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Year before I got there, they had a situation to occur where
they had it and the other thing was out over the Yellow Sea, the
line came across straight. Well, there was 8 air training,
North Korean air, air training areas north of the line.
And we had training areas just South of the line.
And I'm talking like there were this line, we're within 5 miles
of the line on either side. So the year before I got there,
they had incidents where a guy, North Korean and his BIG212
seat, Big 21 was out doing advanced handling or initial
stuff that they do for their pilots when they go out there.
And this guy spilled out of the airspace and spilled into our
train airspace. S OK.
So they're looking at it, you know, of course on the board and
they see this and they're going well, you know, in the in the H
TAC where the combined forces are, all they're looking at is a
radar track. You know, they got a radar
track. We don't know what the guy's
doing. Yeah, he's in the training area,
maybe doing something or whatever.
We don't know what's going on. OK, so they got this track.
He's still South and he's S for a while.
And the story was that it was a mission.
Like I said, the South Koreans were responsible for air
defence. The American two star who was
the lead two star for Air Force guy in Korea and ahead of this
combined force thing says change things now we'll let the 36
handle it. So they scrambled, they
scrambled the guys out of the 36 to head to the head to the West,
to the centre step, you know, and this whole thing was like a
chess match. But it also had to do like off
of indications and signals and stuff.
Like, you know, they would do something and then we would do
something and they would see that we did this.
And so they would make an another move.
It was like a big, you know, move in the chess board.
OK. So they saw the aeroplanes, They
saw the aeroplanes scrambled. So we're scrambled.
We're going out there. These guys are still monkeying
around in our training airspace. And so for whatever reason, we
were supposed to go through a procedure where we had to be
cleared to intercept, cleared to arm, clear to yeah, clear to
engage. They were all, and I may be
missing a couple extra steps, but they're all separate steps
that you you had to get clearance to do, you know, And
then of course, the last one was, you know, clear the fire.
OK, Supposedly the story was they're they're out there and
they're getting inside of 15 miles on this on this Mig and
they request to think clearance to arm or something like that.
And the two stars said that just give him clearance to fire.
OK, so he gave him clearance to fire, which meant that they're
going to take they're going to take a they're going to look to
take a face aim seven shot. OK, to the flight lead.
In addition to that, what that meant was, Hey, I'm getting rid
of my wing tanks. So he jettisons his wing tanks
at that point in time. And supposedly the story was,
was they they got to within prime Aim 7 conditions, what you
could see at the time, which was Max circle expansion on the
radar scope and the circle's just about ready to contract,
which meant that you're right in the heart of the envelope.
Pin Bag, welcome back to 10th century.
Good to see you again. Good to see you too, Steve.
Payback, you treated us last time around to a very
interesting discussion around your time going through
navigator training in the Air Force in the late 1970s, getting
to the FTU or the RTU for the F4 E at Macdill.
And you talked us through some of the structural changes or the
organisational changes that were happening across PAC F and USAFE
E and Alaska Command with regards to introducing the F4E
and replacing I guess some of the F4D units.
And at that point, I think maybe this is where you want to pick
up. You were getting ready to go to
your first assignment at Osan in Korea.
Right. One thing I want to add on to
what I was talking about at the end yesterday where we talked
about where the tactical air forces of Taf were in the seven
in 76. I neglected to mention that
Nellis both in the Tac Fighter Weapons Centre and in the
Fighter F4 Fighter Weapons School there were given the lead
as far as setting a lot of these things up.
And in in 1976 when they published the Fighter weapons
review for beginning in 1977, they came out with two volumes
that are basically the Bible that all the units regardless of
NDS, you know, we're using as far as setting up MQ training
programmes. So I just wanted to show you a
copy. This was the first one here and
it's winter 76 and it was called the Training toward combat
capability. This was volume one.
This dealt with air to air items and it basically told you how
told a person or a squadron how to set up their training
programme and techniques and how to brief missions and stuff.
That was followed four months later by volume 2 with the brown
cover. And the brown cover is because
it was air to ground. And this dealt with how to deal
with air to ground missions and how to deal with flying low
levels. And it also introduced this
little bugaboo pave spike to the Taff and how to set up your your
initial qualification rides and pave spike.
And of course, the guy that authored most of these was a guy
by the name of John Jumper. He was a Clapton at the time,
the guy who was involved with a lot of this, a lot of this was
Ron Keyes, who also went on. And you also had some other
noteworthy names like Joe Bob Phillips in there and stuff.
So that's where the issue of where the Taft was going.
And when I look back, you know, as far as fighter squadrons back
then from my position now where I'm retired or actually, you
know, when even when I was in the my last years in the, you
know, before I retired from the Air Force, was that basically a
fighter squadron? The success of a fighter
squadron was like a three legged stool and you know with the
stool you wanna have all the legs equal to make it so that
you can sit on it 'cause if one leg is shorter you're gonna be
sliding stuff. Well, the three legs I construe
to be technology and the technology is both of the
aircraft and the weapon systems and the weapons that you're
using on the particular aircraft.
So that would drive most of the other legs.
The second leg is training and guidance and that's how well the
the training material is, how well you train people.
And then also what type of guidance do you give out in
terms of now we call it, you know, three, we used to call it
3-1 and 3-3, but now they're called the techniques and
procedures I think it is. And then the third leg is
basically leadership and experience.
Now if one leg is lagging, then another leg can make up for it
to sort of equalise stuff. But that, as I look back,
became, hey, this is how this whole thing is supposed to work
and to have a successful fighter squad.
So with that, I graduated RTU. Back in those days, McDonnell
Douglas was still able to give us our graduation model.
Now they, they, they ceased that in the 80s because it was
considered to be something that you had to claim as far as money
goes for the Air Force. So the Air Force told McDonald
Lucas, you can't give them their $10 models anymore.
So I was one of the last classes, I guess that to get,
you know, our free McDonnell Douglas model.
And of course, you know, we had a whole bunch of other McDonnell
Douglas items that we that we had back in those days too, like
patches and stuff like that. So I left Macdill, finished up
the course the first week of December of 76.
I was basically off for a month for Christmas.
And if you remember from the last time I hadn't done basic
survival training, So basic survival training didn't start
again until the 1st week of January 77.
So January 77, I have to, I finish up doing SERE training,
going through prison camp and, and all that.
And that was an interesting experience going through the
through the SERE because as I thought when we talked about, I
had that delay going to navigator training by going to
pre nap training, that set me six months ahead as far as my
time in the Air Force. So the day I graduated RTU
training, I pinned on 1st Lieutenant.
So when I showed up at survival training, I was a first
Lieutenant and going in route and stuff.
Well, that earmarked me out of the crowd of what was going
through survival training. Survival training at the time
when I was up there at Fairchild, we had mostly a lot
of it enlisted because AWACS was being developed at the same
time. So our ranking officer for the
class going through survival training was what they now call
an air battle manager. Back then we just used to call
the scope dope was the GCI controller that was a major and
he was going to be getting a set of wings to go fly on an AWACS.
And so he's looking out over for everybody, not only the
officers, but there are a lot of enlisted because there are a lot
of enlisted that are going to fly on the AWACS.
And so the first thing they did was they segregate the
leadership from the masses. And the way they did it for us
was they know who, when you arrive there, they have a
background on you. So like, they knew my case.
Yeah, he's a first Lieutenant, but he's also a fighter guy,
graduated from fighter, from fighter training.
He's and he's going overseas. So the first phase of training
they show you is the immediate capture, which is geared toward
a guy flying fighters, where you bail out of your aeroplane, you
land on the ground and you're immediately captured by enemy
forces. And what they're trying to
simulate is your immediate interrogation.
So this would be like your militia or whatever trying to
ask you what were you doing? What was your mission and all
this. And of course they teach you all
the techniques and stuff and which is basically like, I ain't
telling you shit and stuff. So Fairchild was a was a large
base where they where they ran the camp was down where, where
they had some empty ammo bunkers.
And so they captured me. And of course, all the guys that
are running this camp, with the exception of a few officers, are
all enlisted guys. But they're not wearing American
military uniforms. They're wearing stuff that sort
of looks Chai, calm, sort of looks sort of looks Soviet sort
of looks like this or that, you know, for various adversaries.
So they captured me and of course, it's me.
And it's about 13 enlisted guys. So we go into this ammo bunker
and the guy starts to interrogate at me and he says,
you better tell me what I want to know or I'm going to shoot
you. And he pulls out a 45, OK, that
he had on him. And I go, I ain't telling you
anything. He says, OK, will you come with
me? He takes me outside of the ammo
bunker, takes the 45 and shoots around.
And then he says, now you go over here.
So now I'm going over to another ammo bunker.
And the whole reason why they did that was they wanted to
instil in the rest of the guys that were in the ammo bunker was
holy shit, they shot that guy 'cause he ain't coming back.
And they throw another guy in so they'd sit.
So they'd separate the leadership.
So anyhow, we ended up basically it was the senior captain who's
gonna be an air battle manager. We had a a a senior, we had a
middle grade captain who was going to fly.
I forget what the aeroplane was, but it wasn't a tactical
fighter, but he come out of being a Titan missile crewman,
crew lead back when we had Titan missiles in sack.
And then it was about, and the rest of us were all first
lieutenants and we were all F4 guys and we're all going to
various bases and stuff. And then the rest there was
second lieutenants wandering around trying to figure out what
to do with the enlisted guys. And so they kept us separating
to see if they would establish a chain of command as to what's
going on. The other person that we had
with us let me go back as we had a female staff Sergeant.
And you probably wondered why was she there?
Well, she was basically what was described as being like a
stewardess for Mac and she had to go to this course.
So of course they, they picked that on her for a lot of, for a
lot of issues and stuff and basically a raster and stuff.
And so we went through that and the one thing that you want to
try to do is you want to try to escape from the camp, OK, But if
you escape from the camp, it really doesn't matter because
you're going to they you go, OK, I made out of the camp and they
go, OK, fine. Then they take you and they
bring you back in the camp. But what they wanted to see you
do was what sort of ingenuity you could have.
What could you bring out that'd be of value?
So the one thing that we had was we had a copy of the class
roster of everybody's name that was on the roster.
And we had the person that escaped was able to escape have
the roster. So that was a a thumbs up as far
as that for our class that we got the names out of who's in
the prison camp. The other thing that we were
able to bring into the camp was we were able to smuggle a watch
it. And you may wonder what's what's
the purpose of the watch? Well, you get your syllabus
information and stuff and we knew that hey, the course is
supposed to last three days and the first, the whole first
portion of it is to sensually deprive you of what you're
doing. They blindfold you, they stick
in places where you lose sense of time.
Well, one guy had a car, had to watch.
And so we're able to keep eye of what's going on.
We're able to keep track of what day it is.
And so our, the exercise is supposed to end on Thursday so
that we could depart on Friday for wherever we were going to
our next assignment. So like I said, they kept all us
seeing you guys segregated. The guy pulls out the watch and
he goes, you know, hey, it's getting pretty late.
It's like 7:00 in the evening. OK, Now where the camp is from
the main base of Fairchild is you can look right across and
see where the BOQ is, where your, where your room is, where
you're staying. OK, the, but what was in between
US and the BOQ was the sack alert facility.
And so we've been briefed on when you escape, don't head off
in this direction because what you'll do is you'll hit the sack
alert facility and the next thing, if you're lucky, you
should be faced down in the concrete by some security force
personnel. So we're looking at the watch
and we're going, you know, hey, this is getting to be a bunch of
BS and stuff. And so we just decide and we go
out and we look and see what the enlisted guys have been doing
and they're digging a, they were building a big hole and we're
going, what are you guys bigging a big hole for to say?
Well, they told us they want us to make a swimming pool and
we're going, no, what you're building is a AAA placement.
And so we got them all out of that.
And you know, another portion they had was to further try to
disrupt the chain of command. They had a mock camp election.
So when you did the camp election, of course, you put the
senior ranking officer up while the camp commandant decided, no,
he's not good enough, we're going to have an election.
And I want to know what the qualifications were.
Well, among the maintenance guys, we had a tech Sergeant who
had a good background in maintenance and he had
supervised like upwards of 150 people.
And he was the commandant nominee for it.
So we couldn't nominate the senior ranking officer.
So it defaulted then to the next ranking officer to the the other
captain. And so we said now the captain
is the next guy to be the senior ranking senior ranking guy.
And the commandant goes, well, what are your qualifications?
And this guy starts talking. He says, well, he says I'm going
to be off. He goes, well, that's stuff.
And you're just an air crew. He goes, no, But before that I
was the commander of a Titan missile crew, four man team,
majority. And commandant goes, oh, tell me
more So. And the rest of us go, hey, shut
up, shut up. OK, so we get back.
So we're looking around. This is like the first time in
two in a day and a half we see outside of what's going on and
we're going, hey, knock that, knock that crap off.
We're leaving. And they go, what do you mean
we're leaving? We're going, hey, it's Thursday.
It's going on at 8:00. This thing was supposed to have
ended about 1/2 an hour ago based on the syllabus.
So we start going to the main gate.
And of course, one of the guards is there with his rifle and he
goes, stop or, you know, or I'll fire on you.
And we told him, we said, you go ahead and you can shoot one of
us, but the rest of us are going to shove that rifle up your ass.
And so with that, it ended. They raised up the American
flag. And I go, OK, you guys all
graduate and stuff. So off we go.
So this is now 1977 and the way we travel to Korea is by air
contract there. So I go down to Travis Air Force
Base and I get on a contract there.
Stretch 8, the stretch 8, DC 8 stretch.
So it holds about oh excess of 100 people.
Now there's only about 20 guys on that plane that are Air Force
and I'm the ranking Air Force guy being a first Lieutenant.
OK. So the rest of the plane is
filled up with Army guys going up to replace guys in the in the
second Infantry division up on the DMZ.
Takes us about 20 hours to get to Osan.
We take off out of Travis. We have to fly up to Elmendorf
or Anchorage to refuel. And then from Anchorage I think
we flew direct to Osan, although we may have stopped at Yokota
someplace like that to get more gas.
But anyhow, we arrive at I, we landed Osan on a Saturday
morning, 7:30 OK, so we're coming into Korea and it's my
first time looking into Korea. And the first thing that I
noticed back then was, hey, we're flying over a country.
Yeah, there's some rice patties, but there's no trees.
There's no trees on the hill or anything like that.
And I found later on, talking to the local Koreans, that that was
all leftover from when the Japanese occupied an annex
Korea. They took all that.
They deforested the entire peninsula.
Yeah. Now, South Korea at that time
was mostly agrarian, so we were flying over rice paddies.
Yeah, they had their big cities and stuff, but even Seoul was
still rebuilding from the Korean War and stuff.
So it wasn't anything like it is today.
They didn't have any industry. Most of the stuff that came over
came over from Japan. And part of, and when I talk
about the history of the squad and I'll talk about how we get
how some stuff got into Korea because it was courtesy of the
US Air Force and the, and the fighter squad is being
relocated. So after the Korean War, we
basically didn't have what you would call standard bases.
We had bases there, but they were bases that we just pulled a
alert on. And the type of alert was the
same type of alert that was being pulled in Germany and
France, which was was a Victor alert.
So they're flying and we're flying on assets and stuff.
So that's nuclear strike. Nuclear strike, OK, It's
basically what's there. OK, That changed in 1968.
What happened in 1968 was the North Korean Navy increased the
size of their fleet by having a old cargo vessel that was now an
intelligence ship called the Pueblo added to their inventory.
So when the call went out from the Pueblo, hey, we're being
harassed and stuff, there were no, there were no the closest
air assets that were none nuclear alert were down in Naha,
Okinawa. So while we're still fighting
Vietnam, we sent TDY F4 squadrons from Seymour Johnson
to be to be at the Kunsan and we sent F1 O sixes from initially
start out, Minot I think. And then it went through all the
Air Defence Command, F1 O sixes. Now the F that necessitated them
modifying the F1O6 to become air refuel because the F1O6 up until
that point wasn't air refuelable.
And the only way you'd be able to make it would be to island
hop and that would take too long to get there.
So for a period of time you had the 10 sixes and you had the
FTDYF fours roaming around in Korea besides your normal alert
tasking. OK, the alert tasking back then
started out with the one hundreds and F1 oh fives.
As the Vietnam War progressed, those assets disappeared and
they were replaced by F fours. And basically what it was, was
as the 10 Fives were being shot down in Southeast Asia, they
were going, they were being tasked to go down there, use
that force out of Southeast Asia, went N to replace those in
the, in the units and stuff. The primary fighter squadrons
that were in Japan at the time when, when I say Japan, I'm
talking about the islands of Japan were the 35th to 36th and
the 80th squadrons. And they were, they were
assigned to the ATAC Fighter Wing.
However, now is that Bee determined that they wanted the
ATAC Fighter Wing to be one of the wings down in Thailand.
So they deployed, they took the name ATAC Fighter Wing.
They went to Ubon and then the 35th, the 36th and the 30s and
the 80th rotate around air divisions or whatever as far as
reporting chain of command want up in Japan.
OK. And they were primarily out of
your coda, OK. And their whole purpose up there
was they had to man the alert sites of Kunsan and Osan for for
the alert. OK 1972 ish is when the we had
our end the World War 2 treaty with the Japanese came to an
end. And so we're turning stuff back
to the Japanese. One of the requirements they had
was they didn't want any fighters on the main islands.
So now you got those 3 fighter squadrons, you need a place to
go. And now the Air Force says,
well, we'll just put them at the org sites and build up the org
sites, OK. Kusan had more of an
infrastructure. That was Kusan was also known as
KA K8 man Korean airfield agents goes back to the Korean War Osan
was K-55. Osan was starting to be built at
the end of the Korean War. So Osan basically had nothing on
it as far as sport. And that's why both of those
bases were remote for so long. In fact, Kunsan is today.