Part II-U. S. Air Force, Chapter 14-Osan AFB

CHAPTER 14
Osan AFB
1958-1959

I flew to Korea in a Super Connie facing backwards. It was a long trip. I don’t remember how many hours it took, but thank God for the jets that were to come later. We made four refueling stops before we got to Korea. First was Hawaii, then Midway, then Wake, then Tachikawa, Japan then on to Kimpo AFB just outside of Seoul. The war had been over for several years but the scars were still there. This was my first introduction to poverty. There were no trees on the hills, no dogs and no cats. People were living under cardboard and even in culverts. I went back to Korea in the mid 60’s and it was a completely different place; downtown Seoul looked like any big city in the U. S.
I was sent to the 6146th Air Force Advisory Group at Kimpo AFB in Korea. When I got there I found out they didn’t want me. They worked with the Korean Air Force and only had slots for higher ranking officers. Instead of sending me home they sent me to the 314th Air Division, who sent me to the 6314th Air Base Group, who sent me to the 6314th Communications Squadron, who sent me to the 1246th Airways and Air Communications Service (AACS) Squadron for duty. All these units were on Osan AFB. By this time I had the feeling that if I had missed the plane in California no one would have missed me. But there was plenty of work in the 1246th.
I moved into a Quonset hut with five other officers. Our shower and latrine was in an adjacent Quonset that served about five other huts. Each hut hired a Korean woman to do all the laundry and keep the place clean. The lady that worked for us was a widow named Pak; her husband had been killed during the war. She spoke decent English and was a hard worker. She washed our clothes by hand like Mom did when I was a kid.
I was assigned all the jobs on the base that had anything to do with teletype. Osan was the Air Force teletype relay center for Korea; all teletype messages between Air Force units in Korea plus all those coming in or leaving the country would come to our center first. We had branch circuits to about a dozen other sites. (See figure 18.) The teletype machine would punch the message into a paper tape about an inch wide; every eighth inch along the tape was room for five holes across the tape. Each letter and character on the keyboard was represented by a different combination depending on which of the five holes were punched out. At the final destination the tape would be ran through a different machine that would print the message out on a sheet of paper. For classified messages we had a machine that would accept two tapes at the same time. One tape would be the message; the other would have random generated characters on it. The two tapes added together made the transmitted message looked like garble. At the other end of the circuit they had a duplicate copy of the tape with random characters. When both send and receive machines were synchronized the receiving machine would subtract the random characters and the message could be read. The garbled tapes were highly classified and closely guarded because if the Russians could get their hands on the tapes, they could read our messages. Also, to keep the codes from being broken, the garble tapes could be used only one time and then had to be burned. Just the sheer volume of tape created quite a logistic problem in shipping them in, storage space, guarding them and burning them. We had armed guards in the crypto vault, where the garbled tapes were stored, at all times. I was also put in charge of the Crypto center.
The base communications center where the teletype messages destined for Osan came to was assigned to me. I also had the weather relay that was located down on the flight line; it functioned much like the teletype relay with three exceptions: It was much smaller with only one man on duty at a time, it handled no classified material and in addition to teletype, it also had facsimile machines. Equipment maintenance came under another section and I didn’t have to worry about that. So I was OIC (Officer in Charge) of the teletype relay, base communications center, crypto center and weather relay. There were about 100 people altogether in these four sections and each one was a 24 hour per day operation. Junior officers were also given several additional duties such as officer of the day, security officer, pay officer, promotion board, and basketball coach.
I got to travel quite a bit while in Korea which always helped the time go by faster. You could depend on something exciting to happen when away on a trip. On three different occasions I was sent to Tok-Chok-To to pay the troops. I would pay the Korean civilians that worked for the Air Force plus military personnel, about 15 men each. The Koreans were paid in local currency, won, and the GIs were paid in military script. (Military script was used in place of green backs in order to keep U. S. dollars out of the black market.) The monetary value for the Korean’s cash was about one fourth that of the Americans; however I was given a gunny sack about half full for the Korean’s. The American’s cash would be a stack about one inch tall. We were not required to count the Korean money out as we paid; it was packaged in 10,000 won packs (or some similar big number) and we just had to count the packs. This was due to the inflation of the won after the war. Tok-Chok-To was a little island off the west coast of Korea that had a small radio relay site used to relay intercepted North Korean radio traffic from interceptor sites further to the north. To get there, I would fly from Osan to Kimpo, go by land to Inchon and get on an Army LST (Landing ship, tank) that would beach at Tok-Chok-To. The LST made weekly trips and would unload supplies, including a truck with barrels of fuel for the generators on the island. After unloading, the LST would continue further up the coast supplying other sites; about two days later the LST would come through on the way back to Inchon and I would go home. There was a terrific tide on the west coast of Korea; I would guess in the neighborhood of twenty feet on a regular basis. On one of the trips, the truck got stuck on the beach as it was unloaded. The tide was out and before they could get the truck out of the sand the water was coming up fast; in about 30 minutes the truck was half covered. It wasn’t much longer until it was completely out of site. The 55 gallon barrels of fuel were not tied down and they started floating away. They had a small row boat on the beach and were able to recover most of them. The LST decided there was nothing he could do so he continued his run. They had another truck on the island with a winch and when the tide went back out they got the stuck truck out of the water. They drained the fuel tank, changed the oil and had the truck running before I went home. Any one sent out as pay officer or crypto carrier was armed with a .45 side arm. I’m not sure what I would have done with it if I were ever jumped.
I was sent to the railroad station in Osan (off base) to pick up some crypto material one day. I went in a three quarter ton truck by myself; I’m not sure why I didn’t take someone with me. I had to go down a narrow street that was too narrow for two vehicles to pass. About half way down the block I met a Korean walking down the middle of the street toward me. I stopped with him right up against the middle of the front bumper. I think he was drunk and he had a mean look on his face. We both stayed there face to face for what seemed like a long time, probably 15 seconds. I put the truck in reverse and backed up about three feet. He walked around the truck and I never saw him again. I guess he thought he won a confrontation, and I was glad to let him have his victory.
I also had an exciting trip to Paengnyong-Do (we called it P Y-Do for obvious reasons). This was the northern most island on the west coast of Korea and was used as a site to listen to North Korean communications. The island didn’t have a runway but a C-47 could land on the beach at low tide. The beach was crescent shaped and was surrounded by big bluffs. The plane could sit on the beach about three hours before the tide came in and the runway disappeared. I was sent to P Y-Do as a crypto courier. It was the landing that was exciting. The bluffs on the beach extended to the ends of the crescents. On the first pass the pilot went over the bluff, pointed a wing down at the ground and we slipped (fell) towards the beach. Then I guess the pilot thought the other end of the crescent was getting too close so he gunned it and we kept flying; all during this time wind currents were bouncing the plane all over the place. As we gained altitude the end of the wing was closer to the bluff than it was to me. Now we had to make another pass; the only difference was the second time we landed. We jumped off the plane, did our business, got back on the plane and took off for home. The take off was exciting but it couldn’t hold a candle to the landing. I was glad I was never chosen to go to P Y-Do again.
During the winter I was sent TDY (temporary duty) to Japan for reasons I can no longer remember. I think it was on this trip that I met and stayed with Lee and Adele Brownlee, some of Nell’s friends from San Antonio. He was a Major in the Air Force, now stationed in Fuchu, Japan. It was the trip back to Osan that I remember; we were in a C-124. We stopped at Taegu to drop off supplies. When the pilot found out a big front was about to hit, he decided to turn around and go back to Japan because he didn’t want to get stuck in Korea for some unknown time. There were two of us on the plane that wanted to go on through to Osan but we were stuck in the BOQs at Taegu. The two of us were the only ones in the BOQ which was an open bay barracks with about 20 beds. The weather report was right; it turned cold. The barracks were heated by an oil fired stove with a 55 gallon fuel barrel out side. It was so cold the oil in the barrel froze and the fire went out. Then it was really cold. We took mattresses from the empty beds and used them for cover; it was still cold. We couldn’t find transportation to Osan the next day so we went to the motor pool, borrowed a pair of pliers and replumbed our oil heater. We disconnected the copper tubing to the oil barrel, brought the barrel inside by the stove and hooked the line back up. We had heat for the rest of our stay and after it warmed up we got a ride on to Osan. I don’t know what the fire marshal thought when they found the barrel by the fire but we never heard any thing about it.
The most pleasant trip I had while in Korea was a one week R and R to Hong Kong. Everything was so cheap, the food was so good, and the hotel had private bathrooms. I bought a custom made wool suit for $30 and several ivory carvings. You could watch carvers right on the street; they would sit on the ground, hold the ivory with their feet, and carve with a chisel in one hand and hammer in the other. I can’t remember every thing I bought but it was a relaxing week and I enjoyed it very much.
One day one of the sergeants that worked in the teletype relay center came into my office with a message still on the tape. It was from the Red Cross in San Antonio to the Red Cross in Osan, asking them to notify Lt. Tom R. Cook that he had a son. It was strictly against the rules to deliver a message out of channels like that but I figured it was one of the perks of working where I did. I still have the tape someplace. Randy was several days old when I found out he was born. I have always wondered if the night Nell got so sick in Corvallis while we were on the way for me to catch the plane to Korea was the first sign of morning sickness.
I was promoted to First Lieutenant in March 1959, 18 months after going on active duty. This was an automatic promotion.
MSgt Kastle had been in Korea about six months when I arrived. He still had not received the personal items he shipped when he left the states. Each week he would go to transportation and be told the same thing: they haven’t arrived yet; come back next week. About a month before he was due to rotate home he went down again. The man that had run the place for the last 13 months had gone home and his replacement was behind the counter. When MSgt Kastle inquired, the new man asked how to spell the name and was told, “With a K”. His things had been there for months but apparently the first fellow always looked under the “Cs”.
Entry into the relay center was strictly limited. It was always a distraction for those working there to control the entry door. Using a Klaxon horn, solenoid, switches and relays scrounged from the maintenance shop, I made an electronic door lock using a four digit combination. If you entered the wrong combination the Klaxon horn sounded right over your head. It was loud. The door could be seen from the message delivery window. The man working in the window told me what happened one day. He said a Lt. Colonel kept standing in the hall looking at the combination buttons. After a while I guess he decided to see just how effective the lock was; he reached up and hit a button. It was the wrong one; the horn went off right over his head, he jumped back and then took off down the hall never to be seen looking at the box again.
When it rained hard in Osan there was a telephone cable manhole on the base that would flood and set the base sirens off. This was kind of disturbing because this was the signal for an attack from the north. When it went off in the middle of the night, we were supposed to report to duty stations. After a few false alarms it became less scary and after a few more they got the problem fixed. The first time it went off I sat up in bed, turned the light on and saw my shoes go floating by. The manhole wasn’t the only thing flooded; water was running in the front of our hut and out the back.
Another time we were involved in an attack scare but we didn’t know anything about it at Osan. As mentioned before, the crypto machines had to be synchronized to successfully send a message. When the teletype circuit got bad the static would cause the machines to loose synchronization. We would say we were getting “hits” on line and the machines would “jump set”. One day the circuit to Taegu kept jumping set. The Osan operator typed on line that he was getting hits and needed to reset the tapes. He just typed, “I am getting hit” (he didn’t get to the “s”) when the circuit went out completely. Not only did the teletype circuit go out, all voice communications were on the system and they also went out. The teletype operator at Taegu took the piece of paper that said, “I am getting hit” to his boss, who took it to the command post, who was aware the voice circuit had just gone out. When they saw the teletype message they came to the conclusion that Osan was under attack. I’m not sure what all happened after that but years later I met an Air Force doctor that had been in Taegu at the time and he said there had been a lot of excitement that day. We set up procedures to not use the term “hits” after that.
The Koreans were known for their ability to steal things. The ones that made a profession of stealing were called “slicky boys”. I never lost anything to them but was riding in the front of a two ton truck when the driver almost lost three suitcases of his clothes. We were going down the road near Seoul when he looked in the rear view mirror and saw one of his suitcases in the road behind the truck. He slammed on the brakes. A slicky boy jumped out of the back and ran; one suitcase was still in the truck and the other two were recovered from the road. At some point he had jumped in the back of the truck and almost got away with it. Another time the base had several barrels of tar stored not too far from the perimeter fence. Instead of stealing the barrels they punched holes in them and dug a trench where the tar would run under the fence where it was collected in buckets and disappeared. The story was told of a fire truck that was stolen by slicky boys in the Philippines. They stole the truck on base and headed for the main gate with the siren blasting. The guard waved them through and the truck was never seen again.
I bought several things for Nell including a Noritake 12 place table setting, a string of cultured pearls, some silk material, and a transistor radio (This radio was just a little larger than a pack of cigarettes. It was unusual in that all radios we had seen before had vacuum tubes and were much larger.) She still has all four things. I also made her a fancy jewelry box in the hobby shop but it got lost in one of our subsequent moves.
While at Osan there were five or six of us that held a church service each Sunday morning. There was a young black enlisted man that usually did the preaching.
After almost 13 long months I was scheduled to leave Tachikawa AB, Japan on the 5th of November 1959 and return to the land of the big BX. At this point I had spent most of my married life separated from my wife and had never seen my firstborn son. My orders assigned me to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Warren AFB, Wyoming. Nell, her mother, and Randy drove our car (Randy was four months old so he didn’t help drive) from San Antonio to Travis AFB and met me at the plane. It was so nice to be home again. We then drove on to Othello, Washington and stayed with my folks for about three weeks. Nell, her mother, Randy, and I left for Wyoming where Nell’s dad was going to meet us.