We haven’t yet learned much about“Dee” Harper’s early life.   Most of us in 18FWA know of him from his ‘bodacious decisions’ while serving as 18^th Fighter-Bomber Group Operations Officer late in the Korean War when, as a then-spot-promoted Major, he made a series of General-class command decisions which proved to be extremely advantageous to the United Nations’ cause... a Korean War episiode which is described later in this piece … 

We know only that Flamm D. Harper was born on April 9, 1920; ‘that he hails from Ogden, Utah, ‘prefers “Dee”, (his middle initial), to his given name of ‘Flamm’,  that he trained as an Aviation Cadet and pinned on his pilot wings December 5, 1943 at Williams Field, Arizona, graduating as a 2^nd Lt. with Flying Class 43-K.

After a brief stint at a Replacement Training Unit, twenty-three year old Dee learned to fly twin-engined Lockheed P-38 ‘Lightnings’, then found himself at Wattisham Air Base, near ‘Ipswich by-the-sea’, England, where in April 1944, he was assigned to the 479^th Fighter Group, and began flying fighter sweeps across the English Channel into northern France.  By mid-July, 1944, he had accumulated 28 successful combat missions and was becoming an experienced flight leader.

On the afternoon of 15 July, Harper was scheduled to fly as a ‘spare’ for the 434^th Fighter Squadron. for an armed reconnaissance sweep over south-central France, near the city of Poitiers.  The number three man in a flight led by 1^st Lt. Robin Olds, aborted soon after take-off with engine problems, so Harper moved up to take his place as Element leader.

‘Letting down through a 3000 foot ceiling in the target area, they spotted a series of ammunition storage igloos and promptly began their attacks.  On his second run, while strafing the igloos, Harper flew into a massive explosion, colliding with masses of debris at just 100 feet above the ground. Fighting to maintain control of his mangled P-38, Harper unstrapped preparatory to bailing out, but remembered he was very close to the ground, ‘thought better of it’ and struggled to control the now burning airplane, to get it down for a belly landing… wherever it might chance to crash.

The P-38, as if with a mind of its own, chose to skim the tops of a few trees, then followed a cleared meadow just wide enough for the 52 foot wingspan, and a full 1500 feet in length… enough to allow Harper to slide to a rattling stop just before reaching another line of trees at the far end.  Despite the fact that he had not re-fastened his seat belt, and had tried to protect his head simply by cradling it in his bent elbow … Harper suffered no serious injuries during his noisy crash into the meadow in southern France.

With danger of fire or explosion imminent, Harper immediately forced his way out of the battered cockpit, and raced for the edge of the meadow, where he found a young French girl waving for him to follow.  They went to their family farm house, and Harper’s flight suit was quickly traded for civilian clothes, then by use of hand signals (neither could speak the others’ language), the partriarch grandfather took the young Air Corps Lieutenant and a couple of well-worn fishing poles to the nearby river.  By ‘fishing their way’ along the river, they managed to walk leisurely through the German and Vichy French militia who were by then speeding toward the P-38 crash site.

A few miles upstream the grandfather led Harper to a cave and indicated that he was to remain hidden inside.  A short time later, a group of heavily-armed French men arrived and took him by car to a village bar, where everyone except Dee Harper drank and danced the evening away.  Harper, admittedly, was frightened … ‘captured’ by heavily armed civilians with whom he could not converse or understand, being taken he knew not where … Dee began to think that he might be wise to escape from his present ‘captors’; but fortunately, he did not have an opportunity.

Later that evening he was taken to a large farm house where, shortly, an American Jeep drove up, driven by a British Officer.  (He was head of one of many secret detachments parachuted into France preliminary to the Normandy invasion, tasked to work with the Maquis to disrupt German troop movements heading toward the then-active Normandy invasion front.)

The Brit Captain questioned Harper intensively, trying to determine if he was actually an American pilot, or a German infiltrator.  It was only when a French witness verified that he had personally seen Harper climb out of the crashed P-38 that his identity was confirmed.

Captain Tonkin, the Brit, returned for Harper the following night, and together they drove several miles along back roads and lanes, until finally stopping in a forested area where they were met by 18 armed troopers, with four jeeps and several civilian cars, all with Lewis machine guns mounted by their right seats. 

Because the SAS team had their dangerous assignments to carry out, Tonkin offered Harper three options: he could stay undercover in a local safe haven until the Allies took over the area, he could stay with the Detachment as a guest as long as they remained in the area, or he could join them and continue to actively battle the Germans.  Tonkin emphasized the fact that the latter choice would no doubt waive any claim to Geneva Convention rights if he were to be captured.

Harper chose the latter option, and was promptly issued a British uniform, a 9mm Luger pistol and a Sten submachine gun.  He had just become a full-fledged member of the British Army’s secretive SAS “Operation Bulbasket” and would spend the next three weeks engaged in spy-thriller guerilla actions intended to disrupt rail  and  road  access  throughout   central France.  But Harper’s activities were handicapped, initially …not by his aching head, the result of a mild concussion caused by his crash … but by his boots.

Harper, as the typical American pilot, had promptly acquired a pair of fleece-lined English flying boots soon after arrival in England, to ward off the high altitude chills of the poorly-heated P-38s; he was wearing them when he crashed, and he soon found that they were made for flying – not for serious walking, because the soft fleece would ratchet his heavy socks into a ball at the toe.  Capt. Tonkin noted his handicap and soon ‘requisitioned’ a pair of sturdy combat boots … which were in a shipment air-dropped to them three nights later.

Properly-shod, Harper was then able to participate in the guerilla’s destruction of a critical railroad bridge near Poitiers, which destroyed a locomotive and several cars.. but which also resulted in a scary night-time, running fire-fight with the German troops who had been riding the train.  (He soon realized the many advantages of machine-gunning the enemy from the security of his speeding P-38s)

Within a very short time he was deeply involved with site selection and construction (manual, physical labor)  of building a clandestine 3000 ft air strip near Bon Bon, deep within enemy territory.  A Jeep was used as a tractor to pull a disc and spike tooth harrows, but axes and shovels were required to clear the heavy masses of hedgerow roots encountered

On the night of 6 August, 1944, two Lockheed Hudsons from an RAF Special Duty Sqdn. arrived with Free French SAS troopers to replace the weary Brits, marking the end of Operation Bulbasket, and the beginning Operation Moses.  An RAF C-47 landed shortly thereafter, and evacuated Harper and a number of other American airmen who had successfully evaded capture. The lumbering Dakota took them through the darkness to the RAF base at Tangmere, near the south coast in England, arriving near 1:30 a.m.  After some serious questioning about their unannounced  arrival, by the British MP’s the following morning, the Americans were driven to SHAPE Hq., where they underwent a month of relaxed, but intensive interrogation by Intelligence debriefers before being returned to duty with his 479^th Fighter Group in Sept. ‘44.

Newly-promoted to First Lieutenant while in France, Harper soon returned to the ‘States and after a much-needed thirty-day Leave, was assigned in February 1945 to the 412^th Fighter Group, Flying P-51s, P-38s, P-59s (Bell’s first Jet) and Lockheed’s YP-80 jets.  The 412^th was soon moved to March Field, CA, where it was redesignated as the “1^st Fighter Group”. 

Lt. Harper left active duty service in 1946, during the massive force reductions following World War II, but returned to active flying duty the following year, when he was awarded a Regular Air Force commission in August 1947. He was eventually assigned to Nellis AFB, NV, where he checked out in F-86 Sabrejets in late 1949… beginning a long and rewarding association with our first swept-wing jet  fighter plane.

Captain Harper was transferred to Korea in January 1953, and assigned to duty with the 18^th Fighter-Bomber Wing, which was then in the process of converting from the venerable propeller-driven F-51 Mustangs to the hot new F-86F ground-attack version of the Sabre…all the while actively, and successfully, engaged in continuous wartime combat against the North Korean and Chinese enemy in both types of aircraft*). 

(*A notable feat of singular merit: - “The three active squadrons –12th, 67th and No. 2 SAAF Sqdn, switched from slow propeller-driven ‘tail-draggers’ to speedy nose-wheeled, swept-wing jets without standing-down for conversion, or having lost  a single combat  assignment.”)

His many hours of prior F-86 time stood Harper in good stead, and he had racked up fifty combat missions deep into North Korea … before being shot down for the second time in his career, by enemy ground fire on 27 June 1953, near the North Korean town of Hag-ne … ‘then becoming one of the few American airmen to successfully evade capture and to painfully make his way through enemy territory to a helicopter rendezvous and timely airlift back to his base.

Harper may possibly be  the only USAF pilot to have been downed and evaded capture in two different wars.

But this second time he paid a higher price for his successful evasion … while bailing out, his ‘chute barely had time to open, then collapsed as he hit the rocks alongside a cliff.  Harper ended up draped over a big boulder at the foot of the cliff, with a few broken ribs and a heavy contusion to his spinal cord.  He was hospitalized for two weeks after his rescue, following which he was placed on ‘DNIF’ status, (Duty Not Involving Flying) where he served as 18^th Fighter Group Operations Officer to manage the scheduling of bomb loads and target directions for the Group’s three squadrons. Harper, at that time, was a Captain, serving wih a temporary ‘Spot Promotion’ to Major. It was not really tough duty by that point in time, because peace talks had begun at Panmunjom in Spring 1953, and finally showed promise  of a compromised  end to the vicious fighting in Korea. 

Both sides appeared to be cutting back on their directed combat operations, and even though 5^th AF was having trouble finding targets worthy of pre-planning, everyone seemed to have a sense of apprehension that the North Koreans were planning one final, last ditch assault to enhance their bargaining position at the peace table. Individual pilots became extra wary, and hesitated to become ‘too aggressive’,  thinking they could reluctantly become “the last man to die in the Korean War….”

 Late in the afternoon of June 16, 1953*, , while Lt. Col Harry Evans, 12^th Sq CO, led an armed recce flight operating just North of the battlefront, they discovered a very long train of what appeared to be “a hundred or more cars stalled in front of a tunnel”.  They attacked the newly-identified targets, causing huge explosions and fires, but when they became low on fuel and had to leave the area, there still remained scores of undamaged rail cars.  

“Near the same time*” in mid-June 1953, in the vicinity of Heartbreak Ridge, Lt. Col. C. L. Stanton, Commanding Officer of the 67^th Sqdn, discovered a concentration of several thousands enemy troops… in the open, all neatly arrayed in huge rectangular formations marching along a road; his flight immediately  attacked the  formations  and encampments with their 1000 lb bombs, rockets and machine guns, slaughtering  an estimated two thousand or more of the enemy.

When the flights returned to base at Osan (K-55) from the rail and troop attacks, and reported their startling new enemy targets to Operations Officer Dee Harper, he immediately contacted Taegu’s Fifth Air Force Combat Operations Center for permission to promptly reload and dispatch additional aircraft  to continue the attack.

As the luck of ‘Murphy’s law’ would have it, the 5^th AF Commanding General happened to be at dinner when Harper tried to call for authorization, and no one in the Combat Operations Section would venture to interrupt the General’s repast with such a wild and unconfirmed report. 

‘Frustrated by the bureaucratic roadblock  imposed by 5^th Air Force Hqtrs, and the fact that his own 18^th Group and Wing Commanders were not available …for they were attending a conference in Tokyo …but  also knowing full well that neither of the vital strategic targets would remain in place through the night, Major Flamm D. Harper made a Command Decision, on his own, to refuel and re-arm the Sabrejets, and send them back to restrike the targets immediately … that evening  and, almost unheard of in ground attack battles, they continued their dangerous air-to-ground attacks far into the dark of night… when their targets were lit only by the flames of the burning and exploding rail cars.  The 18^th Wing had been ‘Tasked’ by 5^th AF to fly 120 combat  ‘sorties’ on that day  .. (1 plane on 1 flight equals 1 sortie) and the Wing had already completed 93 of them.  During the remainder of that evening and night they flew an additional 94 combat sorties, losing two aircraft, (but just one pilot) in the process of wiping out the prepared-and-ready armaments which the enemy had stockpiled to spring their final massive offensive on the following day.  The Chinese battle plan was never launched; it’s strength had been mortally sapped by the heroic night attacks of the 18^th Fighter-Bomber Wing pilots, under the forceful .. if illegal .. direction of one ‘lowly’ temporary Major, by the name of ‘Harper’.

The war petered out during the next few weeks, and the fragile truce was finally signed on 27 July, 1953.  The many pilots who had bravely flown their F-86 Sabres in low level ground attacks with only their altimeters and the silhouette of hills near the burning rail cars keeping them from plowing into the ground, reveled in the success of their night’s work.  None of them knew that all of their heroic missions that evening were ‘unauthorized’, because Harper had purposely kept it from them … not wanting to expose anyone but himself to the almost certain threat of military Courts Martial.

Only the recognition of  the tremendous success of the 18^th Wing’s missions in stemming the impending Chinese offensive prevented him from possibly being cashiered from the Air Force … or being limited to a lifetime in the rank of Captain.

‘Dee’ Harper was ‘chewed out, royally’ for assuming the General’s prerogatives … but he had come to expect that after his Group CO told him that he, the Colonel, had suffered the very worst ass-chewing of his entire career over Harper’s unauthorized  ‘Decisions’.

After the Korean war ended, in 1953, Harper was transfered once again, to Nellis AFB Fighter Weapons School,NV, as Director of Operations, and served as Operations’ Director for the 1955 USAF Worldwide Gunnery Meet.  In 1956 he began a tour with the Military Advisory Group (MAAG) in Spain, serving as advisor to the Spanish Air Force as they converted to jet aircraft … the F-86.  After two subsequent tours with Headquarters, Tactical Air Command, Lt. Colonel Flamm D. Harper retired from active Air Force duty in 1970, and returned again to live in Los Vegas, NV.

But even in retirement Harper could not desert his beloved F-86 Sabres … Harper joined the newly-chartered F-86 Sabre Pilots Association, became it's Secretary from 1992 to 1994, (during which period he also chose to become the 37th registered member of the 18th Fighter Wing Assoc.) and advanced to become President of the Sabre Pilots Association in 1995 … just in time to head-up the highly successful 50th USAF Anniversary celebration at Las Vegas, NV. He stepped down from the Sabre presidency in 1997, but continues to serve the Sabre Pilots Association as its esteemed Chairman Emeritus.

 The Rest of Harper’s WW-II P-38 Story

 In September 1999  18FWA Status Report #17 described in some detail how our member Col. Dee Harper had been shot down in France while flying P-38s during WWII.  The following AP article was later forwarded by our Joe Hettema from CA, to tell  the ‘rest of the story’ .

News Item:  LAS VEGAS, Nov 4, 1999, (AP)

“An American pilot who crash landed near a French farm during WWII has been reunited with a woman who, as a young French girl, had risked her life to lead him to safety.”

“In the summer of 1944 Jacqueline Briand was a 14 year-old girl living in German occupied France when she saw Dee Harper fall from the sky in his P-38 aircraft.  She didn’t give a second thought to her own well-being as she helped the American airman to safety.  Her life and the lives of her family would have been at stake if the Germans had discovered Briand helping an American.

Harper said later,   “She was a very brave little girl to wave me to follow her because it was very dangerous for the Frenchmen to do that,  There were many Germans in the area.  There was also a French militia that wasn’t friendly to the Allied forces.  It was an extremely patriotic and very, very courageous move.”

Briand claimed she was guided by instinct when she rushed the pilot to her grandparents house in the farming community of Concise, less than 100 miles south of Paris.

 “I may have saved an American, but the Americans saved all of Paris.” Briand said.

Dee Harper, 79, didn’t even know the girl’s name and never dreamed he would ever be able to thank her for saving his life; Briand thought that she would never learn if he had survived the war or not.

Then last year (1998), an archeologist connected the pair while researching the crash site, and with translation assistance from their grandchildren, the two exchanged letters and e-mail, before Briand decided to fly to Las Vegas to meet Harper again, after 55 years.

The two appeared together at a recent University of Las Vegas French Class meeting., exchanging their stories for the benefit of the American students.

Harper told the young French class students:  “It’s hard to believe that everybody does not know all the history of World War II because, in my generation, it was our whole lives.  It was probably the most important war in the history of mankind.  We were fighting for your way of life today.  It meant that we would either live as free people with liberty, or you were going to be serfs, serving under dictators.  That was what World War II was all about.”