Ian Birnie's Recollections……
My flight from Hickam to Tachikawa was in a C-124, "Old Shaky." There were about 70 bags of classified material on a pallet on the plane. We flew all day to Wake Island, where another USAFSS guy and I had to stand watch all night while everyone else went to the chow hall. We were in our winter woolen Class A blues, but were allowed to strip down to pants and t-shirts because it was so hot. The next day we flew to Tachikawa, and my first impression of Japan, from several thousand feet in the air, was the stench of burning feces. The MATS people at Tachikawa were sympathetic to those of us going to Korea, and they always allowed us 2-3 days in Japan before sending us on to Osan.
When we first arrived at Osan, waiting for our final clearances to arrive, we had to pull sentry duty walking the perimeter inside the fence on the hill. We had all qualified with M-1's (or M-1A-1's ?) in basic, but we were issued .45 caliber "grease guns," that no one had ever fired, for patrol duty on the hill. The safety was the chamber cover, and one night as two of the guards met, one of them pulled the trigger, but the cover had slipped open, and several rounds were fired across the boot of his compatriot. Both guys were so shaken that they had to be relieved for the rest of the evening.
We were given an incoming briefing by the first sergeant, who made sure we were aware that it was illegal to deal in cigarettes. Then, on the first payday, there he was collecting a carton of Pall Malls from each of us to pay our houseboys. I believe they cost $1.10 a carton back then; shorter cigs were a buck a carton. Another instance of that sort of hypocrisy was that "co-habitation" was a big no-no and if you were caught living with a girl in town (or if you caught the clap three times), you were subject to losing your security clearance. One time everyone who ate in the chow hall, including me, got amoebic dysentery; only the "paddie daddies" who were co-habitating (and thus eating elsewhere) were able to function, i.e., show up for work.
As a couple of "airborne" guys had just left, I was assigned to the "Blue Sky" barracks (quonset), where most of the guys on flying status – but not all – lived. I managed to perform reasonably well and went on flying status within a few months. Shortly after I made E-4 I got my own crew. We flew with the 6053rd Radio Flight Mobile,
We flew with the 6053rd RFM. They had four C-47 "Gooney Birds," silver with red, white and blue wedges across the top of the vertical stabilizer. Two were heated, two weren't, and of course none were pressurized. We "backenders" froze in the winter; I recall wearing longjohns, the old flannel winter flight suits, extra socks, parkas and "Chinese" headgear. We once took a "gooney" up to 24,000 feet on a test hop, and that was the ceiling listed in "the book." We had a couple of crazy pilots, frustrated fighter pilot wannabes, one of whom liked to dive on Korean fishing boats, popping up from sea level over an island when he knew there were boats on the other side. We sometimes flew low enough to view our propwash on the ocean. We got back at Lt. "Wild" Hair by having the backenders crouch at the forward bulkhead while on final, then rush to the rear just before touchdown, trying to make him catch a tail wheel before landing on the main gear (gooney birds are 'tail draggers').
POST LOG……..
I wound up going to OCS (one of the last classes for non-college grads; we just held a reunion in San Antonio this past May). I was a navigator then electronic warfare officer in B-52's, held several staff jobs. Last position was 3AD chief of electronic warfare and director of sea surveillance and reconnaisance for SAC in WestPac. Visited my old site in Osan in 1979 and watched how they were doing it then. Also ran into a couple of guys up on the hill I'd been stationed with 19 years earlier! And of course they were on their 4th tours there. Osan's a far cry from the quonset huts of our era.
Aloha from Hawaii,
Ian Birnie