On September 14, 1950, we were set up in a four-ship flight of 12th Squadron F-51s, with Capt. Bill Slater leading, Lt. Bill Bridges on his wing, I was Element Lead with Major Ken Carlson on my wing, bringing up the rear. We each carried two napalm tanks, rockets and machine guns, and were in the Pohang-dong area of the 'Pusan Perimeter' within 20 minutes after take-off from our base at Pusan.

We contacted the local T-6 'Mosquito' spotter ship, who told us he had pinpointed the location of a gun position which had shot the tail off another control ship just thirty minutes before. He wanted us to go in and knock him out before the guy created some really serious problems for someone else.

There is very little in life that makes you feel more insecure than to know you're going in to attack a known flak position ... 'knowing that the machine-gunners can see you, but you don't know for sure where they are.

It always gives the flak gunner the first shot, and you're not much of a threat to him until after he starts firing at you ... at which time you hope you can see his muzzle blast and return his fire, quickly and accurately ... or else. When the machine gun position is known to include the highly-effective "Quad-Fifties" ... four fifty caliber machine guns bore-sighted to fire simultaneously at the same target ... well, it's not hard to understand the deep feeling of apprehension facing the attacking pilot ... who dives in without knowing exactly where his target is!!

The Mosquito spotter ship pilot fired a smoke flare into a creek bed between a group of low, bare ridges, then told us that Quad-Fifties were in a certain clump of bushes on a ridge 200 yards east of the smoke flare.

Bill Slater dove in first, dropping his Napalm bombs just a little east of the smoke flare. It landed fifty feet short of the intended ridge. Bill Bridges went in next, from a different direction, and dropped his bombs nearby ... close to where we thought another set of machine guns were located. Carlson and I circled at about 3000 feet over the area, just out of the gunner's effective range, looking for muzzle flashes. We couldn't see any until Bridges had finished his attack, and started climbing out, when we could see the multiple tracer flashes coming out of a clump of trees about 75 yards behind where their bombs had been hitting.

During the time Ken and I had been circling, I was carefully planning my line of attack to place my flight within the enemy's line of sight for the briefest possible time. So, when Bridges pulled off, I knew just which way I was heading. I signaled Ken to 'firewall' his throttle, then dove low onto the deck just behind a low ridge south of the target. We followed a little ravine, which ran toward the north, then popped up over a little covering ridge just in front of the tree clump. With Carlson following just a few hundred feet behind and to my side, I fired steadily at the trees as soon as we cleared the first ridge, then dropped my two Napalm bombs so they'd splash forward into the suspected clump. I got a beautiful hit, with the fan of flaming jelly bouncing and spreading out to penetrate deep into the trees. Ken Carlson dropped his bombs right next to mine, and they too penetrated deep into the forest.

We immediately hit the deck again, and I started kicking rudders vigorously to skid the airplane from side to side, turned north at the first little valley and continued to 'jinx' around for a couple of miles before pulling up into a steep, full-throttle climb, leveling off, finally, at about 2500 feet.

Carlson had seen another gun position firing at me, off to the side of where he had dropped his bombs, and, before he could turn out of the way, his airplane was hit in the engine by a 20mm shell. He immediately pulled up and headed toward the nearby airstrip at Pohang ... now deserted and in the middle of 'no-man's-land'. We weren't sure whether we or the North Koreans owned the real estate by that time, but Ken had to find a level spot to put it down, and quickly, for his engine had started to flame.

He managed to spike it onto the ground ... downwind, and get it stopped at the far end of the runway. As he opened his canopy he heard the sharp "twang of rifle fire, which told him we didn't yet own the airfield. He jumped out and ran for a nearby drainage ditch, while we circled overhead, ready to strafe any troops which didn't look friendly. A group of 5 Koreans in civilian attire moved toward him, and Ken wondered how far his seven rounds of .45 pistol fire would go towards stopping them ... but they stopped, and tried to signal that they were friends. The Mosquito control ship soon came over to tell us the field had not yet been taken by the Reds. But Ken didn't know that; and he didn't move from his huddled position in the drainage ditch ... until the T-6 spotter landed and taxied over to where he was hiding until picked up by a chopper.

Ken Carlson had just survived his 4th knock-down. He had been shot down 3 times in Europe, and now once more during his first week of combat in Korea. Ken blamed himself for getting hit; 'said that he was too intent on taking accurate aim on the target and wasn't 'jinxing' his airplane around like I was. The gunfire that he heard on the ground at the airfield was a lone sniper in the hills north of the Pohang airfield perimeter.

On another memorable occasion, around the same Fall, 1950 time frame, I was exposed to an eerie situation while flying a mission about 50 miles behind enemy lines, along the railroad near enemy-held Seoul, where I'd seen a locomotive race into a tunnel.

I figured I could block the entrance by bombing one end, then fire rockets into the other end, to catch the train inside. However, because of known troop concentrations in the area, I was wary of how I made my bombing pass, and wanted a high, steep and fast approach ... to get in and get out.

'Rolling over from 8000 feet into a near-vertical dive, my speed reached 400 mph and, as it did, I heard a loud and most eerie sound of "Whooooo" resonating throughout the cockpit. Soon my speed was over 450 mph and the strange sound kept increasing in pitch. I'd never heard anything like it before, in an airplane, and it was frightening ... especially during a scary dive bombing attack.

"Cowardice being the better part of Valor...", I reduced power and broke off the dive-bombing run without dropping bombs or firing rockets, until I could find the source of the eerie sound, which stopped each time I slowed my speed to below 400 mph.

I climbed back up to 8000 feet again, where I rolled over into a steep dive bomb run again and, as I passed through 400 mph again, the same spooky sound came back. This time though, I continued my attack even though the loud moaning grated against my tensile-taut nerves, and I scored a pair of direct hits against the mouth of the tunnel.

During the rest of the flight, the deep moaning would resume whenever I made a high-speed attack, but would be silent during slower flight. I knew it had to do with wind flow, but couldn't pinpoint the cause ... was it a bullet hole in the fuselage, a crack in the plexiglas canopy; was the skin of the airplane coming apart? I couldn't know. Finally, I passed my hand along the inside of the inch-thick bullet-proof glass of the windscreen, and found that by pushing, it would "give" slightly under my hand pressure.

I tried another high-speed dive to verify my findings and found that I could almost `play a tune' with the ghostly moaning sounds when I pushed or eased pressure on the windscreen. I felt better, knowing the cause of the eerie symphony, but got little sympathy from my wingman as I tried to explain the reason for my recent aerial gyrations.

He didn't believe my story; he said it was just the fact that I was so frightened, during the bomb-run, that the "Whooooooooeee" was just the sound of my 'asshole sucking wind'.... a very common phenomenon among combat fighter pilots! - Bud B.