Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [46]
August 9,
At sea,
Had my first combat hop today.
August 10,
At sea,
Lt. Doyle Cole had engine failure over the target and had to ditch his plane in the water off the coast. A helicopter picked him up, so far we have lost 3 planes but no pilots.
August 10,
At sea,
Captain Moses shot down and picked up by helicopter.
August 11,
At sea,
Captain Moses shot down and killed at Kosong.
August 14,
Sasebo, Japan,
We are now in port to re-supply so I had to check on cleaning all of the guns, testing the rocket launchers and bomb racks. We had memorial services on flight deck for Capt. Moses.
August 15,
At sea,
I flew 2 strikes this afternoon, landing with my lights on at 2035 so I was very tired after 6 hours of flying. We lost another plane when Capt. Penn spun in off the catapult. He got out ok and the destroyer picked him out of the water. Also, one in the catwalk but we’ll get that one fixed. They sure better get us some more planes out here for replacements.
August 16,
At sea,
Today we heard that Monk Taylor was shot down but he got OK and is being brought back to his ship. The Sicily (214) and Badoeng Strait are working together so we fly the afternoon strikes and they fly the morning strikes and visa versa, alternating each day. It is really gratifying to see how well our Close Air Support works with the 1st Marines.
August 19,
At sea,
Only one hop today so will tell about the country we are flying over. Of course I’ve only flown over the southern part of the country. It is very mountainous with lots of rivers and streams and little villages. No large cities to speak of but thousands of little villages all connected by a very good network of roads with plenty of modern looking bridges crossing most of the rivers. Every piece of land that isn’t a sheer mountain is a rice paddy with a terrific system of irrigation, which makes the whole country look very green. There are always clouds over the mountains and a lot of rain in the high country. Most of our targets have been dug-in emplacements in the side of hills, tanks, trucks, ammo dumps, etc..Actually we see very little of the Commies as they hide out most of the day and move at night. Today we burned a little village about 15 miles behind the enemy lines and one of the bombs hit an ammo dump and really set it blazing.
August 20,
At sea,
It is raining now which doesn’t seem to make a difference in flying. 4 of my 13 landings have been made in rainstorms. Boy, I’ve really got to hand it those Marine crunches, they really know how to fight. They just pushed the Commies back across the Naktong River like it was child’s play. Of course our own squadron and 214 helped out.
Sometimes we’re strafing only 40 or 50 yards ahead of our own troops and tanks coming up. We’re putting bombs and rockets inside 10 or 20 foot circles now. Can knock out a jeep or truck in one run. But we must remember the North Koreans. They, with Uncle Joe’s (Stalin’s) help pulled off one of the nicest, smoothest attacks ever staged. They’re well trained, their tactics without an air force are superb and they don’t make the mistake of attacking in inferior numbers like Hitler did when attacking the Russians. They outnumber our troops 10 to 1 and pick up another 1000 men in every village they over run and have the equipment to supply these men. That’s the kind of people we’re fighting, besides the fact that to them life is cheap.
August 25,
At sea,
No flying again today. For the last 2 days we’ve steamed back and forth way up north in the Yellow Sea but no one seems to know why.
August 26,
At sea,
We flew CAS for the Army near Pohang and had some pretty nice targets. On one rocket run I flew through an AA void (where an anti-aircraft shell explodes and leaves the air bumpy, all the fragments already having gone) and I bounced my head off the top of my canopy so hard I