A Cannon for a Train

IHF NOTE: This story was related to IHF Researcher Johnathan Clayborn personally by Mr. Carroll during an in-person discussion in 2005. He has presented the story here to best of his ability and recollection. Any errors in the details below are assumed to be Mr. Clayborn's error in transcribing the story.

Those North Koreans were pretty clever, I'll give them that. While I was there we used to fly low to increase our chances of hitting the targets in one pass. Because we had almost total air superiority during the day any material the Koreans tried to move in daylight hours was eliminated, so they took to moving them at night, which is where my squadron came in. A lot of the pilots used to find a section of railroad track and then fly low along the tracks until they found a train to kill. Well, the North Koreans figured this out and they would erect two large poles painted black, one on both sides of the track. Then they would string some high-tension metal cable in an X pattern between the poles, high enough that a train could pass under, but low enough that a low-flying Invader would get the wings sheared clean off. That happened a few times before HQ put the kybosh on flying along the tracks. We got really good at hunting trains. It got to the point where the North Koreans would hide the trains inside of a tunnel where we couldn't reach them and just wait for us to run out of fuel and leave the area before continuing on. We had enough of that and brought in a special plane with a cannon that could hit the train while she was parked in the tunnel and disable the engine, trapping the whole train inside.

IHF NOTE: We are still attempting to corroborate this account with official records. We've spoken with Donald Henderson who runs the 13th Bomb Squadron Historical Association. According to Mr. Henderson, Charles Hinton, who was a Navigator for the 13th also spoke of a cannon, but Mr. Henderson could not remember the specifics. We do know that the 13th had a 20mm Cannon on one of their planes for about a 6 month period from late 1951 to about spring of 1952, but it is not clear if this is the cannon that Mr. Carroll is discussing. Due to a change in reporting protocols, squadron level reports were no longer required beginning in Jun of 1952 and the Group took over those reports. We are still in the process of obtaining and transcribing those reports, but we are uncertain they will confirm or deny this in either case. At this point we are convinced that a cannon was used in the manner described above, although we cannot confirm the caliber. We will update this page as we get more information.