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When I joined the 19th Aviation Company in June 1965, it was located at Camp Humphries, near P’yongt’aek, about 40 miles south of Seoul. The town of P’yongt’aek of 1950 was described by author T.R. Fehrenbach in his book This Kind Of War as “a dirty little town of wattle huts and muddy streets”. The intervening years had changed little beyond the size of the place. In 1965 it consisted of one paved street that connected the Main Gate of Camp Humphries to the main North South highway about five miles to the East. The first hundred yards or so of this street were lined with bars and shops selling every thing from food to woodcarvings and brass wear. Several dirt alleys running perpendicular and parallel to the “main street” were also lined with bars and shops. The Japanese had originally constructed the Camp Humphries airfield, during their 1910 to 1945 occupation of Korea. It was taken over by the US and used as a US Air Force Base, designated K-6, until shortly after the end of the Korean War. The US Army took control in the late 1950s and built it into a major base. The camp sprawled over an area of about five or six square miles. It housed an Area Command Headquarters and several supply and maintenance support units. The airfield had long runways good parking ramps and several large modern hangers, the newest of which was still under construction. This new hanger would become the home of the 19th Avn. Co. in just a few weeks.
The primary mission of the 19th Avn. Co. was to provide logistical support to units of the 8th Army. Most of our missions were priority cargo flights from rear area supply depots to units along the DMZ. Our missions took us to almost all parts of South Korea and it was interesting to see new places and things. With only 8 flyable aircraft I soon found myself busy, flying two or three flights every two to three days and keeping up with maintenance on the other two days. July 16th started out as a maintenance day. I was sitting in the aircraft going over the aircraft logbook when the Line Chief stuck his head in the cargo door and told me to get over to the Maintenance Office right away. As I entered the office I found the Maintenance Officer and five other Flight Engineers already there. The Maintenance Officer asked each Flight Engineer “is your aircraft flyable?” Four of us answered “yes”. The Line Chief sent one of his clerks to notify the Crew Chiefs of the four flyable aircraft to get them ready to go in the next half hour. The Company Commander (CO) and several pilots joined us soon after and we were told that we would be going to the Seoul area to take part in a rescue mission. The last several days of heavy rain throughout Korea marked the beginning of the summer monsoon. In addition, the dams controlling the level of the Han River are located North of the DMZ and whenever the North Koreans have an opportunity they would open the floodgates and attempt to flood as much of the South as possible. This combination of open floodgates and monsoon rain caused widespread flooding of the low-lying areas of Seoul along the Han River.
Thirty minutes after notification of the mission we were off and heading north with the CO flying my aircraft in the
lead of a ragged flight of four. A short twenty-minute flight later we arrived at Yong Son, the helipad serving 8th Army Headquarters. The CO received a quick briefing from the 8th Army Aviation Officer and we headed to an island in the river where a large number of people had been cut off by the rising water. All four of the aircraft landed on the island and started loading people. There were four or five men in uniform, ROK Army or KNP, Korean National Police, controlling the crowd and in general keeping order. I was in the forward end on the cabin trying to get people into seats and reasonably secure while the Crew Chief was at the rear door counting the passengers as they boarded. Each time we returned to the island the Crew Chief and I switched places. The normal seating capacity of the CH-37 is thirty-two combat loaded troops, but since we were only counting adults we carried at least twice that many people. Fortunately most Koreans are smaller and lighter than a fully loaded American Soldier so we had little problem getting them belted into seats and lifting the load.
Each time we returned to the island it had grown smaller. By our fifth landing the island had shrunk to an area just large enough for one aircraft to land. After our fifth flight we landed at Yong Son to refuel. As I checked things in the cabin the Crew Chief pulled me aside saying “I think I am in trouble.” When I asked him what the problem was he told me he had punched a Korean civilian. During our last pick up on the island the Army or KNP officers were no longer on the scene and things were getting out of hand. As the Crew Chief was getting passengers loaded he saw a young man grab an old woman and pull her away from the door and attempt to take her place. The Crew Chief punched the young man, pushed him out of the aircraft and closed the door in his face. The young man was last seen heading toward a small boat that was ferrying people off the swiftly shrinking island. I found it strange that a Korean, one of a people who profess to have great respect for their elders, would do something like that. I guess jerks come in all nationalities. When we told the CO about it he said “I didn’t see anything so don’t sweat it”. That was the last we heard of it. In all, the four aircraft lifted over a thousand people from the island before it was entirely flooded.
By about three in the afternoon, two of our aircraft were released to return home while two of us flew to the US Army Airfield at K-16 at Yongdongp’o just across the river from Seoul. By the time we arrived the water was one to two feet deep over the entire ramp area. The second aircraft, which landed ahead of us, was released to return home and started to take off. The aircraft lifted off and started forward when it suddenly settled back to the flooded ramp throwing spray up and into the air intakes of both engines. The spray caused both engines to backfire and run rough but luckily they kept running. The pilot managed to keep things under control and the aircraft staggered back into the air continuing it’s take off run. One of my pilots commented “that was as close as I ever saw anyone come to crashing an aircraft without really doing it”. I found out later the aircraft had been sitting in a low spot on the ramp and water had filled the ten to twelve inch deep area between the cargo floor and the fuselage adding several hundred pounds of unseen “cargo”. When the pilot lifted off and nosed down to begin to take off, the “cargo” shifted forward, the aircraft became suddenly nose heavy and settled back to the flooded ramp. When the aircraft landed at K-6 twenty minutes later water was still pouring out of the drain holes in the belly.
The last seven US personnel, who had been left at K-16 to guard the hangers and several non-flyable aircraft, quickly loaded on my aircraft and we departed for Yong Son pad. After dropping our passengers we were released and headed for home. It had been a long day, but cleaning the mud, sand and “other stuff” from the cargo floor, repacking all the wheel bearings and giving the entire aircraft a wash down the next day was almost as long. We spent several days flying flood related missions in support of various U.S. and Korean Army units around the country. All pilots and crewmembers who took part in the first day’s rescue mission were awarded the Sikorsky “Winged S” Rescue Award and Certificates from the Korean Ministry of Defense and the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department.
Another major mission of the CH-37 unit was the transportation of large,
classified, “ammunition items” from the forward Artillery units to a rear depot for periodic inspection. Every week or so, one and sometimes two aircraft would be tasked to support this mission. If we were not actually moving an “item”, our mission would be to conduct a training class for the Artillery unit we were working with. The CH-37 was designed to handle cargo. One of the better features built into the cabin was a monorail and hoist system. The system consisted of a 3,000 lbs capacity electric hoist, equipped with 75 ft of steel cable, on a monorail running the length of the cabin and around a 90° curve out the rear cargo door. This allowed the crew to pick up a load from the ground and move it to almost any position in the cabin. Most of the “items” we worked with however were much too large and heavy to be lifted with their full weight on the hoist cable so we used the system a bit differently. First, the hoist was positioned on the specially reinforced, last section of the monorail. The cabin section of the monorail was then folded up against the roof of the cabin getting it out of the way. The hoist was held in position by two retaining pins and two cargo straps hooked to tie down rings in the cabin floor. After setting up the hoist we could run the hoist cable out, hook on to a piece of cargo and pull it up the ramp thru the forward clam shell doors and into the cabin. Since this method did not require a dead lift, the hoist could pull loads greater then 3,000 lbs, which it needed to be able to do, as most of the “items”, weighed 4,000 lbs or more. To protect the cabin floor and allow the “item” to move easily we laid out several sheets of 3/8 in, grease covered plywood. The cargo “item” would be placed on the plywood sheet at the front of the ramp, the cable would be hooked on and the cargo dragged into the cabin.
The really delicate part of the job came when the “item” was removed.
Our hoist system only worked to pull things into the aircraft. The cable was not long enough to allow us to rig a block and tackle arrangement to reverse the process. Most of the Artillery units would simply hook one end of a vehicle towing chain to the front end of the “item” the other to a 2 ½ Ton truck and drive away with it. This would not have been much of a problem had they not insisted that I hook my hoist cable to the back end of the “item” so it did not slide down the ramp too quickly. One of the 19th Avn Co CH-37s had recently been damaged when a truck driver tried to pull an “item” out of the aircraft faster than the hoist could pay out its cable. The hoist cable snapped and whipped through the cabin taking out a seat frame and a window. Fortunately the Flight Engineer, who was controlling the hoist, was standing outside the aircraft or he would have been injured. I always insisted on tying a small loop of rope to the “item” and hooking the hoist cable to the rope. That way if a driver pulled too fast the rope would break instead my hoist cable.
A third mission of the 19th Avn Co. was flying personnel of the Armistice Commission to P’anmunjom for meetings with their Chinese and North Korean counterparts. This was a straightforward passenger transport mission. We picked up the passengers at Yong Son pad and flew them to an area known as The Joint Security Area or JSA. The JSA was a small camp well inside the DMZ. The pilots were required to fly to a specific point on the South edge of the DMZ then follow a road that led to the JSA. All pilots flying into the JSA were briefed that in the event of a problem they should land on the road, as there were extensive mine fields on both sides. After dropping our passengers the pilots went to the Officer’s Club and the Crew Chief and I went to the NCO Club where we sat around, drank Cokes and listened to the long and boring Commission meeting.
The primary reason American and South Korean personnel were flown to the meetings was to “one up” the North Koreans who arrived at the meetings in a convoy of Russian or Chinese built copies of Russian “jeeps”. This game of “one upsmanship” was carried on by both sides and was at times ridiculous and at others bizarre. In an incident several years ago the U.S. and South Korean Commission Members found their chair legs to be noticeably shorter than those on the north side of the table. The North Koreans had shortened the chairs on the South side to put themselves in a superior position. At the next meeting the U.S. and South Korean members brought their own, standard height, chairs and removed them when the meeting was over. In the early summer of 1964 the North Koreans repainted the roofs of all their buildings green. They then introduced a flock of pigeons trained to land only on green roofs. These pigeons were proclaimed to be “Doves of Peace” who would land only where there were “Peace Loving People”. This worked pretty well until the first blast of the notorious Korean winter when all the pigeons flew south. I guess they were looking for “Peace Loving People” in a warmer place. The one area where the U.S. could always “one up” the North Koreans was the Military Police personnel who worked in the JSA. It was required that they be 6’2” or taller. There are not many 6’2” Koreans.
The only problem with these JSA Missions was that the military members of the group wore dress uniforms and the civilians wore suits. While the CH-37 was a transport aircraft it was not a VIP transport. Conventional wisdom among crewmembers held that if the hydraulic systems weren’t leaking it was a sure indication the reservoir was empty. The worst offender in this leakage was the secondary flight control servo, located in the cabin overhead. In most CH-37’s the seats located under the servo were soaked in hydraulic fluid. The passenger seats were in three seat sections of nylon webbing attached to aluminum tubing. The best way to clean the seat was to remove the oil soaked section from its frame and scrub it in aviation fuel. This was an efficient but somewhat dangerous way of getting the seats clean. It also demanded a strict No Smoking policy when the seats were newly cleaned, but at least the seats could be used without making a mess of the passengers uniform or suit.
The job of keeping my aircraft flyable made the tour pass quickly, and in early May I received orders reassigning me to Ft Eustis, VA. When a pilot or crewmember departed the company, it was traditional, if possible, to fly them to Kimpo Airport in Seoul to catch the flight home. The day I departed, I was lucky enough to catch a ride on an aircraft that was headed north on a mission. As part of the flight to Kimpo, it was also traditional to give the departing pilot or crewmember a “fly by”; a fast low level pass over the company flight line where fellow pilots and crewmembers waved or made other gestures of farewell and good luck. A CH-37 coming toward you low and fast is an impressive sight and sound, and a fitting send off for a pilot or crewmember. The pilots of my ride gave me a really great fly by, almost taking the radio antenna off the top of the hanger. I was standing on the ladder in the cockpit and got to see it all from there. It was a great way to begin the journey home.
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