Did you know the 581st had a helicopter flight in Korea during
the unpleasantness? Betcha didn't! Not many of you know that.
In fact, when Larry Barrett attended the 1994 Reunion, many people
told him they had no idea that the 581st actually had helicopters
in theater for about seven months, in combat for about six months
before the SA-16's came to K-16. Maybe it is time to tell that
story.
We had a strange mission or perhaps I should say, all sorts of
strange missions. Our primary mission of course was PsyWar, although
to be honest I do not think any of us at the time thought of what
we were doing as waging psychological warfare. We certainly were
aware we were dealing with some pretty strange people, but I don't
think I personally ever equated putting spooks ashore with PsyWar
as such. But then, what would one expect from the only Second
Lieutenant in the outfit, a brand new helicopter pilot at that!
Secondly, we supported 3rd Air Rescue. When they needed help,
either helicopters or crews, 5th Air Force tasked us. We spent
a lot of time in that capacity. After that, we did a lot of cat
and dog, ash and trash mission for the 5th Air Force, and even
for the 7th Fleet.
Some of the SA-16 people met us when they moved up to K-16 in
around April or May 1953, but by and large, the unit was still
a mystery. My name is Bob Sullivan, and I was the token Second
Lieutenant in the original group of six pilots. Four helicopters,
six pilots, one NCO and twelve enlisted men directly out of Tech
School at Sheppard. That was the total organization, and that
combination should scare the hell out of almost any thinking person!
5 Oct 52 was the date we pilots arrived in Korea. We asked where
the 581st was, and people looked at us and said, "581st what?
There's no such outfit in Korea!" Now, that's the 5th Air
Force talking! Our new bosses. I think everyone was underwhelmed
by that answer!
The airmen arrived a few weeks before we did. No one knew what
to do with them, so Air Rescue put them to work. It is a good
thing someone remembered where those guys went for we had to go
recapture them! Finally someone at 5th Air Force said we were
the guys with the four helicopters. That was news to us. We had
no helicopters, no tools, no people, no housing, no supplies,
no weapons and without 3rd Air Rescue's generosity, no place to
even sleep or eat. A b-4 bag each and the clothes on our backs
were our only possessions at that point. To the 3rd Air Rescue
Group, we looked, acted, and smelled like replacements, but they
could not understand how we got there without coming through the
Air Rescue Service's pipeline.
Frank Westerman, our senior man, a Captain, got on the phone,
and things started coming together. How that man did that amazed
me, but then, when you are a Second Lieutenant, lots of things
amaze you! Pretty soon, a very few days after our arrival, Koreans
started putting up additional tenting next to Air Rescue; it looked
like "Rescue City" just grew suburbs. Then they went
out in the field behind the tents and put in four PSP pads, which
got us sort of excited thinking that we might eventually get helicopters
to fill them. We spent the next thirty days or so, living with
the 3rd, as regards our basic needs, like food and such, and counting
and storing all the goodies that seemed to appear like magic.
When we found out that we were, in fact, the 581st's helicopter
flight, all of it, and that we were not going to get any more
people, Frank decided it was organization time.
There were jobs that had to be done, and people had to fill the
spaces that would make them happen. Since Frank Westerman was
our senior rank, he obviously was the Commander. Joe E. Barrett,
another Captain, and a long time helicopter pilot would be the
Operations Officer, since he had more experience than the rest
of us put together. Frank M. Fabijan had some supply experience,
voila! a Supply Officer. I had an A&P Mechanics certificate,
and had been the Assistant Maintenance Officer in a C-82 outfit
from which I escaped by going to helicopter school. With a stroke
of Frank's pen we had a maintenance type. Lawrence A. Barrett
suddenly became the Adjutant. I am not sure what Rut Garnett drew,
but we were in business. Sergeant Jackabowski had been a ground
school instructor on H-13's in the Army program at Gary AFB, San
Marcos, Texas and he suddenly became the Line Chief, which is
pretty damn heady progression when you stop and think about it.
Now that we knew who we were, the next thing was to find out what
we were.
No one knew where the helicopters were. Someone at 5th Air
Force remembered something about helicopters in crates over at
Kissararzu, and got on the phone. There they were, four brand
new H-19A's right out of the factory, and we think shipped via
Mountain Home AFB to Japan. We were reasonably sure that we were
due for some Air Rescue cast-offs, and that news surely brightened
our future. As quickly as Frank could get some orders, we were
off to "Kiss", and ferried the birds to K-16. Since
we were destined to spend a lot of time over water, that little
jaunt was a nice warm-up.
The organizational set-up seemed to leave a good bit lacking.
We were attached somehow to the 3rd Air Rescue Group, in that
they provided our food and we used their mail system. Our "suburb"
had been built adjacent to all their facilities, so we had showers,
barber shops and all the "nice" things in life readily
available. We were attached to the 6167th Air Base Group for personnel/finance/administrative
support, and I guess, operational control. Our goodies coming
through the supply system came direct, once we managed to convince
everyone that there really was such an outfit living over on the
far side of the Base, alongside Air Rescue. As Colonel Mike Haas
says in his new book, "if anyone noticed that four helicopters
sitting over there did not have Rescue markings on them, we were
fully prepared to tell people we were some rinky-dink trash hauling
outfit." Indeed, we had painted out the Rescue markings,
I think, at the request of the Air Rescue Commander.
Our missions were fragged through "B" Flight of the
6167th, usually. A few we got directly from 5th Air Force. As
openers we went down to Chinhae (K-10) and placed a radio relay
outfit atop the mountain at the North end of the runway. Seeing
that no one had any prior experience with sling loads, it was
sort of like the blind leading the blind for the first couple
of hours, but we figured it out and all went well.
We put our first "people" ashore in North Korea on,
I think, 27 Dec 52. We flew off Cho-do and put these folks in
well above Chinnampo on the mud flats. We flew North angling slightly
away from the beach until we were well off shore, then turned
West and finally Southeast and went back to Cho-do. This route
was flown right down on the water, without benefit of radar, radar
altimeters or anything else, except for an altimeter setting at
Cho-do and the M-1 eyeball. I personally dragged my nose gear
in the water on one of the missions, causing a nose down pitching
motion, which of course caused major heart palpitations, and an
extremely tight grip on the seat cushion! Others bounced off the
mud flats on occasion. If those missions were nothing else, they
sure were interesting! One night when Frank Fabijan was out doing
his bit for chaos, and said you could see the flares fired by
the coast- watchers as they thought they detected something up
and down the coast.
Joe Barrett and Frank Fabijan picked a Marine Major named Cleeland
off the ice on the Haiju reservoir in a big daylight shootout.
Frank Westerman and Larry Barrett went inland to the MSR and grabbed
a chap named Cottrell, who was in deep serious trouble at the
time; another shoot-out. Don Crabb (Garnett's replacement) and
I pulled Joe McConnell out of the water North of Cho-do after
he shot down his eighth MIG and was downed in turn. These were
all in support of Air Rescue, and were all prosecuted in daylight.
Frank Westerman and I went to 26 miles South of Antung at night,
straight line over water, from Cho-do, and then inland in a vain
attempt to locate an evadee. That was the deepest helicopter penetration
of the war, according to 5th Air Force. That one happened to be
our own mission. One of Air Rescue's SA-16 crews flew navigation
for us on that mission at about 100 feet off the water, and then
stayed up there with us until we came back out off-shore. Man,
that crew was good!
All in all, we, six of us, put roughly one thousand hours on four
H-19s. We did both the ARC mission, and the Air Rescue mission,
having never refused a single one. We earned a bunch of decorations,
took our share of battle damage, yet never, as long as combat
missions were flown in that theater, had an accident, a combat
loss or a fatality. Not too shabby for a bunch of beginners, Huh?
Reprint from the January 1995 issue of the ARC Light
After completing A&E school and Helicopter Maintenance school,
I was assigned to Mountain Home AFB. On arrival in 1951, the line
chief told me that there weren't any helicopter and I might as
well forget about them. I was sent TDY to Elgin AFB in Florida
to become part of the maintenance crew on a B-29 assigned to the
581st. The B-29 was being used for tests to determine the feasibility
of picking up personnel during flight.
When I got back to Mt. Home, the helicopter mechanics were all
working on B-29s and some had changed their AFSC to regular aircraft
mechanics to get on with their careers as bomber mechanics.
Later, the squadron was informed that everyone would soon be shipping
overseas. None of the nine helicopter mechanics received any travel
instructions that were different from the rest of the squadron.
Some of the squadron personnel flew to the Philippines with the
B-29s but the rest of us took bus transportation from Mt. Home
to Camp Stoneman for processing.
After processing at Stoneman we bussed to Oakland where we boarded
a ferry that took us to the USS William Wiegel in San Francisco.
We shared the transport with 8,000 army troops.
Those that boarded the USS Wiegel in San Francisco got to the
Philippines with the exception of one army guy who was killed
while we were docked in Pearl Harbor. He was shot on board by
someone who was upset over a poker game.
The Wiegel arrived in the Philippines after a short stay in Pearl
Harbor. When the ship anchored, all airmen were informed by loud
speaker to line up on the deck and to disembark as their name
was called. It was quite a gathering. We helicopter mechanics
waited as all of the other Air Force personnel were called and
departed.
When our names weren't called, we tried to get permission to go
ashore but those in charge kept us on deck. Someone contacted
the Captain of the ship for a decision, and he passed back the
edict that no one could get off without orders. So, we stayed
with the ship and wondered what the hell....
That left nine enlisted airmen and 8,000 army personnel on the
troop ship. The only word to where we might go came from one of
the deck hands. We were going to Yokohama.
Some days later, the same procedure took place in Yokohama. Per
the loud speaker, we lined up on the deck with the 8,000 army
men and waited for our names to be called to no avail. The ship
stayed in Yokohama for several days and finally one of the ship's
officers got permission for us to go ashore for one day. Then,
the army loaded combat troops on the ship and the troops told
us we were heading for Korea. Thirty days after boarding the Wiegel,
we arrived in Inchon.
Same deal in Inchon harbor. The troops got off one name at a time
and we were left standing on the deck again. This time the Captain
of the Wiegel came down personally to give us an eyeballing. He
questioned us all and shook his head. Then he made a profound
statement, "You have to get off here because we are going
back to the States." He then put the ranking A2c in charge
and told us to report to the Port Commander. We climbed down the
webbing on the side of the ship and made our John Wayne landing
all the while asking each other what is a Port Commander? We felt
very naked as all of the army personnel had gone ashore with their
weapons at the ready.
Inchon was a bundle of dusty activity with troops, refugees, kids
looking for any kind of handout, and troop carriers and ambulances
moving about with MPs directing traffic. We found our way to the
Port Commander but he had more to worry about than nine lost airmen.
We waited until hunger made us think about trying again the next
day. We found food and shelter with the army with no questions
asked.
The next day, some naval assistant to the Port Commander gave
an audience to the A2c in charge. He couldn't believe we got where
we were without more official documents. The only question he
asked, "What are your specialties?" He accepted that
we were helicopter mechanics and told us to come back the next
day.
When we reported back, he told us he had called around and found
a helicopter outfit at K-16 and that he had arranged to get us
a ride there by truck. It seemed to me it was about 60 miles away.
We arrived at K-16 and sure enough there was a helicopter outfit
by the name of 3rd Air Rescue, Detachment 1. In other words, we
were to be adopted by bigger and better organized orphans. We
reported to the First Sergeant and listened to his displeasure
at irregularities but he treated us right by finding us quarters
and putting us to work on the helicopters.
The Third Air Rescue was supporting a MASH Organization called
8055th. Their helicopters picked up the wounded in the field and
transported them to the rear or to a hospital ship off the coast.
They also picked up any airmen that crashed or bailed out in North
or South Korea. I really think the folks that prepared the sets
for filming the MASH series on TV must have been a part of the
8055th organization because of the look alike backgrounds, props
and jargon.
I believe that all nine of us were glad to be part of the 3rd
Air Rescue because there was a serious need of work to be done.
Once we settled in, we became for all practical purposes members
of the existing organization.
Several months later, it became apparent that there was no way
for us to be promoted because we really were orphans. So, being
of a mind set that I didn't really want to spend the rest of my
time in the USAF as an A3c, I wrote letters saying as much to
the 581st in the Philippines that were addressed to my old CO,
the Maintenance Officer and the First Sergeant.
Nothing changed for about a month and then one day a 2nd Lieutenant
showed up from Clark AFB and said he was glad that I wrote to
someone because we had been listed as AWOL. The good news he brought
was that we were scheduled to receive four helicopters and six
pilots in the near future. By the time they got there, I wasn't
sure I really wanted to go back to being a member of such a mixed
up outfit.
Once the pilots arrived, we got organized and things worked out.
The original nine mechanics were replaced and rotated back to
the U.S. when their year's tour was up.
Years later, during a job interview with IBM, some impertinent
type, who enjoyed turning the screws, asked why I left the Air
Force after four years with such a low rank. I told him that I
did very well considering I was a misplaced helicopter mechanic
on TDY, lost or classified as AWOL for nearly three years.
Actually, I wouldn't change anything if given a choice.
Reprint from the January 1997 issue of the ARC Light
Revised: 9 Apr 03