It was always apparent to pilots when we got to the friendly side of the front lines because of the open activity of the ground forces, which were not subject to hostile air surveillance. “Jim knew where he was,” Brook continued, “and when he saw a reasonably good spot, he put the plane in and it disintegrated on impact. The fuselage broke at the cockpit, and the engine and the after part of the fuselage went hurtling along in a flaming mass. The cockpit and nose section was rolled up in a ball tumbling after it. I was convinced nobody could have survived a crash like that because of the fire and the disintegration. But as we came around for one final low pass, I looked over the section of the cockpit and I could see Kinsella unstrapping himself from his ejection seat and walking away from the wreckage. We made one more pass to make sure he’d safely gotten out, and by then Kinsella was fifty yards south of the wreckage and he waved to us. We could see an infantry patrol with some armored vehicles coming out to meet him, and we knew there was no more that we could do so we headed for home, except for my wingman, who had some suspected flak damage and went into K-18. We still had enough fuel and the time to make our landing cycle, so I opted to return to the ship rather than take all three planes into King 18.”
At that point, in my capacity as the senior officer in the squadron, I appointed a board to start on the necessary paperwork. At the same time I told Brooke he would now lead the skipper’s division and we would use spare pilots to fill in the flights as necessary for the rest of the day’s schedule. It was time to get back to business. Paul Hayek’s division had arrived in the ready room to prepare for the next launch, and Lt. Bob Hayes was preparing his section for their combat air patrol, launching at the same time. I wanted to write Dotty Kinsella, Jim’s wife, right away, but I decided to defer my letter until I knew more.
I had another flight that afternoon, a CAS mission, again on the central front. According to the FACs, we were successful in inflicting casualties on the enemy. I landed back on board the Boxer at about 1600. The squadron duty officer had a message from commander, Seventh Fleet’s representative at the TACC to the effect that Lieutenant Commander Kinsella had crashed north of the front lines in the Second Infantry Division’s sector and had been brought in by an armed patrol. He was evacuated to a mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) unit for immediate medical attention and assessment. Kinsella had suffered serious burns on his face and hands and had been taken by ambulance to Seoul. He would be evacuated that evening to Japan for hospitalization and further evacuation to CONUS. There were no broken bones or internal injuries.
What a remarkable outcome of what had appeared to his flight to be a fatal crash. His F9F, in flames, had disintegrated upon hitting the ground. Jim Kinsella was the eighth pilot in the squadron to have his plane brought down during hostile fire. All had survived, although some had been wounded.
NEW SKIPPER
I did not have much time to reflect over the report on Kinsella. The squadron duty officer said that the Boxer’s skipper, Captain Gurney, wanted to see me on the bridge as soon as I had landed and been debriefed. I dropped off my helmet and navigation kit and walked up the four levels of ladders to the navigation bridge. Captain Gurney was sitting in his CO’s perch overlooking the flight deck as the last of the Skyraiders on this recovery were landing on board. He motioned me over and asked if I had seen the message on Kinsella. I told him I had and that we all considered Kinsella a very lucky pilot. Capt. Marsh Gurney, who was a very fine naval officer, a good carrier skipper, and a very thoughtful and friendly individual, then said to me that he was preparing to send a message to the Bureau of Personnel (BuPers) recommending that I be given command of Fighter Squadron 52 as of that date. I thanked him very much for his consideration in recommending me. He said he would send a copy of the message to the squadron and that I should immediately assume all the responsibilities and prerogatives of the CO. A very thoughtful gesture. He was busy running the recovery and I had things to do, so I excused myself and was leaving the bridge when he called me back and said, “Jim, I know you’ll do a good job. That’s a fine squadron and you certainly showed that you can fill the shoes of Jim Kinsella.” Again, a thoughtful senior officer. That brief comment was a substantial boost to my morale. I went back to the cabin that I shared with Kinsella and broke out a sheet of Navy-issue lined paper and wrote a quick note to Dotty Kinsella, his wife, who was a close friend of Dabney, my wife, and told her just what had happened as far as we knew and that we were all grateful that Jim was going home all in one piece, with the prognosis of a full and complete recovery. I knew that we would be getting a mail plane off first thing the next morning and I wanted her to hear personally from someone on the ship close to Jim. I then went through the onerous task of packing up Jim’s clothes and belongings. It was not nearly as depressing as it had been for me on the previous cruise, when Tom Pugh, the XO of the Skyraider squadron, a Naval Academy classmate, and my next-door neighbor in quarters at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, had been killed in action and I was packing up his worldly possessions, which ultimately would be opened by his widow and children.
The next day, VF-52 was at it again as if nothing had happened. Except that the pilots made a great point of calling me Skipper and generally laughing and scratching about the change in command. There is a great deal of black humor among naval aviators because of the losses they sustain among their close friends and their leaders. I had been with this squadron for almost three years and been XO for twelve months. They knew me well and were confident that there would be no surprises with me as CO. I had been running the squadron under Jim Kinsella since coming on board. Jim was essentially an air combat tactician and spent minimum time dealing with the pilots or the enlisted men. He left that up to his XO while he pondered new tactics and strategies for more effective ways to kill the enemy.
Years later, at a squadron reunion in San Diego, Jim Kinsella and I were reminiscing about our Korean War days and he told me this story. When he had crashed and saw the infantry patrol coming out of their lines into no-man’s-land, he had run forward to meet them in his pleasure at realizing they were friendly troops. When he reached the group, grateful and breathless, the patrol leader, a sergeant, said, “Mister, the CO of the 217th Engineers is going to be very mad at you.” In response to Jim’s “Why?” the sergeant said, “He had told us that minefield you just ran through was impenetrable.”
We went to work the next day with the same kind of schedule, but now the spares were being launched with every flight, just to get the maximum weight of effort over the target. At the end of that day the squadron received a copy of a message from commander, Seventh Fleet reporting that the carriers in Task Force 77 had flown the highest total of combat sorties up to that time in a single day in the Korean War. This was in response to the appeals from the ground commanders. The Chinese were battering the UN strongpoints all along the eastern front — Pork Chop Hill, Little Berlin, Sniper’s Ridge — using human-wave attacks preceded by the heaviest heavy artillery bombardments of the war.