Such Men as These by David Sears

Author:David Sears
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780306819049
Publisher: DaCapo Press
Published: 2010-10-20T10:00:00+00:00

At this stage in his career, although still learning and still mastering the chopper’s quirky subtleties, Thorin was largely unfazed by the things that could go wrong—and so often did—in these rescues, whether over water or on land behind enemy lines. Having learned to ride, rope, herd, hike, camp, hunt, fish, and otherwise survive in the open and still essentially wild spaces of Nebraska, Thorin was used to tough situations and unusually confident in his ability to improvise. Indeed, if Thorin had a personal flaw, it was his condescension for those who weren’t as confident, clever, and resourceful.

Indeed, Thorin railed against entire classes of “fools,” chief among them brass hats, bureaucrats, toadying staff officers, and rear-echelon “commandos.” The latest and biggest of these classes, at least to this point, encompassed most U.S. Air Force personnel. Interservice rivalry was rarely put aside even in the war zone; for Thorin it often bordered on barely suppressed contempt.

In November, just days before Toledo left for Yokosuka and the States, Thorin had been called on to extract an Air Force F-51 pilot who had bailed out in the mountains west of Wonsan. Before crossing the coast-in point, Thorin, flying without a crewman but escorted by a flight of Marine Corsairs, climbed to 14,000 feet, both to avoid ground fire and to receive radar vectoring instructions from Air Force controllers. The controllers in turn were communicating with a pair of Air Force F-51 pilots said to be circling the mountain where their buddy had bailed out. During the thirty-minute flight, Thorin received a stream of eastward course corrections from the Air Force controllers—so many that he began to wonder if they (or the circling pilots) actually knew where to find the downed man.

Eventually, the controllers directed Thorin and his escorts to descend through a cloud layer. Emerging from the clouds, Thorin and his escorts immediately realized the rescue site was no mountain; rather, it was a broad valley rimmed with radar-controlled antiaircraft batteries protecting what looked to be a major North Korean supply route. Spotting Thorin’s noisy and slow-moving chopper, battery gunners quickly drew a bead. Within moments Thorin was bracketed by flak; only a hasty climb and a reflex-quick intervention by the Corsairs saved him.

Afterward, the radio circuit fairly crackled with Marine and Navy invective and Air Force counterinvective. The problem got sorted out only when the Air Force pilots were finally pinpointed. The “mountain” they were circling turned out to be a thick cloud drifting eastward in the prevailing wind currents.

It would take a second day and another aborted rescue flight before Thorin (again flying alone because of the altitude) finally plucked the pilot, an Air Force captain named Waid, from a small clearing on an otherwise steep and jagged mountain slope. By then, however, Waid was expecting company. A small party of North Korean soldiers had spotted him and was closing in. Barely able to hover because of the elevation and lacking the help of a crewman, Thorin had no choice but to touch down.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.