includedaerial broadcasting of loudspeaker messages and "wide-ranging leafletdrops urging Chinese and North Korean soldiers to surrender or face inevitabledeath." Always innovative and willing to try new ideas, Aderholt decided thatbecause they were flying over enemy-held terrain anyway and nearly alwaysspotted tempting targets, they might as well make the most of the opportunity.In the saga of what has been described as the first and last C-47 "Bomber," thedetachment rigged some of its planes to hold "two seventy-five-gallon napalmbombs under the transport's belly." The C-47 had paracontainer racks underneaththat were used to drop bundles. Aderholt's crews screwed aerodeliveryshackles into the racks and hung napalm canisters the same way it was done onfighters. When the last agent had parachuted from the plane, Aderholt and hiscrews flew "armed reconnaissance," dropping the napalm canisters on trucksand other lucrative targets on their way home.

    Aderholt and Captain Lou Droste made the first C-47 napalm drop against atarget that Fifth Air Force intelligence had identified as an enemy headquarters.On Christmas Eve they made a reconnaissance run over the target, observing alarge barnlike structure sitting in the open with tracks leading through the snowinto the building. "At dawn the following morning, flying at minimum altitude,fifty feet off the ground, we delivered a Christmas present—two napalm canisterscrashing through the front door at the same time," Aderholt recalled. "Thebuilding erupted in flames. Nobody got out." That was the first time the 21stTroop Carrier Squadron's planes had dropped napalm and was believed to havebeen the first napalm dropped in combat from a transport aircraft.

    The detachment believed higher headquarters was unaware of its midnightbombing runs until Colonel Childre called and said, "I know you have beendropping napalm." Hesitantly, Aderholt answered, "Yes." "Well, officially I'vegot to tell you not to do it," Childre said, "but I know you are going to do itanyway." Months later, as Aderholt was nearing the end of his tour in Korea,Childre called and asked him to come to Tokyo. The colonel had left Korea inFebruary 1951 to become deputy commander of the 315th Air Division atTachikawa. He explained that the division was planning a napalm saturationmission using C-119s and could benefit from the detachment's experience.Aderholt flew to Tachikawa and briefed Childre and his staff. The division subsequentlymassed a large formation of C-119s loaded with fifty-five-gallondrums of napalm. Their target was a hill where heavily fortified enemy troopspersisted in beating back attacks from exposed UNC positions below. After theC-119s saturated the hill with napalm, fighters roared in and ignited the fire.Aderholt learned later that they burned off the hill, but enemy troops were welldug in, and most survived the firestorm.

    As the detachment's reputation in flying special missions grew, more agenciesasked for support. Already lean in resources, the unit got a few more menand planes for the increased workload, but mostly "sucked it up" with whatwas already available. "Aircraft were hard to come by, and my outfit had sofew people," Aderholt said. "Nobody wanted to fly with us when they couldlive in Tokyo." Bringing to mind the lieutenant who never returned, he said thedetachment's C-47s rarely had navigators. "Navigators were hard to come by,and none of them wanted to fly with us," he said. Pilots like Droste, JackNabors, and John McDonald (captains at the time) who flew the hard missionsand were always there when you needed them "had balls of steel" and werecrucial to detachment operations.

    Among the detachment's new missions were more daring penetrations deepinto North Korea in support of Fifth Air Force intelligence and the Central IntelligenceAgency, the latter having far-reaching implications for Aderholt's career.These missions did not begin until January 1951, however, amid perhapsthe harshest winter endured by American fighting men since Valley Forge andthe "Winter of Despair" nearly two centuries earlier. The convulsion of the bitterKorean winter of 1950-51 into a hellish struggle for survival might havebeen averted had General MacArthur and his staff heeded intelligence gleanedfrom prisoner interrogations and partisans dropped into North Korea by Aderholt'sdetachment.

(Continues...)

Copyright © 2000 Warren A. Trest. All rights reserved.