Its Raining Bombs

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.

This was probably the most dangerous mission we ever went on. Our target for the night was a large North Korean train depot. Our mission was to fly in and take out enemy spotlights and AA batteries so that a squadron of high level B-52 could fly in and carpet bomb the whole place. They were going to hit two other priority targets first and then this depot would be third on the list, plenty of time for us to come in and soften it up before they arrived.

My plane was the number two plane to take off for the mission. We followed the lead ship out and joined up with the them in formation with the ship right after us. The weather suddenly turned very bad and the remaining planes were grounded, unable to take off. It was just three planes, when it was supposed to be eighteen. A few minutes after taking off our wingman developed a hydraulic leak and head to turn back, and not more than 10 minutes after that the lead ship developed an engine problem and had to abort as well. He ordered us to follow him back to base, but Cpt. Emil Pindzola said the radio suddenly developed a mysterious problem. We all talked it over through the intercom. We could go back to base and play it safe, but then those AA guns would still be operational and those B-52s would take heavy losses. We were fast and agile and could get in and take care of business and give them a fighting chance, so we decided to press the attack anyway, alone.

The rest of the ride in was eerily quiet. None of us spoke. The gravity of our insane plan finally started to weigh in on us. Lt. Roy Compton, our navigator, told us we were about 15 minutes out. Captain Pindzola said that he was going to switch off the running lights to help give us the advantage. Our plane was painted black as midnight, so we were hoping that would help us blend in. We passed through some low level cloud cover a few moments later and fairly accurate flak begin exploding outside the ship. Then an AA battery lit up the tail end of the plane, right near where I was sitting! I glanced out the window and noticed that the wing lights were still on, making the clouds glow. "Lights! Turn the damn lights off!" I shouted up. We went dark and Emil adjusted our course to make us harder to hit, but I was starting to get a bad feeling about this mission.

We broke out of the clouds and Emil dipped low, just above the treetops. We followed the curve of the hillside up, and popped over the peak, directly over the target area. Immediately searchlights swooped in on us and Captain Pindzola hit some with the nose guns while I got to work with the turrets. We criss-crossed back and forth over the target area and on our third pass something fell past my window and a second later, a bright explosion from a few hundred feet beneath us, followed in short order by a dozen more.

"They're early!" Lt. Compton observed. I held back a sarcastic remark and kept focused on the job at hand. The ground below was chaos, men running trying to decide if they should flee, if they should put out the fires, if they should shoot at us, or if they should try to shoot down the B-52 flying overhead. I took advantage of that chaos and put bullets into everything that posed a threat.

We circled around for another pass. The North Koreans decided that the B-52s up top were causing more damage than we were and were setting up to take them out. Cpt Pindzola lined us up and started blasting spotlights while I took out AA batteries. An explosion from the ground blinded me for a second and I leaned back from the periscope just in time to watch a bomb fall just inches past my window. "Captain, if we keep flying under these big boys we're going to get hit."

Pindzola said something only mildly reassuring and set up for another pass. The last wave of bombers flew overhead as we started our next pass. Most of the defenses were already destroyed by this point so we targeted fuel dumps and train engines that somehow missed getting blown up by the B-52s. I sat up to scan the area and I watched a bomb fall perilously close. So close that the fin of the bomb clipped our horizontal stabilizer with a loud clang that sent the bomb wobbling on the way down.

The B-52s left the area and we bugged out, the depot was completely destroyed. We got back to base and landed the plane and the ground controller ordered us to park at the end of the runway and report immediately to the Commander's Office. We reported in and got our asses chewed out for the next two hours, an informal reprimand for disobeying direct orders to RTB. On the record, what we did was one hell of an act of courage and we were being put up for commendations. They gave us a medal for that mission, but really we were just doing our job.

By the time we left the Commander's Office it was light out. I went back to the plane and climbed up top. I saw all of the bullet holes in the tail of the poor girl and I was so excited I hugged the plane, thankful she kept us all in one piece for another day. That plane was later shot down, another crew took her out on a mission and they never came home. That's how it was over there. Sometimes you did crazy things that, by all rights should have gotten you killed and you lived to tell the tale, and then other days you go out on a routine mission and get your ticket punched. We tried not to think about it too much.