As we returned south, I continued the climb to ten thousand feet at 90 percent power with lazy S-turns, which gave the flight an easy opportunity to rendezvous. A quick check from the section leaders on the tactical frequency indicated that all external weapons had been expended and no aircraft had suffered any damage. It seemed like a miracle.
We headed for the nearest point on the front lines, just to get us over friendly territory. We had had enough excitement for the day. Meanwhile, I advised the TACC of our success with an estimate that there were between fifteen and twenty trucks in the column with some “flak wagons” interspersed with them mounting machine guns and 37mms. I recommended that the next available flight of jets go back in on the target and tear up the remnants of the reinforcing column. About that time we were over the coastline and I checked out with the TACC and called the Task Force 77 control, announcing that Boxer Flight 2201 was feet wet, with six Panthers, mission successful, with no battle damage to our own aircraft.
THE IRON TRIANGLE
On 21 July, the next day, I was scheduled for a CAS mission in the vicinity of Kumhwa, where the 3rd Division GIs were under heavy pressure from the Chinese. My flight was armed with four 260-pound frag bombs fused instantaneous, two HVARs, and full 20mm ammo. We were fortunate in being in the day’s earliest launch, and we were the first planes off the catapults, arriving on station ready to go, without waiting for an earlier flight to complete its mission. We also had the benefit of both an airborne FAC in an L-4 orbiting at three thousand feet just behind the front lines and a FAC on the ground within fifty yards of the closet Chinese positions. The weather over the target was a five-thousand-foot overcast, and we were able to conduct very accurate thirty-degree glidebombing runs. With ample fuel, we were able to make individual runs for each item of ordnance being delivered. The frag bombs could not achieve pinpoint accuracy on a bunker or a machine-gun nest, but the shrapnel did raise hell with the troops, even in their foxholes. By the time we commenced our passes with the rockets, we had become familiar enough with the Chinese positions that we were able to spot the machine-gun locations and the mortars. The HVARs, fired one per pass from a very low altitude at exceedingly short range, were almost all direct hits. At the end of our six passes, the flight still had enough fuel for another ten minutes on station, so I offered to conduct two more firing passes with the 20mm guns, strafing the trenches and the foxhole areas. The controllers were delighted. The 20mms in the Panthers were a very formidable weapon. With the four guns bunched in the nose, they were capable of great accuracy. The pilot could place his pipper on the target and then adjust his fire by watching the tracers, without shifting his line of sight. The fighters would always prefer not to fire all their machine-gun ammunition because it was their self-defense in the event that MiGs strayed into our sector or because the jets did not often have sufficient fuel to make the strafing runs.
After completing our second strafing pass, we checked out with the FAC. He was lavish in his praise for the damage we had inflicted on the Chinese. We pilots knew that the ground observers tended to go overboard with their damage assessments and kudos to the pilots, to bolster our morale and give us a sense of accomplishment that would incline us to put a high priority on future CAS missions. Nevertheless, we were pleased by the reports that substantial damage had been inflicted on the Chinese unit. As we headed east to the coastline, effecting a running rendezvous, we climbed slowly to ten thousand feet. At the water’s edge I checked out with the TACC, switched to button 3, and called up the Task Force 77 net to report that we were feet wet at Chang Sung, returning to the carrier with our assigned mission completed.
At this point I heard the TACC announce on guard channel that a Navy Panther was down in the sector we had just left. Because there were four carriers, each operating two squadrons of F9Fs, this downed aircraft could be from any of eight squadrons; all of the carriers were overlapping in their missions over the beach. Nevertheless, I was apprehensive. I knew our squadron was scheduled to have a flight in that area. When we got to the carrier, the weather was squally, with the winds strong but variable and the deck wet. Our signal was Charlie on arrival — land immediately — and each of our pilots got aboard with minimum interval and without a wave-off. As I taxied my plane to its parking spot ahead of the island, where it would be rearmed and refueled for the next launch in forty-five minutes, I had that nice feeling of having returned safely from a flight that had gone well in all respects. We had found our primary target, been successful in achieving a commendable level of damage to the enemy, and gotten back on board ship easily in spite of some nasty weather. Then came a shock. Unbuckling my seatbelt and unplugging my oxygen and G-suit connections, I passed my helmet to the plane captain standing on the ladder alongside the cockpit, and he said to me, “Too bad about the Skipper getting shot down.” That confirmed my worst fears. The Navy Panther down was Jim Kinsella.
I made my way down to the squadron ready room as quickly as I could against that heavy traffic that clogs the ladders, hangar deck, and passageways between launch and recovery cycles. As I came through the watertight door of the ready room, the squadron duty officer, whose desk was at the far end of the compartment, was just putting down his phone and called out in a loud voice, “Well, Triple Sticks [a squadron nickname from the “III” at the end of my name], it looks like now you’re the Skipper of VF-52!” That was his rather tasteless way of confirming that it was Jim Kinsella’s F9F that had just gone down. I suppose that was excusable, because the younger officers in the squadron — in all squadrons — generally took the loss of a pilot with little evident emotion, a protective device that was helpful in maintaining their morale over a long deployment fraught with all kinds of hazards.
I joined him at his desk and he told me what he knew based upon communications from the TACC ashore and intercepts of the conversations of the other pilots on his flight. Kinsella’s aircraft had been hit in the vicinity of Kumhwa, and his plane, on fire, had crashed some miles to the south in no-man’s-land. Lt. (j.g.) Bill Brooke, his section leader, had just flown over the crash site and reported no survivors. I stood there while the duty officer dialed the phone and punched buttons on the squawk box in an effort to get more information.
About ten minutes later a call from the ship’s Operations Center reported that the pilot of the crashed Panther apparently had survived and been picked up in no-man’s-land by an armed patrol from the Second Infantry Division. What a remarkable change in the situation.
When Kinsella’s flight landed back on board the Boxer, Bill Brook told us what had happened. “The flight was normal, with a quick rendezvous after takeoff and a high-speed run into the beach, where we were rapidly cleared by the TACC to a FAC in the vicinity of Kumhwa. We were quickly briefed on the target, and Kinsella identified it and made one dummy run to ensure both the FAC and ourselves we had the right spot. The FAC called for a rocket firing pass on the first run, and as we strung out in single file, Kinsella was first and I saw him go in flat and very low, and then there was a tremendous explosion, which was either his plane being hit by heavy antiaircraft fire or his bombs going off right beneath him. As he pulled off the target, I could see that he was in trouble. Fire was streaming from the engine compartment and the tailpipe. He immediately commenced a turn to the south, calling on the VHF that he was in trouble. He knew he was on fire, but he was not going to eject over enemy territory. He would ditch as soon as he got over friendly lines. He did not attempt to climb for altitude but remained pretty much on the deck, flying at the maximum speed he could get out of his aircraft. This was consistent with what he had briefed us on before other flights. He did not want to be taken prisoner, and if his plane was damaged, he would stay low so that when his plane was no longer flyable, he would be able to make a crash landing with some control of the aircraft remaining.”