Howard E. Halvorsen
Air Force Sustainment Center Historian
“It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.” – Air Power Truism
During the first frantic weeks of the Korean War, the Far East Air Force faced many challenges. With interests all over the Pacific Theater, FEAF initially fought the war on a shoestring, frequently making do with ad hoc solutions and leftover equipment from World War II.
The thinking at the time was that if a major war broke out, it would be in Europe and not in Asia. Also initially, there was insufficient appreciation for the communist foe, the forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Immun Gun had the newest and best weapons. Many were veterans fighting with the Chinese communists against the Japanese during World War II and with the communists during the Chinese Civil War. American troops on the ground were green and ill-equipped and needed all the help they could get. The best help they had was the United States Air Force, providing close air support that was the force multiplier denying the communists a victory.
As the United Nations forces were built up and supplied, FEAF began to realize there was one thing of finite supply: pilots. The weapons of war could become hors de combat and be replaced, but pilots and crews shot down behind North Korean lines were irreplaceable and needed to be saved. Just then, a small group of dedicated warriors demonstrated that the solution lay not in conventional aircraft, but in the helicopter.
At the beginning of the war in June, 1950, the Fifth Air Force had one small helicopter detachment composed of nine Sikorsky H-5As assigned as part of the 3rd Air Rescue Squadron.
At first, Stinson L-5 observation planes were attempted for rescue in Korea, but the terrain made it impossible for the Piper Cub-like planes. Finally, on July 22, 1950, the first helicopters to serve in Korea arrived in Taegu. Initially, their mission was aeromedical evacuation and light supply missions. Discussions began on how to rescue downed pilots as well.
1st Lt. Paul van Boven got the word that an F-51 Mustang from the 35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron had gone down in flames near Hanggan-dong, just north of the Pusan Perimeter.
The pilot had bailed out and landed in a rice paddy. His comrades were circling above him and called for rescue. The Navy planned to send in a landing team to recover him, but that would take time and the Mustang pilot was surrounded by North Korean troops. The pilot would likely be killed or captured before the Navy team could march the several miles behind enemy lines to get him.
It being so early in the war, it was not yet widely known that nearly all captured pilots were shot on sight. The enemy knew the war would already have been won without CAS involving the first wide-spread use of napalm.
1st Lt. van Boven was told he did not have to go. He knew the risks. He knew the H-5s were not sturdily armored. He also knew what capture meant; he had been a POW during World War II, but would not abandon a fellow American to that fate, if he could help it. He and medical technician Cpl. John Fuentez were going in.
Capt. Robert E. “Bob” Wayne was not having his best day. He was newly hairless, covered in third degree burns and manure, and was peering out at North Korean troops who wanted to kill him. Shortly before, he had been flying CAS when his plane was hit. He hadn’t noticed the plane had been hit until he felt his right foot on fire.
When he released the canopy, he was quickly covered in flames and ejected a mere 400 feet off the ground. Now, he was surrounded by Immun Gun he had been bombing just minutes before. Meanwhile, at his base in Japan, his wife was giving birth to their third child. Wayne had better places to be.
Despite his injuries, he did his best to evade enemy troops and one angry bull in the rice paddies behind enemy lines. During this time, it was not ground troops engaging the Immun Gun, but his fellow flyers circling and diving from above. When the rescue helicopter arrived, Wayne got up to wave it in, not seeing a North Korean officer closing in from 100 yards behind.
Everyone watching from above – the helicopter pilot, his fellow F-51 fliers – all knew they were about to watch Wayne die. Wayne’s wingman, Capt. R. Stan White, in one of the F-51s dove maniacally towards the scene. The North Korean officer drew his pistol from 50 yards away, and just as he was going to pull the trigger, long deadly accurate machine gun fire from the plane cut the North Korean in two. It had been that close.
Captain Wayne was picked up by the whirlybird and taken to Taegu (K-2). Wayne was banging down medicinal doses of appropriated bourbon and regaling everyone with his tale of survival. There were no medics available to help him, but the bourbon took the edge off the pain…even if it did nothing for the smell of burnt flesh and manure.
He heard about a Curtis C-46 Commando that was going that evening to Itazuke, Japan, and decided to catch a ride. It was a mail plane and he took a late afternoon nap amongst the mail bags. When he awoke, it was evening and the plane was in the air. He decided to approach the cockpit and ask where they were. The pilots, who had no idea they had a passenger, were scared to death at this hairless, foul-smelling creature coming up to them and talking to them in the dark.
After landing, Wayne finally received medical treatment. He remembered, “That night they took me down to the hospital and filled my butt full of penicillin and wrapped me all up.” He caught a C-45 flight back to his home base in Osaka, Japan the next morning.
Unannounced, he appeared in the doorway of his wife Penny Sue’s hospital room. Looking up from her bed, she was startled at the sudden arrival of this walking mummy. Covered with bandages and burn salve, his hair missing in places, and his eyebrows nothing but a fond memory, Wayne was hard to recognize. Worse, his burns had been oozing through the bandages, which caused him to have a particularly noxious smell.
She quickly recovered her composure when she realized that this apparition was her husband. Then, the stoicism of all great Air Force wives set in and her face went blank.
Casually, without a hint of worry in her voice, she asked, “So, what happened to you?”
Wayne ambled into the room, glancing down at his wife, who held their newborn son in her arms.
Smiling as he reached out for his boy, he replied with forced nonchalance, “Well, Hon, I had a little trouble refilling my Zippo.”
Excerpts from Crimson Sky by John R. Bruning.