I Always Wanted to Fly

by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

  Captain Howard S. Myers, Jr, FR34694A, distinguished himself by exceptional meritorious service in the performance of duty as Commander, Detachment 1, 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, and RB-45C Aircraft Commander during the Korean Conflict from November 1952 to March 1953. While piloting a RB-45C jet reconnaissance aircraft, staging from Yokota and Misawa Air Bases in Japan, and forward air bases in Korea, the exceptional ability, diligence, and devotion to duty of Capt. Myers was instrumental in successful collection of highly classified photographic and radar intelligence information over enemy territory, during reconnaissance penetration missions into North Korea, Central and Northern communist Asian countries, and Soviet territory. Accuracy of the intelligence information collected on these missions provided vital targeting data for follow on bomber and fighter strike missions over the North Korean Peninsula. In addition, deep penetration missions into other highly fortified Soviet block countries provided long range strategic planners in the Pentagon and Strategic Air Command Headquarters with vital intelligence and combat capability information. These singular distinctive accomplishments of Captain Myers reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

  Colonel Howard S. “Sam” Myers Jr.

  Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal (4)

  The Korean War was in its third year in November 1952 when Sam Myers’s crew and another air crew relieved two RB-45C crews at Yokota Air Base in Japan. The RB-45 arrived at Yokota in September 1950 and flew its first combat mission in November. Sam’s navigator on the deployment was Lieutenant Frank Martin, who, like Sam, was assigned to the 322d Reconnaissance Squadron of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at their home base of Lockbourne. Sam had been appointed commander of the two-plane Yokota RB-45C detachment, which was part of the Yokota-based 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron. His primary mission was to fly reconnaissance for the FEAF Bomber Command, colocated with the RB-45Cs at Yokota. FEAF’s B-29 bombers were based at Yokota and on the island of Okinawa.

  At one time in late 1950, the Yokota RB-45C detachment possessed three aircraft, but one was shot down on a mission near the Yalu River. At noon on December 4, 1950, an RB-45C piloted by Captain Charles E. McDonough, the detachment commander, rose into the sky above Yokota Air Base, never to return. The aircraft called in when it penetrated North Korean airspace. Silence followed. It wasn’t a routine combat mission. Besides the pilot, copilot, and the radar navigator, onboard the plane was an air force colonel from the Pentagon. Colonel John Lovell worked in air force Intelligence and was assumed to have been involved in planning reconnaissance missions for the RB-45C. Why Colonel Lovell accompanied the mission is unknown. It was unusual for someone with Colonel Lovell’s knowledge of reconnaissance operations to expose himself to possible capture. Robert Burns of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and Ledger Star wrote in 1994,

  The RB-45 was no ordinary plane. It was the most advanced photo-reconnaissance plane in the world, and this was its first wartime use. The Air Force knew the RB-45C was a target of Soviet intelligence. Moscow was aware that U.S. Air Force planes were flying over its territory throughout the 1950s, but it didn’t become an international issue until the Soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers in a CIA-operated U-2 spy plane on May 1, 1960. Although never officially acknowledged by Washington, men who flew the plane in Korea say their top-secret missions sometimes took them deep into Chinese and Soviet airspace. More routinely, it flew photo reconnaissance over North Korea. Louis Carrington of Tyler, Texas, one of the two other pilots in McDonough’s unit, recalls that Mac and his crew, attired in blue flight suits, took off into clear skies from Yokota at about lunchtime on December 4. The last word from the RB-45 crew was a routine radio contact 100 minutes after takeoff, signaling their entry into North Korean airspace. The crash site was never pinpointed. No bodies were recovered. (A6)

  Major Carrington was himself no ordinary pilot. In July 1952, three months before Sam Myers and Frank Martin arrived at Yokota to replace his crew, he won the Mackay Trophy, given by the National Aeronautic Association for the outstanding flight of the year. It was only the second time the trophy had been awarded to a SAC crew. The first Mackay Trophy had gone to the crew of the Lucky Lady II, a B-50A of the 43rd Bomb Group, which completed the first nonstop around-the-world flight in 1949. On July 29, 1952, Lou Carrington flew RB-45C 48-042 nonstop from Elmendorf AFB in Alaska to Yokota Air Base, supported by two KB-29 refueling tankers. It was the first transpacific flight of that nature.

  Burns pointed out in his story that “the clinching evidence [about the shootdown] came not from U.S. government files, but from Russia, whose MiG fighters shot down McDonough’s plane near the Yalu River separating North Korea from China. McDonough ejected from the plane. The one page document that said McDonough had died was found in Russian archives. It was dated December 18, 1950—exactly two weeks after the shootdown—but did not indicate the exact date or cause of death. ‘I am informing you that the pilot from the shot-down B-45 aircraft died en route and the interrogation was not finished,’ the note said in Russian.” McDonough apparently was the only crew member to eject from his stricken aircraft, and he subsequently perished.

  “Our standard missions,” Sam Myers recalled, “were day missions over North Korea. We were tasked by FEAF Bomber Command, and as soon as we returned from a mission, their intelligence specialists would retrieve our film, process it, look at the target areas, and then task the B-29s at Yokota and Kadena, Okinawa, against the targets we had located. Some of our missions were deep penetrations into communist China and the Soviet Union. We flew other missions against the coastal regions of the Soviet Union abutting the Sea of Japan and along Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, often escorted for part of our flight by F-84 fighters. We had a one-hundred-inch-lens camera mounted at a thirty-degree angle in the bomb bay. We could fly at twenty-five thousand feet over water and shoot into the Soviet Union and get great pictures of their airfields. It worked real well for photographing Sakhalin Island. We used our powerful bomb bay camera for high-altitude photography and the nose camera for low-altitude work. Nearly 90 percent of our missions were day photography, the remainder were night radar photography.

  “If our missions were flown at night, we used our black RB-45C, tail number 48-027. There was a U.S. Army searchlight detachment at Yokota. My predecessor, Major Carrington, had run a test to determine how visible our aircraft was at night if we were picked up by a searchlight. The Koreans and Chinese used searchlights prodigiously. In the test Carrington ran, the RB-45C flew at thirty-five thousand feet when it was picked up by the Yokota searchlights. The aircraft shone like a bright star. They then painted one aircraft black and flew the test again. The searchlights couldn’t track the black RB-45C, so at night we flew aircraft number 48-027. On December 17, 1952, I flew a deep-penetration mission over the Soviet Union and China. We took off from Yokota, crossed the Sea of Japan, and coasted inland at thirty-five thousand feet, just south of Vladivostok. Then I turned northwest toward Harbin, then back south toward Mukden [Shenyang]. After passing an airfield near Mukden, I made a programmed ninety-degree banking turn, and I could see MiGs taking off below me. They didn’t catch us. We crossed North Korea, heading toward Japan. When we flew over the battle lines, there were searchlights operating on both sides. The battle lines were lit up all the way across the peninsula, a spectacular view from thirty-five thousand feet. On other missions we staged first to K-13, Suwon Air Base in South Korea. There we refueled, and then we’d go out over the Yellow Sea, up the west coast of North Korea. We penetrated into China and took photographs of activity along the coastal areas, especially ships being loaded. Much of what was being loaded was going to North Korea. The B-29s would then try to catch the ships as they were unloading in North Korean ports.

  “The closest I came to getting shot down was over Wonsan on the North Korean east coast, returning from a night mission over China. We had two fifty caliber machine guns mounted in the tail. Although it looked like we
carried a gunner back there, we didn’t. The two guns in this particular aircraft were fixed. One gun pointed straight aft, the other pointed downward at a thirty-degree angle. I could fire the guns from the cockpit. We were cruising along at thirty-five thousand feet, heading for the Sea of Japan, when by chance I overheard a flight of two navy F9F Panthers calling their carrier, which was sitting right in front of us. The lead navy pilot was saying they had spotted an IL-28 bomber heading for the carrier and they were going in for the attack, thinking my RB-45C was an IL-28. Luckily, I happened to be on their frequency when I heard the radio call. My adrenaline level rose instantaneously, and for a moment I felt like the bull’s-eye at a rifle range. I immediately called back to let them know I was friendly. The shipboard radar had seen us coming from the north, assumed we were hostile, and launched the Panthers. The F9Fs finally got the word and broke off their attack, but not before making a pass at us close enough to rock the aircraft with their jet wash.”

  Lieutenant Frank Martin, Sam’s radar navigator, sat in the nose of the aircraft and spent most of his time with his eyes glued to his radar-scope. “I had none of the panoramic views of Korea or Vladivostok Sam had from the cockpit of the aircraft. On several occasions we flew up the Yalu River from Antung until we could see Vladivostok. Those were daylight missions for which we had navy fighter escort. I recall one mission over Tsingtao (Chingtao), on the Yellow Sea. There were three MiG airfields in that area. I bet you there were a hundred MiGs sitting on the aprons. I could see them on my radar. They didn’t have a clue we were there. They didn’t have the radar to see us, nor, I presume, did they think we would do that in broad daylight. My crew flew a total of thirty-one missions over North Korea and the maritime provinces of China and the Soviet Union while we were there.”

  Rear view of RB-45C 8-042 on the Yokota flight line with two fixed-position tail guns, 1952. All other SAC RB-45s had their tail guns removed. H. Myers.

  Master Sergeant Arthur E. Lidard

  Air Medal (3)

  In addition to the small SAC RB-45C photo-reconnaissance detachment at Yokota, there was a much more sizable presence of aging RB-29 reconnaissance aircraft to conduct both photographic and electronic intelligence. The ELINT aircraft were addressed by their crews using a World War II moniker, Mickey ships. The RB-29s also were assigned to the 91st SRS at Yokota, a SAC squadron under the operational control of FEAF. Technical Sergeant Arthur E. Lidard, better known as “Lucky,” was assigned to the 91st SRS at Yokota in 1951. He got there in the usual roundabout way.

  Captain Myers in the cockpit of his RB-45C at Yokota, 1952. H. Myers.

  “I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 24, 1926. My first flight in an airplane was with Colonel Roscoe Turner, flying a Fokker monoplane. I was six years old. Roscoe Turner was a well-known barnstormer, three-time winner of the Thompson trophy, and experienced fighter pilot. My father told me, ‘Don’t you ever tell your mother about this,’ because he spent five dollars to take me on that flight. It was 1931, and times were bad. After that breathtaking flight, my dream was to be a pilot and fly airplanes when I grew up. When the war started, I was two years behind in school because my dad was crippled and I had to go to work to help my family. I attended Loyola High School in Baltimore. They sent me to take the aviation cadet examination, and I did quite well on it. I finished in the top 10 percent. I enlisted in the Army Air Force, waiting for a flying slot to open up, but as the war was winding down in 1944, they didn’t need any more pilots. Instead, they sent me to B-17 armaments and electronics school at Lowry Field. Then I went to B-29s at Maxwell Field in Alabama. I flew as a scanner.

  “When the war ended, I extended for a year because I had no job to go home to. I was transferred into air rescue. I flew on a B-17E as a crew chief. We carried a twenty-two-foot wooden boat with twin inboard Packard engines slung underneath its belly. I never had to actually drop the boat to rescue anyone. In October 1946 I was discharged and went to work for the post office. Two days before Christmas, I called a recruiting sergeant and told him that I would like to come back into the air service. The day after Christmas, they swore me back in. I missed airplanes, and they sure didn’t have any in the post office. I came back in as a buck sergeant, a three-striper. Promotions were frozen, and I stayed in that rank for five years—seventy-eight bucks a month for five long years. I was stationed at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. When I showed up at Bolling, the line chief said, ‘Oh, goody, we need you—a crew chief. I’m going to give you a T-6.’ I said, ‘No, Sarge, that’s single engine. I’ve been crewing B-17s, multiengine aircraft.’ He said, ‘We give you more than one.’

  “I ended up with two T-6s. The most important tool in my toolbox turned out to be a can of metal polish. Man, we shined those things until you could see your face in them. All the brass from the Pentagon flew out of Bolling. The chief came out one day and said to me, ‘You’ve done a hell of a job, Lucky. I wish I could promote you, but I can’t. I can put you in a multiengine aircraft, though. You get some flying pay then.’

  “He gave me a C-45. It was my baby. I did everything including the twenty-five-hour inspections. The pilots came over from the Pentagon to fly. One old colonel I will never forget. He had four sets of different prescription glasses. The colonel fascinated me. He’d come out and say, ‘Hello, Sergeant. Nice day today. Good day for flying. We’ll take it up for a while.’

  “I knew that ‘for a while’ meant four hours, to get his flying pay for the month. I got the crew chief next door to hold the fire bottle, because I had to sit in the right seat. The colonel never brought a copilot along. Then the colonel would say, ‘Start ’em up, Lucky,’ and I’d crank ’em up.

  “Read the checklist,’ he’d say. I’d read the checklist. Ran the engines. He’d turn it onto the runway, take the power up, and we’d start to roll. That’s when he switched glasses. Scary. We’d roll, break ground, and he’d say, ‘You’ve got such and such on the bird dog?’

  “ ‘Yes, sir,’ I’d reply.

  “He’d say, ‘Clean her up, and you got it. Take us up to eight thousand feet.’ We’d get to our assigned quadrant in the local flying area and he’d say, ‘Fly it around for a while, Sarge. When it’s time to go in, you wake me up. It’s been a busy day in the Pentagon.’ I flew around for a while. Then I woke him up. Going home was a rerun of what had come before, only in reverse. This happened once or twice every month. I got to thinking, this isn’t for me. I’m getting twenty days a month flying pay—not even a full month’s pay. I had to fly with anybody, and some of the landings were real awful. I went to headquarters every day. They had a bulletin board near the sergeant major’s office where they’d post the requests for people that came in. I found what I was looking for. Alaska. I took it in to the sergeant major. ‘I’m ready to go,’ I said. ‘I can be packed and on the way in an hour.’ ‘Sure you want to go to Alaska?’ he said.

  “ ‘At least,’ I said, ‘you get overseas pay.’ Alaska was still a territory. ‘It’s a C-54 squadron, and I want to work as a flight maintenance technician,’ I told him. Two weeks later, I was in Anchorage with the 54th Troop Carrier Squadron. I went through the usual training—made a few trips up the chain [Aleutian Islands] as a student. I played on the squadron baseball team. All the games ran until past midnight. The last game we played the 1st Cavalry Division. They beat us twenty-eight to nothing. When we got to the shower, someone said, ‘Don’t get comfortable. Ops wants you in the briefing room.’ Colonel Sammons, General Nathan F. Twining’s son-in-law, was our commander. He had a southern drawl you could cut with a knife. ‘We are going on a thirty-to sixty-day TDY to Germany,’ Colonel Sammons said. ‘We need to get the airplanes ready to go. We want them off the ground heading for Germany as soon as they’re ready.’ I worked on an engine change that night.

  “We got off the following day. We had three crews aboard and a bunch of maintenance men as well as their toolboxes, carbines, and helmets. We left the snowshoes behind. We flew to Great F
alls, then on to Scott Field, and to Westover. At Westover the crew rested us for eight hours. The following day we flew to Harmon, then to Lajes Field in the Azores. At Lajes we stayed on the ground long enough to eat. Took off in the evening and landed at Rhein-Main the following morning. We got in on July 1. The airplane went into Berlin that evening. During the Berlin Airlift, I flew almost entirely with my own airplane, and I kept it running. I stayed until February 7, 1949, and completed 185 trips to Berlin. When I got back to Anchorage, seven months later, someone had cleaned out my locker, and all my stuff was gone.

  “In 1951 a friend of mine got an assignment to B-29s. His wife had just gotten pregnant. They had tried to have a kid for a long time, and he didn’t want to leave her. So I said, ‘I’ll see if I can take your shipment. I’ve flown in B-29s before at Maxwell, and I liked them.’ A lot of people didn’t like the B-29. I made the request, and they said I could take his shipment. I reported to Randolph, near San Antonio, where I was assigned to a crew. We went through training together at Fairchild AFB, in Spokane, Washington, and then reported to the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron at Yokota. I was really happy about that. The 91st had RB-29s and RB-45s. Our tail marking was a circle X for the 91st SRS. The 98th, also at Yokota, were circle Hs. They were bombers.

  “From 1951 until I left in 1952, I flew thirty-five photo missions, three of which were over Beijing, and eighteen yoke missions, for a total of fifty-three. Yoke missions were sea-lane surveillance flights off the coast of Russia. We’d fly out over the Sea of Japan at three hundred feet off the water and twelve miles off the coast. We’d take pictures of Russian ships. The Russian sailors waved to us as we passed. We’d wave back at them. The 91st SRS also had two airplanes without numbers on them and no tail markings. Those two B-29s, painted black, had special equipment. When we briefed for those airplanes, they sent some of our gunners home. We still took our CFC gunner, but the two waist gunners and the tail gunner we left behind. We also sent the photo men home because the ship was a Mickey ship, full of all kinds of electronic junk. On the missions we turned in our identification except for our dog tags. They’d give each of us a little box, which we carried in the leg pocket of our flying coveralls. The box held several Mickey Mouse watches—the good ones. There also were several gold ingots in there. And a blood chit that said I was worth twenty-five thousand dollars in gold, alive, half that if dead.