Paul Hummel

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Paul Hummel: My name is Paul Leslie Hummel. P-A-U-L  L-E-S-L-I-E  H-U-M-M-E-L.  And I was born in on June 2^nd,1928.

Interviewer: Where were, you born?

P: I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I:  Could you spell it?

P:  C-E-D-A-R  Cedar like the tree. Rapids like the stream, R-A-P-I-D-S, Iowa.

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P:  I was born there on June 2^nd, 1928, and a lived there about six months so I don’t recall those times.  I spent my early years of my memory until December 1940 on the farm in Dixon, Illinois then after high school there, I went into the Air Force.

I: When did you graduate from high school?

P: June of 1946.

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I:  Tell me about other schools you went to like elementary and middle.

P: Well, I went my first six-and-a-half years in Lisbon, Iowa, elementary school, and that was good.  I was a slow learne,r so I’d spent two years in third grade. After that I took off and did very well . So then tragedy hit my home my father died when I was eleven years old.  And in that period of time we moved to the farm, it was very traumatic

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to me to lose all my friends and go to a whole new world, so my mother put me into a city school in Dixon, South Dixon. I was suffering from the loss of my father and my move and everything else,  so I was very unhappy for that period of time.

I: What’s the name of high school you graduated from?

Paul:  Dixon High School

I:  Dixon.

P:  Yeah, that was like going away to college because my seventh and eighth grades were in country school,

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Preston Country School, south my farm there. It was a little school with the teacher and about 6 students I think. All eight grades, but we did not have students in all the grades. It was like tutoring we would go up to the desk, interview the teacher or she would interview us, get our new assignment ,then go back to our desks. Then she would take another student up.

I: What school?

 P: Preston.

I: One room school, right?

P:  A one room school. Yeah, an old country school in those days.   I had a cousin who taught in a country school

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that had like 30 or more students in her school, so she had a big job.  In my school I had like tutoring which  was some of the best education I got in my life

I:  Because it’s a one-to-one?

P:  so when I graduated there I had good grades.  Then I went on to high school it was like going away to college because this was a big school with hundreds of students from all over the whole area there.  Just one high school for the area.  So when I

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went there I just did not know how I stacked up against the city boys and girls,  but  I did very well there. I graduated in the top 10 percent in the class. I got good grades in math and science I was focusing on those things, instead of English and history you know the whole bit. When I graduated from high school that was right at the end of World War II, and so I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a farmer , so I went off to the University

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of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois and that was in the fall of 1947.  . . fall of 1946 I guess so I was there one year. I chose chemical engineering because I enjoy chemistry and so forth. But going to school there was a huge crowd of veterans and it was really pandemonium, lots of turmoil all over the.  I was so kind of felt like

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I was a little bit out of place and apprehensive about a lot of things so I decided to terminate my college career at that point and went back to the farm

I: Did you know anything about Korean when you were in school, before you graduated from high school?

P: Very little, after I came to Hawaii I learned a lot because a lot of Koreans came over here before the Korean War

I: Right, 1905. That’s the first year Korean immigrated into Hawaii

P: Okay.

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I: But, did you know anything about Korea about the time that you graduated high school?

P: Very little

I: Very little

P:  Yeah

I: Anything you knew, tell me about it.

P: I can’t remember what I knew about Korea at the time.  I knew where it was on the map, but as far as the history of like when I graduated from high school I did not have much interest in history. My interest developed over the succeeding years that.

I:  Got it.  So you joined the Air Force in May

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of 1949,

P:  right?

I:  And so, you enlisted, right?

P: Yes.

I: Tell me about the day that you enlisted. Where you did it and where did you go to get the basic training and so on.

P: Well, I did it I guess at Dixon, Illinois. I forget exactly how the recruiting thing went, but I got accepted and so on I went by train then down to Waco, Texas, and went into flight training and of course

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they started out with boot camp, just like any other private or any other officer candidate school. So it’s about six weeks or more of marching around and taking commands and all that kind of stuff. Then we went into flight training and the flight training in basic training was in Waco, Texas.  It was half the day, morning would be like ground school we learned all theory of this that and the other things the other half of the day was flight training. We would be out in the line

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flight and so.

I: When was that?

P:  That was May of ’49 for six months until whatever it was October or something like that.

I: Why did you enlist to the Air Force? And what is the difference between enlisting in the Air Force as just a soldier or as a pilot? What kind of differences is there? How do you enlist that?

P: Well, I’ve always had interest

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in flying. In high school I’d read these books about the Flying Tigers in China Claire Chennault and his slang Tigers and  Scott or somebody he wrote book my co-pilot.  I’d read these books about pilots and flying and fighter planes and so forth so I was very intrigued. I’d have visions of myself being a fighter pilot (laugh)  so I had interest in

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these things and I thought well learn to be a pilot that might have some career implications afterwards and I could have went that route. I had friends that went to school with in pilot training they went out of the Air Force they went into PanAm train became Pan Am pilots all kinds of commercial pilots. I didn’t go that route, but anyway that opened up a new career opportunity because after high school I am was going into chemical engineering and I didn’t held off on that and

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so then after four years in the Air Force. I decided didn’t want to make destruction killing my career I wanted  to do something constructive with my life so then I went into engineering which we can cover later.

I: So, tell me about your the pilot training. How was it?

P: Very, very, rigorous. In fact it was it…

I: Was it in Waco, Texas?

P: Oh, yeah because down there I had

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instructor pilots this is at the end of World War II and they were cutting down the Air Force. Some of them lost their jobs, got thrown out of the Air Force or they were threatened so they weren’t all that anxious and train new people to take over their job. So, there was a time there when I was just barely hanging on by the skin of my teeth it that was going to be thrown out because a lot of people failed out a flight training for one reason or another and part of my reason was that I get one instructor

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and they’d be gone.  Then the next instructor would come in so it took me a little while to get solo status because they kept changing instructors all the time, finally I passed my flight training. I could land the planes and take off and fly things went pretty well after that.

I:  What aircraft did you train on?

P: That  was called the AT6

I: 86

P: No, AT6. Advance T Trainer that was the plane that World War II

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pilots flew in the last period of their training. They had primary trainer, basic trainers, and advanced trainers so at that point in time they kept changing the flight training program so we started right off in the advanced trainer, AT-6.

I: How many hours of training?

P: Um..I guess is around 230 hours, I forget.  I forget exactly, but by the time I left basic training I could fly that plane like nobody’s business I can do acrobatics,

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all kinds of things I could put it into a spin take it out again fly formation, flight instruments, fly cross-country. So, we went to Williams, same airplane, more advanced training, all kinds of things, so I flew that plane most of the time at Williams advanced training. And then through the F-80 at Williams for about 35 hours

I: Williams where?

P:  That’s up just outside of a Phoenix, Arizona

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a little town called  Chandler and it’s now suburb of Phoenix  I understand, but it was a little town of its own. Williams Air Force Base was just outside the edge of town. Well, when I graduate the Korean War hadn’t started

I: Right

P: I graduated in May, it started in June of 50. I went to a Bergstrom Air Force Base, Austin, Texas, 27 Strategic Fighter Wing, 520 2^nd Squadron

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and the word comes out that way because later on were attached to tactical air command but strategic was their whole mission was escort missions for the big bombers in Europe and so the Bomber Command SAC Curtis LeMay had his own fighters to escort him, so we had top-notch fighter pilots in our unit. And they were flying the F- 82 which is a prop plane the nickname is a Twin Mustang

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because the silhouette looks like a Mustang.

I: I know

P: You know they have F-82?

I: Yeah.

P: Oh, good.

I: What was your rank?

P: I graduated Second Lieutenant

I: Second Lieutenant?

P: I was second lieutenant all the way until I got into Korea. They gave me a battlefield promotion to first lieutenant, but after I came back out they reverted me back to second lieutenant then later on I was promoted to first lieutenant

I: But tell me about the aircraft that you were flying because to the audience

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How do you bomb and how many people in there? Tell me about that.

P: Well I flew the F-84E and that was the current advanced model for the F80. It was built by Republic Aviation. It was a straight wing aircraft with a nose intake and flow goes at the tail and we had six 50 caliber machine guns four in the nose and two in the wing roots. And we had bomb racks right underneath there on the

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wing tip so I had big tanks for extra fuel which usually always carry because even in combat if you had to adjust and those knew you could get more maneuverability, but we never did because we didn’t need to. She always carried those wing tanks to give us a fuel for longer range and then later on we had some long range missions which carry fuel tanks in the on the bomb racks to0, so on the bomb racks we could carry up 500-pound bombs we could carry clusters of 5-inch

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rockets we could carry napalm.

I: How many pilots? One?

P: One.

I:  Just one?

P:  Yeah, we did everything. We did the navigation. We did the fighting. We did the flying, the whole thing.

I:  Were you good at shooting?

P: Oh yeah, but …

I: Were you a top gun?

P: Well, I don’t know we can talk about that a little bit

I: Were there kinds of war top gun at the time too.

P:  I think that terminology came later on.

I: Later on right, yeah.

P: Yeah because

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they had advanced training in California someplace where they got this title for Top Gun that kind of stuff,, but I think I was excellent, but the thing is this, at the time I graduated which was 12 months later on it went to 18 months pilot training because then they got weapon training. I graduated no weapon training, just piloting.

I: Wow

P: They expected you to learn that when you got to your unit and so I went on some missions in Texas there

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where we did a few things, nothing much, because in one month we were over there well in one month we were transitioned into the F- 82, so it took a little time to transition into jet fighters, the F-84. I’d already had jet time before any of them, did but not much. So they were all good pilots, so anyway our first mission from Texas was to fly a whole wing

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75 aircraft, 25 aircraft per squadron, three squadrons to Europe because they didn’t have any F-84 is over there. So we flew from Texas up to Maine, up to a Labrador, up to Greenland, Iceland, up to to Europe because in in those days no in-flight refueling and so we did that came back got a new complement of aircraft did the same thing again.

I: What was your mission? Just fly over to Europe.

P: Just take the planes over came back on the cargo planes.

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I: Oh, ok.

P:  And then you go back again and come back, so then after we came back the second time, then we got our assignment to go to Korea. So, we flew our aircraft  out to California and at that time, they loaded the aircraft on the baby aircraft carriers from World War II. The old deck was full planes rather than disassemble and reassemble them put the whole plane on there, tie them down, and go. So, we left, I think, oh I forget now,

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maybe October of ’50, something like that, but we were out in the ocean Thanksgiving, I think it was.

I: What they have craft were you on?

P: I don’t know. I can’t remember the name.

I: Early George or. . .

P: I can’t remember. It was a small baby, baby aircraft carrier. I can’t remember the name of it. So, anyway we’re out in the middle of the ocean when the Chinese came in because while we’re out there was when MacArthur and his troops  landed in Incheon and the whole war looked like it was over.

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We thought, well it’s over before we even get there because they were going full speed north and trapped all the North Koreans in the South, so it looked like it was all done until the Chinese came in. So by the time we landed over there, the Chinese were coming full speed, so we landed there not even fired the gun yet. We took off and our planes are ready growing up on a gunnery range above Tokyo someplace.

I: What do you mean, landed where?

P: It was a big, a big

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port outside of Tokyo.

I:  Sasebo?

P:  Probably. Yeah, I don’t know I can’t remember exactly anymore.

I: So when did you land in Japan?

P: That would be December of ’50. So we flew a couple of missions there to get us accustomed to shooting at targets on the ground, firing our weapons. While I was going across the ocean

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I studied my flight manual for that aircraft intensively. I knew where all the switches were for all the guns for every operational thing there was, so I intentionally knew my airplane by that time and. . . . So then after a couple of missions there then we were assigned to Taegu

I: K2?

P: Taegu we were assigned their, Peers Plank runway and we had all kinds of planes,

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F- 51, so we had F 80s, we had the F-84. We’d take off there on our  missions and we’d line up like a big  commercial airport. One afternoon take off, take off, take off, and come back in. Our plane  was a little bit more long-range than the others, so after a while they sent our group back to um, to um, to Kasuga Air Force Base, Kyushu.

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I: So before, when did you arrive in Taegu? Do you remember?

P: What would be December of ’50. We were flying missions already in December.

I: Okay

P:  We landed in December, and we were over there within a few days

I: How much were you paid as a pilot in the United States?

P:  I can’t remember.

I: About how much, approximately?

P: Well, for me out of high school and other jobs there was good money but nothing like they’re talking about today.

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I can’t remember the numbers.

I: More than hundred

P: More than a hundred. Oh, yeah.

I: More than a hundred, you were paid. When you were in the United States as a pilot?

P: Well, in pilot training it was $75. After I graduated as a second lieutenant pilot, it must have been $250 or $300. I forget. I can’t remember the numbers.

I: Very good. And had you ever imagined ever that you’re going to be in Korea and fighting?

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P: I had no idea.

I:  No idea.

P:  No, because when I graduated from high school there was no war yet.

I: And what did you think about that you are in the war?

P: Well, I thought there was that. . .

I:  Country you didn’t know before?

P:  Yeah.

I: And you are there and fighting.

P: Well, my attitude there was. . .  my whole philosophy through my whole life being a Christian is you don’t kill and on and on and on but I had to resolve that in my mind because my

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mission was to perform my duties because in doing that I protected my fellow combat personnel on the ground and others in the air from being damaged or killed so my whole mission in my mind was to protect myself and those around me. And the enemy, well they’re in there, and it’s my job to kill them if I can because in doing so it protects my country. It protects my fellow combat people,

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and protects all of us. So it’s us against them. right

I: Right. Um, how was Taegu Airbase at the time?

P: Where?

I:  Taegu.

P: Well, at that time that was wintertime is was cold. We had a little tent was about six of us in there on cots and sleeping bags. It had a wooden floor and the wood went up around the edges about three feet or so. A tent over that with a little pot-bellied stove in the middle

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of the place there, so keep a little bit of heat there. So, we slept good. We slept warm, comfortable. The soldiers weren’t shooting at us. We were there, but they were not far away. They were up there in the hills still a few remnants around, guerillas still fighting. And so, there was still action in the area. We were there for at least two or three months. We had hundred thirty combat missions ,and usually they considered 100 missions was the combat duty at that time. But our unit went over as a unit.

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We  left all of our equipment there and pilots from the mainland were coming over to replace us and take over equipment keep the thing going. Well, they were late in getting there.

I: So, were you still belong to 27th Strategic Fighter Wing?

P: The whole time

I:  The whole time. What was your mission? What was your supposed to do there?

P: Well, our initial mission was to protect the bombers because that’s our are calling, Strategic Air Force.

I: But the bombers were from Japan right? Okinawa?

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P: Oh yeah. Yeah they were B-29’s, B50’s, whatever it was.

I: So, how do they meet you guys together in the air?

P: Oh, yeah, in the air.

I: Tell me about those.

P: Well, we’d be assigned mission and we go up and meet with them sometime before they got up to the combat area. and they were in the 30 to 35 thousand foot altitude range somewhere in there. And we were up above them about 2,000 feet doing a pattern there to protect them against the enemy. It was the MiG 15

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at that time and so when they go up to North Korea, almost every time we’d meet the MiGs up there in the air. Now, they were probably Russian pilots, maybe Chinese, maybe some North Koreans, we don’t know exactly, but they all came from Russia as they were producing that MiG-15. Chinese, I don’t think had the capability of manufacturing fighters at that time. I’m not sure of that, but they may have had pilots that were trained we’re not sure of that, but they were good pilots.

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I: So you ended up in dog fighting

P: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I: Tell me about it. Any occasion that you had.

P: Well, see I was new in the wing, so we’d fly is a flight of four. This pattern was  developed during World War II tactics that two planes always stayed together, the flight leader in the wingman. The element leader, number three man, and number four men, two man were always afloat to you,  always,  no matter what. So, when we engaged

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the enemy fighters, the element leader, was the flight leader. The element leader their job is to look ahead and try to get the enemy. My job as a wingman was to stay in formation no matter where they went and be looking behind to protect his tail so you didn’t have to look back there. So, I’m looking up here, looking back there, and flying all over this sky, but I was real proud of myself because I never lost my flight leader.

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I was always with him and he was real happy for that. During some of our early missions, some of the element leaders lost their wing men because going all over the sky, but by lost I mean they got separated. So anyway, we engaged the MiGs there, oh, maybe a half a dozen times, not very long, not very often, but there were times when the MiGs would come down to at us you see the tracers coming past and say brake, turn hard this

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way, so I never got got hit by the MiGs my own plane, and my flight did leader never did either. But some of our  planes got shot up pretty badly, and they came home to survive and fly again, but I don’t recall if any of our aircraft were at that time lost to the MIG fighters, because they came in fast and we thought we could turn inside of them because they had swept wing right straight when we thought we could turn inside of them. Later on when they captured MiGs and flew them

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we realized that if they’d slow down they could have stayed right with us, but they came down shot at us and took off. So, um, they only did that a few times, but then later on they realize that our straight wing couldn’t fly like this swept wing, so later on they developed the tactic of coming right through our formation going down hitting the bombers, and going down. We tried to chase them and we had a mock limitation .82,  so we go down

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the plane starts shaking, if we’d keep pursuing him, the wings and fall off. So we had to back off, so we were totally ineffective at that time when the MiGs left us in the dust and went down hit the bombers. So then, the bombers went to night raids  so we were done with that, so our whole wing was then transferred to the Fifth Air Force Tactical Air Command. So then, we flew like all other tactical fighters so as ground suppor,t interdiction, you name it,

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the whole bit so most of our missions were that.

I: At the time, the US soldier were withdrawing from North Korea.

P: Oh yeah, yeah, full time.

I:  Yeah.

P:  Trying to get the heck out of there. They had  a hard time.

I: Any of your mission was regard to the Chosen Few?

P: We were up in that area. I can’t remember the all the geographic locations, but we were up there all over North Korea. I knew North Korea like the back of my hand. You’d get down there and we knew where we were. We didn’t have all the sophisticated navigation

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stuff they have nowadays, but we knew the geography of the area very well. I can’t remember all the towns and locations of it.

I: Any battle that you remember that you of the Air Force, the US Air Force, was helping and supporting the withdrawal of US forces?

P: Yeah, well, we did a lot of that all over the place, but was it Hamhung?

I: Yes, Hamhung.

P:  We were flying close supporting in that area that was later on when all of our troops

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were trying to get the heck out of there, and were trying to protect him and not damage our own people and try to intersect the the enemy there. But, we had missions way up above, and we had always a secondary mission, if we couldn’t find enemy directly we had alternative mission was a called “Armed Interdiction”. We’d scout the area to find targets of opportunity and hit them. So, we had complete control of the air our Air Force, Navy, and all the rest

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during the whole period of time as the MiGs were there to cause trouble that they couldn’t dominate. They couldn’t hurt, their air force, I don’t think ever hit our forces on the ground not that I’m aware of.

I: Exactly.

P: So that helped a tremendous amount right there. So. we did our best, but you know when you’re up in the air you can’t see exactly what’s there. You have to be careful of you don’t hit your, with friendly fire, your own people, so we tried our best on that but we had an excellent technique for frontline

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support had what they called mosquito pilots. Have you heard of that term?

I: Yep, yep, yep.

P:  So, we worked with them. They had the AT-6. Air Force pilot up front, Army radio man in the back. The Army radio man knew what is going on the ground.

I: Yeah.

P: and he could talk to the pilot. Pilot would be back here come down as AT-6 shooter 2 inch smoke rocket down. It would hit a puff white smoke. Okay, your target so many yards this way or that way from the smoke. So, we’d dive down. We’d hit him with whatever we had. When we first went in there

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you’d make pass, after pass, until all your munitions were gone. All your machine guns, everything was gone. By the time we left there in June of ’50, you made one pass you got out of there because their anti-aircraft fire really improved tremendously over those few months.

I: I see. Can you describe the first moment, occasion, where you face the Mig-15?  Do you

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remember that moment and can you describe your feeling emotion? Were you scared?

P: Not really, because the adrenaline was there and I had tremendous confidence in my own flying ability that I could do anything that was required. And I had less fear in my mind fighting the MiGs because I could see everything, than when I was on ground targets, the guns are down there, anyplace shooting at me you know. So I couldn’t see where the enemy was or who was shooting at me,

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so I had much more confidence flying up in the sky than I did my ground support. After the Korean War came back and then I went to school here an joined a Hawaii Air National Guard and we flew F-86s , some of them still had emblems on from Korea so I’ve spent three years there was going to engineering school.  I flew you know like the Air National Guard two weeks full-time the summer and then weekends from time to time.  And we’d go out and shoot targets tonight I had some of the best scores

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on the target to shoot.  I’m so I felt I was very, very top notch.

I: How many pilots were in K2 when you were there?

P: How many pilots?

I: Yeah.

P: Oh, I can’t imagine because they had F-51’s, F-80’s, and we had F-84’s. So we had three squadrons and …

I: One squadron, how many pilots?

P: Well, we had about 25, like 25 aircraft, but not every aircraft is flying every day because of maintenance and that sort of thing.

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I:  Oh, so one squadron has a 25

P: 25 aircraft and  25 people, pilots ,so more or less I’m not sure.

I: More than 25, because the pilot has to be always you know rotate, right?

P: Not really I mean…

I: So if you have a 25 aircraft and there are 25 or more pilots?

P: No, the thing is that 25 aircraft were not all functional every day.

I: Right.

P:  So we had between a half and two-thirds

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or three-fourths that were functional at any one time, and so there were many, many days, I’d fly two missions in one day. They’d fly one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

I: Must be very hard

P: It was very intense

I: How many squadron in K2 at the time?

P: How many squadrons? I really don’t know because they had three different groups of aircraft.

I: Right.

P: And if there are three different wings than 75 each so when you multiply it out so we’d have 450 or so. So. . .

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I: Were you able to write letter back to your family?

P: Oh, yeah.

I:  How often did you do  it?

P: Oh, not every day but as frequently as I could, but at that time I was not married, that came later, so I’d write home to my family in Illinois, mostly to my mother. I give credit for a surviving that old thing to my mother’s prayers, she kept me alive.

I:  Also, did you send some money back to

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your family?

P:  Not really, because they they had enough money and what little money I had whatever it was went into savings and so when I  left the Air Force, what I consider be a significant amount by that time, but I was very frugal my whole life. I was raised in Depression years and I squeezed every penny so.

I:  Exactly. Depression really was a big impact.

P:  1930s.  But I was lived in a small , this is regressing now,  lived in small-town Iowa and we had a home…

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I: Right

P: a warm bed to sleep in, with food to eat ,and my father mother knew how to survive a big garden and two cows and pigs and chickens and stuff so we had food eat. A lot of people were starving, but I was very blessed my whole life.

I: Very good. Tell me about the life there at the Taegu. What did you do?

P: Nothing much but fly. I didn’t go into town.

I: Didn’t go?

P: No. no, because we’re at the air base there and we were flying all the time.

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Ok, so it was mostly get up and eat and sleep and fly that’s about what I did there in Taegu.

I: You were not curious about the Korean society the Korean people?

P: Well, I didn’t have time to really think a lot about it. At that time a lot of the Korea was pretty well devastated from from the war from the North Koreans coming down and South Koreans trying to survive. You know the City of Seoul was pretty much

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in ruins. We flew over the number of times and looked like it’s mostly ruins at that time. So it’s amazing how it’s developed over these years.

I: Yeah. How was food and life there?

P: It was fine. We had good food to eat at the airbase. They gave us what we wanted. We had to like a buffet we could  chose what we wanted to eat.

I:  Wow.

P: It was fine. We had you know as much as we wanted to eat. A variety of things, so

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it wasn’t like a lot of K-rations for the troops on the front line some place.

I: Pilots been really well treated, right?

P: Oh, yeah.

I:  Always, yeah.

P: Yeah, so a lot of people are kind of envious of the Air Force and the pilots because of our are privileged living conditions.

I:  Right.

P: But, we did our duty as best we could.

I: Any dangerous moment during your service in Korea?

P: Ah, almost every mission is a

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apprehensive, but I got to the point where I was so confident that I had no problem going down and doing my job. And sometimes, I was a Second Lieutenant, we’d have other pilots they were full-time duty supply officers, but they were pilots.  They’d have to fly from time to time, so there are times when I had a wingman it was a Major and they followed me down.  I was the leader, so when you’re flight leader, you’re flight leader, no matter what their rank is.

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Like I said, it’s a almost no interaction with the Korean people.

I: Got it.

P: If there were some Koreans working on the airbase, it was, you would see them or something, but you didn’t have time to visit with them and and interrelate to them. So, it was just that they were there and we were there, and they were doing their thing, we were doing our thing. So, well there’s one one time, I got a black-eye that’s my major wound.

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I was flying the F-84. We’d taken off and picked up maybe 15,000 feet or so, all sudden the canopy just exploded.

I: Oh, really!

P: The whole thing went off in pieces.

I: Why was that?

P: Well, because they analyzed it, and it was kind of not a circular it was a elliptical, and so like from time to time the air pressure would expand it out and come down so the flexing of it I guess we can the plastic.

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I: Oh.

P: Where it got destroyed. So, they quickly modified that. They put strips reinforcing longitudinally and transverse, and so looked like you look out little windows all over the place, where before he had clear open view. So when that thing blew off, I lost my, you always had the visor, the piece that comes down your oxygen mask is there, my oxygen mask was still

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there so I could still talk to people, but the noise of that air going past was like huge noise

I:  Thundery.

P: Yeah,  so I had to abort the mission. I had a full load of 5-inch rockets I think. So, I called my flight leader my problem, and so they went on their mission ,I went back to the base. They have a place for that kind of emergency, so you go to the dump and dump your munitions

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and fly around awhile to lower your fuel load so you can land on that little strip. So, I did all those things, I knew the procedure, so I landed and went in and and pieces someplace hit me in the forehead here a little bit here, so I ended up with a black eye.  But I didn’t go forward with a to get a Purple Heart for a black ey,e so it’s not on the official record anywhere but that’s was my only wound. But on other missions

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later on in the war, close support we’d come down, we’d wing over to come down, and I came back sometimes with a bullet hole through the top of my wing. As we’re coming down the bullet would come up that way and other times there was a bullet came in the front of fuselage ahead of me, but it wasn’t, you know, it was close to me but it wasn’t in my cockpit with me so I didn’t get wounded from enemy fire.

I: When did you leave Korea?

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P: In June of ’51.

I: What were you feeling? What were you thinking when you were departing Korea?

P: Well, I was happy to be gone, because I didn’t have to face the enemy for another time, but see after I had a hundred combat missions our squadron commander told us you don’t have to fly anymore, but we have missions but we need to do and our relief is not yet here so it’s all voluntary. So I stayed

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on. Said I’ll keep flying, and so then of course it  is is competition. Some pilots wanted to have the most missions, so one of our pilots got maybe 140-145 missions, but I got a 130, they said that’s enough.  I said that’s fine with me.  I don’t mind, and so by that time we had relief pilots coming in and so it was just a matter of time until we flew out of there. Then…

I: So what did you do after you come back from Korea?

P: Well I , I came back

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and went back to Texas, and by that time we were just flying training flights and so forth. We flew a lot of missions out of Bergstrom  up for Kansas and we had interceptor flights on B-29s to train their gunners. We’d make pass after pass, after pass, while they shot cameras at us and so forth. So, I did a number of times I must have been a dozen or two dozen times that went up

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on those missions. but I was young then and single. We had a lot of married pilots in our outfit from World War II, so there weren’t  too many of us that were single and so we got all these other missions and that was fine with me because we’d stay up there for a while. Got TDY, so we stayed up there and make a few extra bucks, so. . . . A lot of times in the Air Force, I was able to send my whole paycheck back to the bank and Dixon for savings because I could live off of my per diem but it was there so I was very frugal

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through my whole life on everything. I had opportunity to go to school, so I went to Squadron Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, so there was six, I don’t know, what was eight weeks or ten weeks, whatever it was. I stayed with the family there, because they didn’t have room on the base. It’s kind of interesting because the family I stayed with, they had a room there for people like me and paid a modest amount for the room rent and they were with a religious group called the

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Primitive Baptist, and so that was new to me. So there’s like hellfire and damnation, you go to the sermon go on for hours you know talking about all the stuff they talked about, so I didn’t really quite fit in with my background. But when I was a Protestant back in Iowa and Illinois, and the Grace Evangelical Church would have a I forget what they called it temperance a week or something that’d be a guest preacher come in for a couple of weeks and speak every night on same type of thing Hellfire and damnation

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if you don’t live right you’re going to go the wrong way, so I was familiar with that sort of thing. They were very nice people. I learned a lot there. Went back to Texas and had an opportunity for another school there, Intelligence Officers School, so I went up to Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, and went for a class up there forever long it was a number of weeks and part of that training there was survival

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training so you end up in the mountains above. Where is the Air Force Academy?

I: Colorado Springs.

P: Yeah, Colorado Springs. We went down there. We went through a little bit of ground training and went up in the mountains with backpacks and to survive in the mountains. And of course so they didn’t have a place for fighter pilots, mostly like long-range bombers, and they’d have a crew so to assemble a half a dozen of us together to go as a unit

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so we went up there and and learned how to survive in the mountains, so that was interesting period of time. You have to evade the people, so you can’t go in the roads. You’d be picked up and hauledd back and start over again, and interrogated and so forth. So that was interesting a period of time here, and so we lived off these little K-rations and you weren’t allowed to bring along candy bars or other supplemental things you’re supposed to live off the land.

I: Was a survival training?

P: Survival training and so the first night

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I was cold all night as we were up there and you have a sleeping bag and had your little parachute that was for a tent you know and so it was cold up there. So after the first night, they had a lot of pine trees around, so I gather up big arms full of these pine needles make a mattress put my sleeping bag on top of that because you sleep on the bare ground

I: Smart.

P:  that’s right down against that frozen ground, you’re freezing. So, I slept good after that. It’s like a

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like mummy. Slip in this thing, pull a zipper up, it’s all around you all there was just your face sticking out. I slept real good after that, but we got long enough. Then you come to the point where you have to cross the enemy lines or something, so I went down and I tried to hide till I got down there watch the patrols coming and going I was kind of down in the snow there behind some bushes and things I thought is clear

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so I went across the line.

I: When you left Korea in June of 1951..

P: Yeah.

I: did you have any hope about the future of Korea, that Korea could be developed like this today?

P:  I had no idea it’d be like it is today,  I had no idea because there’s so much it’s, kind of like Europe you know Germany today isn’t like it was after World War II. You know big cities all bombed out so it’s just amazing, power of freedom

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that people have in Korea, South Korea and in Taiwan and other places that are away from all that dictatorship business. You know so it’s just amazing to me what South Korea has done and is doing produce automobiles I mean they’re competitive of everybody in the world on everything. So it’s a hard-working intelligent people. But my wife went to school with people from

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Korean ancestry. All the Korean ancestry people here we’re constantly trying to find ways and means to help their countrymen that was underneath the Japanese control. The Japanese army was terrible. I read something about the Japanese Navy which picked up some survivors from some of our Navy ships that were sunk. They would receive much better treatment than the Bataan  Death March, when they surrendered in Philippines there at the beginning of the war

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and what the Japanese Army did, what the Japanese Army did in any place that they controlled in the South Pacific or in China. I read a little bit about this Nanking Massacre  the Japanese did against China. So some of that still a sore point between Japan and Korea and China, so the barbarism is innate in the Middle East right now and it’s a part of human nature.

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I: Have you been back to Korea?

P: No.

I: No, how do you know about all this developed aspect of the Korean society?

P: Well, National Geographic, the newspaper, the the whole media, I am aware of all these things so I, I just try to keep up-to-date with what’s going on all  over the world. so

I: So are you proud of your service during the war?

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P: Well I am but, um um  in that my pride is that I did the best I could for my country, my fellow soldiers and airmen, and all the rest of it, and trying to be a benefit to the Korean people too. So I had all these idealistic motivations to do what I did, but at the same time I have colleagues that were in service with me they ended up in Vietnam and other places and some ended up this way or that way

0:45:30

and something else you know. So the stories of John McCain and some of the others in their prisons in Hanoi for years, and I could have been there but stayed in got shot down. So I’m glad I left, because when I left I had no idea there was going to be more wars. And when I left, it was pretty much a stalemate, but not quite. But it was headed that way. I know these things happen, I just don’t need to have it right now front of my face.

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I don’t need to have to relive it. This one mission, we’d been flying missions sometimes early, sometimes late ,so this one came in the late evening it was almost dark but not quite.

I: 1951?

P: Yeah, I’m not sure what month of be, but the enemy Chinese, North Koreans, whoever they were, we came into this close support area and we had a mission

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to check this one area out and this was a few miles above our front lines so our troops are behind us little ways. We came down this one valley, and I couldn’t believe my eyes coming out of the hills, big lines of troops coming down coming down the road were.tanks and trucks. Wow!

I: What happened?

P: Well, we came in to knock them out, and we did.

I: That’s Chinese or North Koreans?

P: Well, I don’t know who was down there

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but the enemy, so anyway we came down there. By that time, I had lots of experience. So, I came down and we had radar-controlled gunsights. Wasn’t like the old World War II kind, so we had ranging. Set the thing on the target there. You know a lot of these movies are so just dishonest because they show our fighter planes coming down all the bullets going along like, a totally an effective. You might hit something, might not. Well that’s not the way it was with us you come down you get that target

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right in the bullseye, squeeze it off, and you hit it you didn’t spray bullets all over the place.

I: Right.

P: squeeze off a burst. Came down to this one truck, lined it up at the proper range, threw you off a burst and six 50 caliber machine guns, and they were rapid-fire than we have any rounds per minute, but they were extremely effective when they’re all focused in on one point. You just squeeze that off the whole thing blew up.

I: Yeah

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P: All over the place. So we went there, and after we got done with that, because they didn’t have any aircraft fire against us because they weren’t prepared for us coming in.  So we heard later that our ground troops never met them, so we totally disrupted their operation, because they were going to come down and engage our troops at night. And so, we had a very effective interdiction, so that was impressive to me that we did something that was beneficial

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to our cause. So a lot of time targets are hard to find you find something, armed interdiction we had some missions with extra fuel tanks you might clear up into the far northeast corner of Korea right across the boundary there with the Soviet Union.

[End of Recorded Material]