Sunday 1 April 2018
Operation Rook: Douglas MacArthur And The Plot To Nuke North Korea
It was a
bleak morning in April 1951 over the cold Sea of Japan. High over the ocean, just
off the North Korean coast, a United States Air Force B29 bomber of the 9th
Bombardment Wing was flying in slow circles. The increasingly anxious crew was
waiting for their escort fighters and support team of B29s to rendezvous with
them, while watching their fuel gauges drop lower by the minute.
The B29 was weighed down by the immense
weight of a Mark 4 nuclear fission bomb. Its destination: Pyongyang, capital of
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
At the same time, a MiG15 fighter of the
Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force took off from Antung air base in Manchuria for
a routine patrol over North Korea. The pilot, Wang Zhejian, was on his first
combat mission.
On or about the night of 24th
June 1998, the North Korean trawler Dae
Yong Su39 snagged something in
one of its trawls. Pulling up the net, the crew discovered that they had caught
a large piece of aircraft wreckage. Markings on the wreckage caused the captain
to report it to the authorities by radio at once. Within a couple of days,
Korean People’s Army – Navy (KPAN) vessels had retrieved the wreck, and
discovered something within it that had profound consequences for the nation’s
defence programme.
What happened when Wang Zhejian’s MiG15 met
the 9th Bombardment Group B29, and the Dae
Yong Su39’s discovery decades later, would change the course of history – but
the story has been kept under wraps for almost seventy years.
Now, at last, it can be told.
********************************************
On 11th
April 1951, in the middle of the Korean War, President Harry S Truman abruptly
“relieved” his military commander in Korea, General Of The Army Douglas
MacArthur[1].
This dismissal, which is rather famous in
military history, was explained as stemming from MacArthur’s public
contradiction of Truman’s official statements on Korea – and, as became evident
later, by MacArthur’s own admission – owing to his demands to use nuclear
weapons on North Korean and Chinese targets, something that alarmed even the
British government.
Background:
MacArthur was one of the more bizarre
military figures of history. A shameless self-promoter, he had initially
opposed the use of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and had only been
informed of the existence of the atom bomb a few days before it was dropped,
even though he was the theatre commander in the Pacific in mid-1945[2].
He had subsequently been made the de facto dictator of Japan, ruling the
defeated country in the immediate post-WWII years. As the Korean War began, he
had been declared the commander of “United Nations” forces (meaning what would
today be considered NATO troops, because the composition was virtually the
same) in Korea.
On 15th September 1950, with
“United Nations” forces and their South Korean allies having been driven into a
small perimeter around Busan in the south east of the Korean peninsula,
MacArthur launched an amphibious invasion of Inchon on the western Korean
coast. This succeeded, driving the North Koreans back over the pre-war
frontier. The so-called “United Nations” brief had been to “defend South Korea
against a North Korean invasion”; it had no explicit mention of crossing over
the 38th Parallel between the two parts of Korea and uniting them by
force.
MacArthur, however, had already been
privately informed by the Pentagon that he had carte blanche to cross the 38th
Parallel if he thought it “strategically and tactically necessary[3],
something, of course, that he correctly interpreted as licence to carry the war
where he wished.
As more than one voice had predicted, this
provoked a Chinese intervention; Mao Zedong famously stated in Beijing that
“when the lips are cut away, the teeth feel cold”, in recognition of the fact
that if North Korea was allowed to be destroyed, China would be the next target
[vide Russell Spurr, Enter The
Dragon: China At War In Korea]. MacArthur, faced with statements that the
Chinese would intervene, dismissed them out of hand during a meeting with
Truman in October 1950[4]. China, he stated, could only get fifty to
sixty thousand troops across the Yalu river (the border between China and North
Korea), and if they “tried to get down to Pyongyang” (by then captured by the
“United Nations” forces) “there would be the greatest slaughter”. In fact, the
Chinese had already crossed the Yalu, and by November had a hundred and eighty
thousand troops in Korea. Soon, they had annihilated MacArthur’s so-called End
The War offensive, retaken Pyongyang, and sent the “United Nations” forces
reeling back south of the border, again capturing Seoul.
On 30th November 1950, as
Chinese forces were counterattacking the “United Nations” and rapidly pushing
it back, Truman suggested at a press conference that the use of the atom bomb
was under “active consideration”, that the use of the atom bomb did not require
United Nations authorisation, and that the “military commander in the field”
(MacArthur) had discretion to “use...the weapons, as he always has”[5]. This was contrary to not just sanity but even
to US law, specifically the Atomic
Energy Act of 1946, which made compulsory the civilian control of nuclear
weapons[6].
Nine days later, MacArthur demanded
permission to employ nuclear weapons, and on the 24th December,
submitted a list of “retardation targets” across not just North Korea but
China, on which he proposed to drop 34 nuclear weapons[1][7]. He
also, vide General Courtney Whitney,
considered dropping radioactive waste along the North Korean/Chinese border,
but – presumably aware of the outcry if this was stated in public – did not
submit the proposal to the Pentagon.
It is obvious that had he taken this
action, he would have justified it post
facto by claiming that the authorisation to use nuclear weapons at his
discretion extended to using radioactive waste, and that the Pentagon would
have approved it. And – whatever his public posture – MacArthur was desperately
eager to use both the nuclear bombs and the radioactive waste. As he was to
state in an interview, on 25th January 1954[1][8],
“I
could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of ten days...I would have dropped
between thirty and fifty atomic bombs...across the neck of Manchuria...It was
my plan to spread behind us – from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea – a belt
of radioactive cobalt...from wagons, carts, trucks and planes...The enemy could
not have marched across that radioactive belt.”
In other words, MacArthur was willing to
destroy the north east of China and turn North Korea into a radioactive wasteland
to “win” his war. Even by the standards of the time, when nuclear winter was
not a concept that had yet been thought of, this was arguably the standpoint of
a psychopath.
The Soviet Nuclear Bomb:
By 1951, though, the international balance
of power after WWII had drastically changed. While the USSR had been discussing
the construction of a nuclear weapon since the mid-1930s, and the physicist
Georgy Flyorov had written to Stalin in 1942 warning that the German enemy and
the Western “allies” were both working towards such a weapon, the exigencies of
the war meant that it was only after the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
– which have been called “the opening shots of the Cold War[2]” –
that the USSR began actively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme. With the aid
of considerable and effective intelligence about the American and German
nuclear weapons projects, the USSR was able to carry out its first successful
nuclear test – the RDS-1 – on 29th August 1949, a full four to five
years before American and British intelligence had predicted that they would be
able to develop such a weapon[9].
The weapon was also deliverable, not just a technology demonstrator. During the course
of the war, the USSR had just one relatively modern long range heavy bomber –
the Petlyakov 8 – and because of the conditions of the fighting on the Eastern
Front, where planes were used at short ranges and low altitudes, it had not
wasted valuable time and effort in developing another. By 1944, though, with heavy
four engine American and British bombers pulverising German cities and American
B29s launching enormously long range firebombing raids over Japan, the USSR had
grown keenly aware that a long range strategic bomber would become necessary. The
increasingly obsolete Petlyakov was not the answer, and developing a new bomber
from scratch would take far too many years of effort, during which, Stalin was
increasingly convinced, his current “allies” would turn on him. That he was not
mistaken in this is obvious from currently available information, which proves
that both the American General George Patton and British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill (“Operation Unthinkable[10]”) were planning to begin a war
against the USSR as soon as Nazi Germany was defeated.
During 1944 to early 1945, four American
B29 bombers made emergency landings in Soviet territory while bombing Japan,
and a fifth crashed in Soviet territory after the crew bailed out. Since the
USSR and Japan were not at war at the time – war between the two was declared,
under the terms of the Yalta Conference, by the Soviet Union on 8th
August 1945 – the planes were legally impounded by the USSR. One was returned
when the USSR entered the war, but the other three were retained, and an
immediate effort was made to reverse engineer them and put a copy into service.
Despite a lot of hurdles – including the fact that the USSR used the metric
system, so Soviet sheet metal was of different thickness to American – the
reverse engineered aircraft flew in May 1947 and was inducted into the Soviet
Air Force, the VVS, in 1949, as the Tupolev 4. A nuclear capable version, the
Tu4A, was also developed simultaneously, and it was a Tu4A which dropped the
RDS-1 test bomb[11].
Neither the existence of the Soviet atom
bomb, nor the Tu4A, was unknown to the West, which knew that the Soviets not
only had the nuclear bomb but the ability to deliver it on American cities.
Therefore, by 1950, the nuclear bomb could no longer be used without risking
retribution in kind.
Whether Truman, whose knowledge of the
nuclear weapons he had unleashed on Japan was minimal, was aware of the import
of this, his military leaders at the Pentagon cannot have possibly been
ignorant of the possible consequences.
The Dismissal of MacArthur:
Meanwhile the war rolled on. Seoul, which
had been retaken by the North Koreans and Chinese, was recaptured on 17th
March, and on the 23rd MacArthur declared, on his own initiative,
that his forces would again cross the 38th Parallel, and rejected
any consideration of a ceasefire with the Chinese[1]. According to
Truman, this public insubordination (he had prohibited military leaders in
December 1950 from public comments about foreign policy) was the straw that
broke the camel’s back, and he decided to sack MacArthur.
There are excellent reasons to think that
this post facto justification was
just what is today called “arse-covering”; for Truman did nothing to remove
MacArthur at this time. Quite the contrary.
Truman (left) and MacArthur, Wake Island meeting. MacArthur shook hands with Truman, his commander in chief, instead of saluting him. |
On 5th April 1951, the Joint
Chiefs at the Pentagon authorised MacArthur to attack Manchuria and the
Shandong Peninsula if the Chinese launched air strikes on him from there. The
next day, MacArthur met the US Atomic Energy Commission chairman, one Gordon
Dean, and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs to military
control[1]. These were loaded on B29 bombers of the 9th
Bombardment Group and flown to the US air base on Guam. Nominally, the B29s
were not under the command of the theatre commander, MacArthur, but under the
Strategic Air Command. In practice, MacArthur would, as we shall see, attempt
to force its hand.
It might as well be mentioned that the B29s
had previously been deployed on Guam in mid-1950, but been withdrawn. At that
time, though, their nuclear weapons had had an important component removed to
prevent unauthorised use; in 1951 this was not the case.
At this point it is necessary to briefly
discuss the Mark 4 nuclear fission bomb, which will play an important role in
the rest of this article[12].
The Mark 4, like the Nagasaki bomb (“Fat
Man”), and unlike the “gun type” Hiroshima bomb, was an “implosion” device.
This works by compressing a perfectly spherical core of uranium 235 or plutonium
239 by means of the simultaneous explosion of a surrounding spherical assembly
of explosive “lenses” until the atoms of the core undergo splitting.
Schematic of an implosion type fission bomb. |
In early
bombs, like “Fat Man”, the core was placed in the centre of the shell of explosive
lenses and the bomb assembled before it was loaded on the bomber. The bomb was
then dropped over the target, and exploded at a pre-set height when barometers
in the casing detected the air pressure appropriate for the altitude.
There are obvious problems with this; if
the air pressure is for any reason different (for example, because of
variations in atmospheric humidity) the bomb might explode at the wrong
altitude, adversely affecting the damage radius or even potentially threatening
the aircraft and crew carrying out the attack. It is also possible that the
bomb might explode in case of an air crash while taking off or landing (if the
weapon was still aboard). Therefore, the Mark 4 introduced an important
innovation: the core (which was “composite”, meaning that it comprised, in this
model, both U235 and Pu239) was carried separately from the main bomb. Once
almost at the target, a particular crewman (known as the “weaponeer”) would
remove part of the casing and a segment of the explosive lenses underneath,
insert the core, and replace the lenses and the casing. Therefore the bomb
would be unlikely to go off prematurely, and if the bomb was unused the core
could be removed again before landing and the weapon made safe. When the B29s
had earlier been deployed to Guam – from 28th July to 13th
September 1950 – the cores had been left behind; this time, though, they were
deployed along with the cores, meaning that the weapons were ready to use.
All that was required was to fly to the
designated targets, install the cores, and drop the bombs.
Different models of the Mark 4,
incidentally, had different yields, which could vary very widely; all those
that were placed at MacArthur’s disposal had a yield of 21 kilotons, more
powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and as powerful as the one dropped on
Nagasaki.
MacArthur had one major, and extremely
significant, difference of opinion with the Pentagon on the very nature of the
People’s Republic of China[1]. According to the Pentagon, the PRC
was just an appendage of the USSR, a glorified satellite, little better than
Britain was to the US at that stage; therefore a nuclear attack on China, they
feared, would inevitably be interpreted as an attack on the USSR itself, and be
responded to accordingly. MacArthur, who had spent many years in Asia,
correctly considered the PRC to be an independent nation in no way beholden to
the USSR and only temporarily allied with it. That he was correct is, of
course, obvious; but the corollary – that the USSR would not respond to a
massive nuclear attack on China – is not. The massive use of nuclear weapons
just across the Soviet border would alone risk contaminating Soviet cities such
as Vladivostok with lethal amounts of radiation; and like China, the USSR would
be aware that if it allowed China to be defeated, the nascent NATO would be
emboldened to carry out the long desired invasion of the USSR itself.
That this was so should not have been
unknown to MacArthur, since Soviet pilots and ground crew were servicing and
flying MiG15s over Korea; obviously, whether China was a “temporary Soviet
ally” or a “satellite”, the USSR was invested in the Korean War and would fight
to defend China if necessary, since China was of much greater value than North
Korea. For whatever reason – tunnel vision or contempt for the Soviet Union –
MacArthur chose to ignore this fact.
Therefore, while to the Pentagon, the risk
of a nuclear war with the USSR had to be balanced against the “benefits” of
using the nuclear bomb, MacArthur had no such constraints; to him it was a tool
to be used and there were no consequences to be feared. This was an era when
racism against Asians was so ingrained in Western thinking that – as late as
1964 – the British historian David Rees could get away with writing (in Korea: The Limited War) that “the
conquest of the civilised world by millions of expendable Asians had turned out
to be a futile dream.” Therefore MacArthur felt no compunction at the thought
of massacring millions of despised Asian people with the nuclear weapons he
finally had at his disposal.
As shall be seen, he soon took steps to use
the tool he had been handed.
Meanwhile, MacArthur had not gone out of
his way to win friends in the US administration. While the account I have given
so far of this period might suggest that the US military and foreign policy of
this period was focussed on Korea, this was very far from true. The Truman
administration, in fact, for its own purposes, preferred to garrison West
Europe, which Stalin was allegedly about to invade and overrun. Of course, as
was evident even at the time, Stalin had no such plans; he had always preferred
to maintain the Soviet system in the USSR alone, and had merely occupied
Eastern Europe as a buffer to prevent another Operation Barbarossa-style
invasion of the Soviet heartland. But for the Truman administration,
maintaining military control over as much of Europe as possible took precedence
over the war in Korea. On 20th March, MacArthur wrote an embittered
letter criticising the Truman administration’s “fixation” on Europe, which was
made public on 5th April. At the same time, reports reached Truman
that MacArthur had contacted Spanish and Portuguese diplomats in Japan and
informed them of his plans to expand the Korean War into a conflict which
would, he said, result in “...the permanent disposal of the Chinese Communist
question”[1].
Obviously, this was insubordination of an
extraordinarily high order, and Truman could have been forgiven if he had
dismissed MacArthur immediately and without further delay. Instead, as
mentioned above, not only did he not do so, he, as stated above, permitted
multiple nuclear weapons to be placed at MacArthur’s disposal, if not under his
direct command. It was as though Truman was trying to get MacArthur to launch a
nuclear war, but absolve himself (Truman) of all blame for it.
Strangely enough, it was only on 11th
April – when a new offensive launched by MacArthur without permission from
Washington was pushing north of the 38th Parallel – that the general
was “relieved”, that is, dismissed. According to the conventional narrative,
Truman had planned as early as 6th April to dismiss MacArthur, but
the next several days passed in discussions with his Pentagon generals and
cabinet members on whether this should be done. Only on the 9th, the
story goes, did Truman secure the “concurrence” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to
fire MacArthur, and even then he waited two days longer, until the 11th,
before putting it into writing.
There is excellent reason to believe that
something else happened during these days which actually precipitated the
dismissal, and that the “insubordination” of MacArthur, which had been going on
unpunished for so long, was only a convenient excuse.
To understand what that thing was, we will
now turn to the story of a B29 called Flying
Flimflam, and the events of 8th and 9th April 1951.
*****************************************
So far in
this article, I have cited information available in the public domain; from
this point onwards I will be reviewing the account of a remarkable and
extremely well-researched book. This is Operation
Rook: Douglas MacArthur and the Nuclear Strike on North Korea, by Harold
O’Brien and Alan Xavier, Ãœberhaupt Publishers, Quatsch, Germany, 2018, 389
pages (including 40 pages of end notes).
The authors of this book state their
purpose at the start: to explore the real reason behind MacArthur’s dismissal,
and to throw light on the hitherto carefully suppressed tale of the attempt by
the general to start off his planned campaign of nuclear attacks across North
Korea and China – and how it failed, and why.
The qualifications of the authors are given
in the foreword: Harold O’Brien is an aviation historian who has worked, among
other places, at the Smithsonian Institution. Alan Xavier is an aeronautical
engineer and writer who speaks both Korean and Chinese and has lived and worked
in South Korea and China.
Xavier says he became interested in the
topic when he met a man whose grandfather, Wang Zhejian, had been a MiG15 pilot
in the Korean War. Out of curiosity, he met the old man, who, among other
things, described an aerial battle that took place on 9th April 1951
off the Korean coast. Intrigued, Xavier conducted a series of interviews with
other surviving former Chinese MiG15 pilots and ground crews from the period.
Later, seeking corroboration from the US side, he contacted O’Brien, and their
further research led to revelations they detail in this profusely annotated book.
This is what they found out.
*****************************************
On the 6th
April 1951, Douglas MacArthur met, as described above, the US Atomic Energy
Chairman, Gordon Dean, and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear
bombs. The next day, ten B29 bombers of the 9th Bombardment Wing
took off from Fairfield-Suisun Air Base in California and flew west across the
Pacific to Guam, arriving in the early evening; nine of them carried a Mark 4
bomb each, with the core stowed separately in a “birdcage”. The tenth bomber
was loaded with electronic and photographic equipment intended to be used for
reconnaissance purposes and to measure the yield of the weapons if they were
used.
These bombers were all of the so-called
Silverplate or Saddletree series[13], which had been optimised to
carry nuclear bombs. They differed from standard B29s in several ways.
First, all their gun turrets (except the
tail turret) were removed, as well as all the armour plate, in order to reduce
weight. This permitted them to fly high and far enough with the enormous weight
of a Mark 4 atom bomb (approximately 4900 kilograms) to be able to reach
targets far away at an adequate altitude to make them difficult to intercept.
Secondly, their bomb bays and bomb release
mechanisms were changed to the British pattern – which had been used by British
heavy bombers in Europe – to allow faster and more effective unloading of their
single, super heavy, bomb, unlike the many lighter bombs other B29s carried.
Third, they had more reliable engines and
reversible pitch propellers for faster braking on landing (the propellers could
blow air forward and slow the aircraft once it was on the ground) to reduce the
chances of an aeroplane overshooting the runway and crashing, potentially causing
an explosion of an unsecured bomb.
Planes of the Silverplate series had been
used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was the same series (now renamed
Saddletree) which were sent to Guam for possible use against North Korea and
China.
O’Brien and Xavier give exhaustive details
of the individual planes that were sent to Guam, including all their model and
serial numbers and the names of their pilots and chief crew members, but for
the purposes of this article we are concerned with only three – Hornswoggle
Hannah, Bluffmaster, and, most importantly, Flying Flimflam.
Flying Flimflam was a B29 (model number
B-29-48-MO, serial number 47-24681) manufactured in Bellevue, Nebraska, in the
same factory that had constructed the Enola Gay, which had bombed Hiroshima. It
rolled off the assembly line in July, 1948, and began squadron service the
following month after tests. It was given its name by its first pilot, Captain
Jack Murphy, and retained it after passing to a new crew in December of that year.
On 31st January 1949, while
cruising on the runway, Flying Flimflam suffered an explosion in the port
(left) outer engine and a resultant fire, which destroyed the engine and led to
the replacement of the outer section of the wing. There were no casualties, and
no definite cause of the fire was ever discovered. The plane was returned to
service on the 18th of the following month and for the rest of its
service had no other fires or engine trouble.
Flying Flimflam had been one of the
B29s which had briefly been sent to Guam in 1950, carrying bombs, as it will be
recalled, minus their fissile cores. It had flown there without incident (while
one of the other planes had crashed with the loss of all crew) and returned at
the end of its deployment. As such, it was one of the aircraft selected for
return to Guam. At that time it was on its fifth crew (not the one which had
flown to Guam earlier), under the command of Captain John Thomas; but the man
who would fly it into action was the mission commander, Colonel Michael “Mickey”
Finn.
Michael Finn was, in April 1950, thirty
years old. A native of South West Indle, Oklahoma, he had joined the air force
in 1943 after completing college, and qualified as a pilot in December of that
year. He was then sent to England, and flew B24 Liberator bombers over Europe
in 1944, successfully completing twelve missions before being recalled to the
United States to train on the new B29. In February 1945 he was posted to the
Twentieth Air Force, which at the time was involved in firebombing Japanese
cities. Finn flew B29s on 23 missions
between February 1945 and the end of the war, operating from Tinian against the
Japanese mainland, including Operation Meetinghouse[14] – the
firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9th/10th March 1945
which killed between 80000 to 100000 civilians. Though he was not involved with
the 509th Composite Group which carried out the nuclear attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the war he was transferred to the 9th
Bombardment Wing, which flew B29 Silverplate aircraft and was meant to carry
out nuclear attacks. This meant, O’Brien and Xavier write, that he was of
exceptional ability, since only the best pilots were chosen for this duty.
This is certainly the impression given by
his promotion record. Finn was made Major in August 1945, and was asked to
remain in the Air Force when he, apparently, considered leaving after the war.
He was raised to Lieutenant Colonel in 1947, and promoted to Colonel in January
1949. And when the B29s of the 9th Bombardment Wing were sent to
Guam, he was appointed the mission commander, though this was usually the remit
of a brigadier general (brigadier in Commonwealth militaries) and not a
colonel.
As a person, though, O’Brien and Xavier
write, Finn was something of an enigma. He was not married, and seems to have
had no known romantic involvement. Nor does he seem to have had many friends;
aloof and quiet, he was known for rigid obedience of orders, a strict adherence
to rules, and sticking exactly to mission parameters and protocols. According to another officer quoted in the
book, Finn
“...was
the sort of man who gave the impression of being a machine; you told him what
to do, and he did it, ruthlessly efficiently but without either passion or
protest. You could see it in his eyes, too – when he looked at you, you got the
impression that he saw, not you, not the wall behind you, but something on the
far horizon. In all the time I knew him, I don’t think I ever saw him smile.” (Page
129)
This, then, was the emotionless officer chosen
to lead the bomber detachment, and to drop nuclear weapons on North Korea and
China. According to O’Brien, MacArthur had asked specifically for someone like
Finn to lead the bomber group – someone who would obey orders without being
bothered by emotional scruples. Apparently, after photographs of the burnt and
devastated survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had become public, MacArthur did
not want to take chances with any of his subordinates suffering a sudden attack
of conscience when ordered to inflict many times more suffering on the
civilians of China and North Korea.
On the same day as the 9th
Bombardment Wing planes reached Guam – 7th April – MacArthur had a
meeting in Tokyo, shortly after noon, with US Air Force Brigadier General
Edward P Humbug, in charge of coordinating the bombing offensive against North
Korea with the army. Humbug was on deputation from Washington; his permanent
assignment, in fact, was with Strategic Air Command. This meeting was very
strange for a number of reasons.
First, MacArthur had met Humbug in an official military situation
conference that morning at half past nine, and that meeting had gone on for
three quarters of an hour. There were, as far as can be determined, no
emergencies that would require a second meeting just two hours later.
Secondly, MacArthur had not arranged the meeting through his staff; at noon,
MacArthur had (in his capacity as de
facto dictator of Japan) been scheduled to receive a delegation of Japanese
businessmen. Fifteen minutes before the meeting, however – with the businessmen
having already arrived and waiting – MacArthur abruptly cancelled the meeting
and rescheduled it for a week later. (Since MacArthur had been removed from
command by that time, this meeting never, ultimately, took place.) Instead,
MacArthur asked his staff to send in a visitor who would be arriving at any
moment; this turned out to be Humbug.
Thirdly, the meeting was not arranged by Humbug, since at no time between
the morning conference and noon had MacArthur received any phone call, radio
message, or other communication from him. It is obviously MacArthur who had
arranged the meeting, either on the sidelines of the morning conference or
shortly afterwards.
Fourth, the meeting between MacArthur and Humbug involved the two of them
alone; no aides were present, and no voice notes of any kind were taken. The
meeting lasted about half an hour, and neither MacArthur nor Humbug mentioned a
single thing about what they had discussed to their respective staffs.
Fifth, after leaving MacArthur’s office, Humbug went straight to the airport
and arranged for a special USAF flight to Guam, on which he left within the
hour. He returned the next morning, and as for what he did in Guam, that we
shall shortly discuss.
At this point it is probably useful to
review the situation as it was on 7th April 1951:
1. MacArthur, who was obsessed with
“defeating communism” in Asia, had wanted to destroy North Korea and much of
North East China with nuclear weapons, and was frustrated that he had not been
allowed to carry this out.
2. His land offensive to capture North
Korea, his own vainglorious claims to the contrary, had ended in defeat and
stalemate. For someone of his extremely egocentric nature, this was
intolerable, and he was thirsting for vengeance.
3. MacArthur, by this stage, more than
likely believed himself above the civilian government and certainly more “clear
sighted” than the Pentagon bureaucrats in uniform and the politicians in
Washington. His own statements increasingly contradicted the official
Washington line, and he had increasingly taken to ignoring the official
“policy” and taking matters into his own hands in the conduct of the war.
4. By this stage, he cannot have been
unaware that he was living on borrowed time, and that he had to deliver the
spectacular victory he craved before the bureaucrats and politicians he
despised robbed him of it.
The only way such a victory was even
possible to achieve, by 1951, was to conduct massive nuclear strikes across
North Korea, if not also China, regardless of consequences; and for the first
time he had, at his disposal – even if not under his direct command – the means
to carry out such a strike.
5. The only thing that stood in the way of
his carrying out this strike was the pusillanimity, as he saw it, of the Truman
administration and the paper-pushers at the Pentagon, who were terrified of a
Russian nuclear response. MacArthur was convinced that the USSR would not respond.
6. Therefore, in order to prove to the
Pentagon and the Truman administration that he was right, that they were wrong,
and also to take a step that it would be impossible to back away from,
MacArthur logically required to launch a spectacular nuclear attack. The Communist capital, Pyongyang, which he had so ignominiously
been compelled to retreat from, was an equally logical target for obliteration.
This sixth point could be called
speculation, except for the mysterious meeting with Humbug and what happened
afterwards.
Arriving in Guam at about 5.30 pm local
time, Brigadier General Humbug refused to leave the airport, and waited by the
side of the runway for the 9th Bombardment Wing planes to arrive. The
planes touched down between a quarter to seven and half past seven in the
evening, with Colonel Finn flying the B29 carrying the photographic equipment,
by the name of The Great Gammon. As soon as Finn had left the aircraft, Humbug
met him on the runway, drawing him aside to talk for several minutes. None of
the rest of the crew of The Great Gammon could hear anything of what was said,
but the co-pilot, Captain Peter Willy, saw the brigadier general hand an
envelope to Finn. Shortly afterwards Humbug left the airport, and early the
next morning flew back to Tokyo in the same aircraft in which he had arrived.
It must be remembered that officially the 9th
Bombardment Group was not under the control of the theatre commander,
MacArthur, but of Strategic Air Command based in Washington. Humbug, however,
was not an army, but an air force officer; and he was seconded as liaison to
MacArthur from Strategic Air Command. It was, therefore, in his capacity as a
part of SAC (which he still officially was) that he had met Finn, and the
envelope he had handed over (as per the testimony of officers given to the
authors) contained nothing less than written
orders to conduct a nuclear strike against Pyongyang with a Mark 4 nuclear bomb
as soon as possible, and certainly within the next 72 hours. Who this order
was signed by is not certain, for no copy survives; it certainly contained
MacArthur’s signature, but whether Humbug had added his signature to it, or
confined his role to that of messenger, is unknown.
What is
known is the actions Finn took that very evening, as soon as the crew of the 9th
Bombardment Group had had time to eat and freshen up. Calling the captains of
all the ten aircraft to his room at the base, he told them that the SAC had
ordered a nuclear strike within the next three days on Pyongyang, and informed
them of, though he did not show them, the written order. Even without the
order, there would have been no question of anyone refusing. Finn then called
in weather data for the next three days.
The next day, the 8th, promised
clear skies above Guam, but broken cloud cover over the Sea of Japan, joining
to form very heavy cloud over the northern part of the Korean peninsula, which
would make accurate bombing difficult. On the 9th, the skies over
Guam would still be clear, but the clouds over the Korean peninsula would
move over the Sea of Japan, leaving Pyongyang uncovered. By the 10th,
the cloud front would be moving quickly south-eastwards towards Guam, and
tending to develop into a storm. Therefore, of the three days, the only one
that offered acceptable conditions for bombing was the 9th April.
Having decided that, Finn dismissed his
pilots for the night; whether he communicated his decision to Humbug is not
known. The authors describe their efforts to determine if Finn and Humbug met
or spoke again that night(Pages 143-5), but without success. Both
Finn and Humbug were on the base, though housed at a distance from each other,
in B (Finn) and X (Humbug) blocks. One source claims that a motor pool vehicle
was requisitioned to drive “a senior officer” to X block, but whether this
“senior officer” was Finn is unknown. O’Brien and Xavier argue persuasively
that, with Humbug on the base and available, it is most unlikely that Finn did not communicate the decision to him.
They also say that the very fact that Humbug remained at the base overnight and
did not return to Tokyo until the morning proved that he was waiting for the
decision; in this they are more than likely correct.
The
events of 8th April:
After Humbug had left for Tokyo the next
morning, Finn called another meeting of his aircraft commanders, in which the
status of the individual aircraft were discussed in detail. Three of the planes
– Artful Dodger, Masquerade Mary, and The Great Gammon – had experienced
equipment malfunctions during the flight from California that required repair
and servicing. From among the others, Finn soon selected four for the attack. They,
and their respective roles, were as follows:
Hornswoggle Hannah would be the weather
reconnaissance aircraft, checking on conditions over Pyongyang ahead of the
main attack.
Bluffmaster would be the photographic and
electronic monitoring aircraft, to take pictures of the strike and its
aftermath, and to measure radiation levels, both by means of atmospheric
filters carried by the plane and using equipment packages dropped by parachute.
Flying Flimflam would be the actual
bomb-carrying aircraft, with Knave Of Hearts as the back-up aeroplane in case
something happened to prevent Flying Flimflam from taking off on its mission.
Flying Flimflam, photographed on the ground at Guam, 8th April 1951. Photo credit O'Brien/Xavier |
The bombs Hornswoggle Hannah and
Bluffmaster carried, along with their separated cores, were unloaded, and
equipment for their respective roles installed. At the same time, the bombs
carried by Flying Flimflam and Knave Of Hearts were dismantled and checked by
the respective weaponeers and assistant weaponeers, and reassembled. This was
done entirely by the 9th Bombardment Wing crews; no ground crew were
involved in any way, in order to preserve secrecy.
At approximately noon, Finn called the USAF
K-9 Pusan East air base, where F86 Sabre jet fighters of the Fifth Air Force
were stationed, and arranged for escort cover on the following day. During the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks there had been no fighter escort, and the bombers, except for
some desultory anti-aircraft fire over Kokura, had faced no opposition
whatsoever[2]. But North Korea in 1951 was not Japan in 1945, and
unescorted bombers were at great risk from North Korean and Chinese fighters,
apart from anti-aircraft fire. Finn secured the promise of a squadron of F86s
as escort for what he termed a “special mission”; there is neither evidence,
nor any reason to believe, that the K-9 Pusan East base commander was informed
what the “special mission” was about.
After the bombs had been reassembled and
loaded, the four planes – the three primaries and the spare, Knave Of Hearts –
made brief flights to test their equipment and ensure that their engines,
radios and other systems were in good working order. The ground crew on Guam,
who were of course aware of the activity surrounding the planes, were not given
any explanation either, except for the statement about a “special mission”. The
base commander, Brigadier General Donovan Sleech, met Colonel Finn during the
day, but what the latter told him is unknown; there is no record of Sleech
having communicated it to anyone. Since Sleech was under MacArthur’s theatre
command, he did not have any discretion in the matter, but whether Finn even
informed him at all about the intention of carrying out the nuclear strike is
unknown. O’Brien and Xavier claim(Page 192) that this is unlikely,
going by Finn’s attempts to keep the planning on a strictly need to know basis.
Late that afternoon, Finn called together
the captains and main crew members (co pilots, navigators, bombardiers – “bomb
aimers” in Commonwealth air forces, the crewman who would actually drop the
weapon – and weaponeers) of his ten aircraft, and in consultation with them
drew up the crews for the attack. He himself, as mission commander, would fly
the bomber plane, Flying Flimflam. This plane normally had Crew D-42 assigned
to it, but on this occasion Finn made several changes. The regular pilot, Captain
John Thomas, would act as the co-pilot for the mission, but several other crew
members were taken from other planes. The full roster of the Flying Flimflam’s
crew for this attack was (vide
O’Brien and Xavier, Page 210):
· Colonel Michael “Mickey” Finn –
pilot, mission commander, aircraft commander
· Captain John Thomas* – co-pilot
· Major Albert Chisel –
bombardier
· Captain Johannes “Flying
Dutchman” van der Bedriegen – navigator
· Lieutenant Colonel David Dieb+
– weaponeer and reserve mission commander
· First Lieutenant Edwin Hadjut –
radar countermeasures operator
· Second Lieutenant Leo Varas –
assistant weaponeer
· Staff Sergeant Giovanni
Cretini* – tail gunner
· Staff Sergeant William Forbryterson*
– flight engineer
· Sergeant George Puska* – radar
operator
· Sergeant Richard Morder* –
assistant flight engineer
· Private First Class Charles
Gyilkos* – VHF radio operator
*The
names marked with an asterisk denote those who were part of the regular crew of
Flying Flimflam; thus it can be seen that fully half the crew, six men out of
twelve, were from other aircraft, and flying together for the first time.
+Lieutenant
Colonel Dieb was tasked with taking over command in case Finn was incapacitated
in any manner after the start of the mission but the attack was to go ahead.
The crew of Flying Flimflam, 8th April 1951, at Guam. Colonel Michael Finn is at bottom row, far right. Sergeant Morder is missing in this photograph. Photo credit O'Brien/Xavier |
The crews of the other three B29s were also
finalised. While Knave Of Hearts, as the reserve bomber, was assigned another
crew of twelve, the two other planes – Hornswoggle Hannah and Bluffmaster – had
ten man crews since they had no bombs and would not be carrying weaponeers or
assistant weaponeers. Though all planes carried radio operators, their role,
unless there were emergencies, would be restricted to navigation (which will be
discussed below). Finn ordered total radio silence after crossing Japan to
maintain secrecy and the element of surprise.
It seems remarkable, but according to
O’Brien and Xavier, at this stage not
even all the crew members of the planes carrying out the actual mission were
informed that they would be dropping a nuclear weapon. Except for the
pilots, co-pilots, weaponeers, navigators, and bombardiers present at this
meeting, the other crew members apparently were allowed to believe that they
were carrying out a practice attack on the Communist capital with a high
explosive bomb (like the “pumpkin bombs”[15] used on Japanese cities
prior to the Nagasaki bombing), to see exactly how it was to be done and to
refine procedures for the future.
Meanwhile, Brigadier General Humbug had
returned to Tokyo, and reported to MacArthur in his office. The meeting was
brief, and once again there was no aide present and no records were kept.
MacArthur, thereafter, made no attempt to contact Guam, and went about his
business as usual.
The distance from Guam to Pyongyang is 3400
kilometres; at the cruising speed of a heavily loaded B29, some 470 kilometres
per hour, that represented over seven hours’ flight time even if the plane flew
along a direct route. However, to avoid Communist air defences, Finn intended
to take a northern route, intending to reach the North Korean coast at a point
north east of Pyongyang, and then turn south west for the final approach,
outflanking the fighters that could be assumed to be guarding the North Korean
capital against air attacks from the south. This would add over an hour’s
flying time. Finn wanted to be able to return to Guam and land while there was
still some daylight left, to minimise the risk of crashes. Since the return
journey could be made directly and at a faster speed without the weight of the bomb
and the fuel already burnt, Finn kept seven hours for the return journey.
On 9th April, first light on
Guam is at 5.00 am, and sunrise at 6.12 am. Full darkness falls at 7.45 pm.
Daylight times at Guam, 9th April |
Finn
therefore had fourteen and three quarter hours of partial and full daylight to
carry out his mission. Keeping seven hours for the return journey, he had to be
over Pyongyang no later than 12.45 pm (Guam time). This would have normally
meant that Flying Flimflam would have to take off at the latest by half past
four in the morning, before dawn; but there was another complicating factor.
Of the three aircraft that were to take
part in the raid, Flying Flimflam, with its 4900 kilogram Mark 4 bomb and two
extra crew members, was by far the most heavily laden, and therefore the
slowest. Finn would therefore take off earlier than the other two planes, which
were faster, and rendezvous with them (and the escorting fighters) off the
North Korean coast, only just before turning south west to cross the coast and
begin the final attack. The rendezvous was known as Point Zeke, and was halfway
between Kimchaek and Singpo, just off the coast. Finn would have to take off at three in the morning.
All that was left was to choose a name for
the mission, and this had already been selected, either by MacArthur or by
Finn. At any event, he announced it at the end of the meeting. Eschewing any
ironic or boastful reference to victory or vengeance, the name selected for the
attack was simple and, on the surface, innocuous.
The nuclear attack on Pyongyang would be
simply known as Operation Rook.
9th
April: Operation Rook:
At seven minutes past three in the morning,
Flying Flimflam took off from Guam, in darkness but for the runway markers.
With the enormous weight of fuel and the bomb, it was an exceptionally
hazardous take off, and the bomber only lifted into the air at the very end of
the runway. Lifting slowly into the darkness, it set off to the northwest. It
would fly over the Pacific until it reached Japan, overfly the island of
Honshu, and then reach the Sea of Japan, whereupon it would turn due west until
it reached Point Zeke. It would then wait there, flying a holding pattern, for
the other planes to rendezvous with it. If everything went according to plan it
would not have to wait long.
It will be recalled that the weather was
the factor that had determined that the attack would be carried out on this day
of the three dates (8th, 9th and 10th April)
available. This was because the heavy cloud layer that had covered Korea on the
8th had moved out over the Pacific by the 9th, but not
yet reached the neighbourhood of Guam. By mid morning on 9th April
its western fringe still covered the Sea of Japan, but most of it was over the
Pacific, and gathering force into a storm.
If Finn had been able to, he would
undoubtedly have routed Flying Flimflam around the northern edge of the
weather, but fuel and time constraints – the storm extended as far north as the
island of Hokkaido in Japan – made this impossible. He therefore had to fly
through it, and not just through it, but where it was thickest and the
gathering storm winds most severe.
Until this point, everything known about
Finn and the Flying Flimflam, as O’Brien and Xavier point out, is verifiable
information from multiple sources; but from this point on, what actually
happened can only be inferred, because there is essentially no further
information available until the aircraft was sighted by Wang Zhejian in his
MiG15 hours later and far to the north west. Going by what is known, though,
there is little doubt as to what happened.
Several hours after leaving Guam, at about
seven in the morning, Flying Flimflam entered the cloud layer. From available
weather reports (cited by O’Brien and Xavier) it was much higher than
predicted, reaching an altitude of some ten thousand metres, too high for the
heavily laden B29 to climb over. For about two hours, Flying Flimflam flew
through the cloud and gathering wind. And
during these two hours, something happened that drove the B29 irrevocably off
course.
Map from O'Brien/Xavier |
Before discussing what this something might
have been, and the result, it is necessary to briefly describe the navigational
aids Finn – or, to be exact, his navigator, van der Bedriegen – would have been
using. This was long before the era of GPS, and years before even the first
satellite, Sputnik, was launched. Navigation in that era depended on the same
methods ships had been using for centuries – navigation by the stars and dead
reckoning – and direction finding by radio.
Dead
reckoning works like this: if you know your
position at a given time, then, by multiplying your speed and the amount of
time you have been travelling, you can estimate how far you have come. If you
also know the direction in which you’re travelling, you know, approximately,
where you are or should be.
There are – obviously – major problems with
this. Firstly, you have to know the exact position from where you are starting
your initial readings. This is easy enough when one is starting from a fixed
point of reference like a port (or an airport). But if one then changes speed and/or course,
one or more times, one needs to know at what point one changed, and in what
direction, and factor that into one’s calculations.
Direction is not necessarily a problem if
one has working compasses. But if one makes a mistake in calculating one change
point, one’s further calculations will, however correct, still fail to show
one’s correct position. This is even truer if there is a strong wind blowing
across one’s path, because a strong wind can blow even a fairly large
aeroplane, like a B29, off course.
Over land this is not necessarily a
problem; mountains, rivers, cities and other prominent landmarks provide handy
reference points. For ships, too, this is not always a major hurdle, for there
are islands, lighthouses, coastal features like cliffs, and the like. But over
the ocean, especially when speed and course vary multiple times, it becomes
difficult (even with modern computerised systems) to calculate position, and
errors constantly creep in. These errors have to be corrected by some means.
The commonest way of doing so was by calculating one’s position with reference
to a star whose position was known (such as the North Star), or the sun whose
position at any given time over the horizon is known. But this is dependent on
one’s being able to see, and measure one’s position from, the stars or the sun.
If one is unable to do either, as Flying
Flimflam was in the heavy cloud, one has to rely on external navigational aids.
At the time the commonest such external aid was the radio beacon. This was a
radio beam relayed by signal stations, pointing the way across the land and
ocean towards one’s destination. Direction-finding equipment fitted on the
aircraft would locate this beam, and theoretically it would be easily followed
all the way to the target.
Of course, this depended on said direction
finding equipment working properly. And, seeing how far Flying Flimflam drifted
off course, it is obvious that, for some reason, its radio direction finding
equipment was malfunctioning.
The equipment had been functioning during
the test flight the previous day, however, quite perfectly, and on the trip
from California to Guam the day before that. What could have happened to cause
this malfunction?
O’Brien and Xavier claim that by far the
most likely reason was a massive discharge of static electricity while the
Flying Flimflam was passing through the centre of the storm. Basically, the
plane was struck by lightning.
Lightning strikes are far from unusual, of
course, and planes are regularly struck by them without major effects. But
unlike modern aircraft, the electronics of aeroplanes of the era – like the B29
– were not shielded against electric interference. A massive electrical
discharge may have left the plane apparently untouched, but damaged enough of
the wiring of the direction finding apparatus to seriously compromise its
ability to pick up radio beacons.
Even if one disregards the lightning strike
hypothesis, one is still faced with the fact that the Flying Flimflam wandered
off course by almost two hundred
kilometres. One can only explain this by a failure of navigation so extreme
that only one of three possibilities exist:
Either the navigator was incapacitated, or he was deliberately sabotaging the mission by leading it astray,
or his navigational equipment had
suffered a catastrophic failure.
There is no fourth explanation.
One need not (though O’Brien and Xavier do,
at some length) discuss the relative likelihood of these three possibilities.
Briefly, if the navigator was incapacitated, Finn could not have failed to know
it, and would have either aborted the mission or – since he and his co-pilot
were both trained in basic navigation – would have substituted for the
navigator. As for the possibility that van der Bedriegen was deliberately
sabotaging the mission, this was a handpicked man, like all the rest of the
crew, each of whom had been trained and indoctrinated for a mission like this.
We would have to believe that he would suddenly decide that he could not carry
out the attack he had prepared for his entire career, and then set out to try
to wreck it in a peculiarly pointless manner (since the Flying Flimflam reached
North Korea in any case). We would also have to believe that while he was
carrying out this sabotage, his fellow crewmen, including the pilots, the radar
operator (as shall be described), and the radio operator, failed to notice that
anything was wrong.
We would be expected to believe too much.
Only the third possibility – that there was
a major equipment failure – is, therefore, left. Whatever that failure was, its
effects are known: Flying Flimflam, instead of reaching the North Korean coast
at Point Zeke halfway between Singpo and Kimchaek, actually reached it just
under two hundred kilometres to the north east, not far south of Chongjin.
Even though the radio direction finder
might have been malfunctioning or totally inoperative, Flying Flimflam was not
helpless. It still had two other navigational tools at its disposal.
One was its VHF radio set, which could tune
in on radio broadcasts, such as those from Tokyo, and give a rough fix of the
direction in which the transmitter lay. But the clouds which still lay over
Honshu were filled with lightning, and disrupted radio reception. All the
Flying Flimflam might have been able to tell was that it was passing somewhere
in the vicinity of the Tokyo transmitter; it would not have been able to tell
more than that.
Once over the Sea of Japan, Flying Flimflam
could have homed in on radio broadcasts from Pyongyang. But, ironically, the
success of the “United Nations” forces had removed that possibility. When they
had been forced to abandon Pyongyang in the face of the Chinese advance, the
“UN” forces had largely destroyed the city’s infrastructure; and afterwards
they had been bombing it relentlessly. Pyongyang Radio, at this time, was
non-functional.
That left the other tool the B29 had, its
radar. Radar in 1951 was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is now; especially
in ground-mapping mode, it could just about tell land from water. But it was
good enough to be able to map the line of a coast, and provide an image which
could be compared to a large scale map.
And this, O’Brien and Xavier say, is almost certainly what van der Bedriegen
did. Why?
The reason is simple. On reaching radar
range of the North Korean coast – where the sky was still covered in thick
haze, with low cloud obscuring the ground – Flying Flimflam settled into a
holding pattern, waiting for the other planes to rendezvous. Since it was not
at Point Zeke, but nearly 200 kilometres north, it could not, obviously,
logically expect the other planes to join it there...unless it was convinced
that it was at Point Zeke.
Why would it be convinced of such a thing?
Well, the coastline just south of
Chongjin bears, on the radar screen, a strong similarity to that halfway
between Singpo and Kimchaek.
One can readily imagine what happened.
Finn, who knew he had flown over Japan and had reached the North Korean coast,
but not where, would have flown up and down along it, while van der Bedriegen
looked desperately for radar landmarks to find out where he was. With the sun
covered in haze and the land and sea below shrouded in cloud, one can imagine
his relief when the radar showed what looked like the correct point on the shoreline,
matching that opposite Point Zeke. Confirmation bias is a great motivator, and
with no other way of determining their position, both Finn and van der
Bedriegen would then be psychologically primed to insist that they were where
they needed to be, any niggling doubt to the contrary.
Point Zeke, projected flight to Pyongyang and actual position of Flying Flimflam. Map from O'Brien/Xavier |
Therefore, certain he had reached Point
Zeke, Finn settled into a holding pattern, waiting for the other planes to join
up, as he was sure they would do at any moment. He was maintaining radio
silence, as he had himself ordered, and so were they, so they could not contact
each other by radio. And though time passed, and neither the other bombers nor
any of the F86 escorts arrived, the B29 did not break from its holding pattern.
What were Finn’s options at this point?
O’Brien and Xavier list these:
First, Finn could continue in his holding circuit until one of two things
happened: the sky cleared sufficiently to take a reading from the sun, which
could not have failed to reveal to van der Bedriegen that the Flying Flimflam
was far north-east of where it should be; or
until so much time had passed that it had become obvious that the other
planes would not make the rendezvous. At that point he could make one of two
choices:
Either he could continue on the mission alone, crossing the coast and
flying into North Korea. If he was unaware of his real position, he would fly along
the bearing which, had he been at Point Zeke, would have taken him to
Pyongyang. At the point where he was, though, he would have reached the Yellow
Sea – between the west coast of the Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland –
before he realised his mistake. If he was
aware of his real position or became aware of it along the way, he could make
appropriate corrections and reach Pyongyang.
Or, he could abort the mission and turn back. If he did, he had two
further decisions to make:
The first
of these is where to make for: back to Guam, or to another USAF base, meaning
one closer to Korea. This gave him only one real choice: to land the plane in
Japan, probably Tokyo. Since Japan did not, publicly, permit nuclear weapons on
its territory, this would be a major problem, which Finn would be eager to
avoid; Japan would likely only feature in his thinking as a destination if he
had consumed so much fuel that it was impossible to return to Guam.
The second
was what to do with the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. He could either carry the
immensely expensive weapon back to Guam, or jettison it over North Korean
territory or over the sea. If he chose the latter option, he could try to
salvage something from the mission by arming it with the core and carrying out
a nuclear strike on any North Korean target of opportunity, no matter how
merely symbolic. Or he could drop it (either over North Korea or into the sea)
without the core, ridding the Flying Flimflam of almost five tons of weight and
making the return flight that much easier; to all intents and purposes, then,
Operation Rook would never have taken place.
Given Finn’s character, though, there was never
any doubt what choice he would make. His orders were to attack only in
conjunction with the other two planes, and his rigid adherence to orders –
which had commended him to MacArthur – did not permit him to carry on with the
mission on his own. He would wait as long as it took.
We shall leave Flying Flimflam to continue
flying round and round just off the coast in its holding pattern, and move on
to a very different plane, which was also in the air that day.
One of the most significant aircraft in
history was the little MiG15. The appearance of this jet over Korea in November
1950 marked the abrupt end of the almost unfettered dominance the “United
Nations” forces had enjoyed in the air. Flown secretly by Soviet pilots – a lot
of whom were veterans of WWII – and, increasingly, by hastily trained North
Korean and Chinese pilots, the MiG15 soon drove the older vintage “United
Nations” jets from the skies of North Korea. The only American plane able to
counter the MiG15, the F86 Sabre, fought the Soviet jet in furious battles over
“MiG Alley” in the north-west of the Korean peninsula; but over the eastern
fringes of North Korea, at this time the MiG ruled the skies alone.
Most of the MiG15 bases from which the
fighter challenged “United Nations” aircraft over North Korea were in Chinese
territory, in Manchuria. This kept them safe from attack on the ground by
“United Nations” aircraft, and also allowed them to take off and climb to a
height from which they could swoop down on American bombers and their fighter
escorts before crossing the border into North Korea. After attacking from
above, the MiGs would dive at top speed for the safety of the border before
turning to climb again.
One of the primary bases for the MiG15 at
this time was in Antung, across the Yalu river in Manchuria. On the 8th
April, a batch of freshly trained Chinese pilots had arrived at Antung, and one
of them was a young man called Wang Zhejian.
In April 1951, Wang Zhejian was 22 years
old. A native of Taiyuan in Shanxi, he had been an engineering student before
volunteering for the nascent People’s Liberation Army Air Force in 1950. As he
said later, it was mostly in order to get away from engineering, which he
neither enjoyed nor thought himself fitted for. Rather to his own surprise, he
was chosen for pilot training, and in the winter of 1950/51 was sent to the
Polnaya Chush training airport near Vladivostok, run by the 64th
Fighter Aviation Corps of the Soviet Air Forces.
According to Wang’s later account, he and the
other trainees were astonished at the food they received in training. At this
time the food given to the average PLA solder was basic in the extreme – a few
cups of rice and a cup of cabbage soup a day. On this diet, PLA trainees could
barely muster the strength to climb out of the cockpit after a training flight;
as a result, their Soviet trainers quickly switched them to a Russian diet with
large portions of meat[16]. Even with the better provender and
improved living standards, the exigencies of the war meant that the USSR had to
quickly produce large numbers of Chinese and North Korean pilots, so the
training was hurried as much as possible. By Wang’s own admission, by the time
he arrived at Antung from Polnaya Chush, he could fly straight and level, but not
much more than that; he was expected to “learn on the job” as wingman to a more
experienced pilot.
Wang Zhejian in 1951. Photo from O'Brien/Xavier |
On the 9th – the day after he had arrived – Wang’s “on the job” training began. He was paired with a senior pilot, Zhang Liwei (at this time, the PLA had no formal rank system, which is why I am mentioning none; O’Brien and Xavier state that Zhang’s status would be equivalent to a senior sergeant, while Wang would be approximately an acting lance-corporal). There was, on the morning of the 9th, no radar warning of “United Nations” bomber forces approaching, so Zhang and Wang could go out on a routine patrol, which for Wang would double as a training flight. Wang was flying a MiG15 in contemporary “red tail” colour scheme (natural metal finish except for a red nose, tail, national insignia, and the aircraft number on the side of the nose) – in this case, aircraft number 3220.
Modern photograph of a MiG15 in Red Tail colour scheme in flight. Note the three cannon under the nose air intake. |
This patrol was to proceed as follows:
After taking off from Antung, the two planes would fly due east, crossing into
North Korea over the Yalu. They would continue flying east, unless redirected
by their ground controller, until they sighted the Sea of Japan, at which point
they would turn back for home.
Soon after taking off at 11 am local time, however,
Zhang Liwei suffered engine trouble and had to return to Antung. Over the radio
he ordered Wang to keep to the original patrol, but to proceed north-east rather than due east to keep him away
from any possible enemy fighters (this course change was to direct Wang
straight towards Flying Flimflam; on
his original heading he would have passed to the south of the B29). Suddenly, high over North Korea, Wang found
himself alone.
Wang may have been inexperienced, but his
actions over the next hour show a remarkably cool head under what must have
been terrific pressure for a rookie on his first combat mission. At first he
flew uneventfully through clear skies, but as he passed Kanggye clouds began to
appear, as well as a high altitude haze. Although he was not, as he admitted
decades later, trained to fly on instruments alone, he carried on his initial
orders, flying on with the aid of his radio and gyro compasses, with one eye on
his fuel gauge and airspeed indicator as he desperately tried to mentally work
out how far he had come.
Just as he was about to give up and turn round,
Wang glimpsed, through a small break in the cloud, a stretch of coastline
ahead, and, beyond that, water. Although the break closed almost immediately,
he decided to fly closer, to be able to confirm that he had, indeed, reached
the coast. And just as he arrived over the area of the break, he saw, some
distance away and slightly above him, the silhouette of a large four-engine
aircraft.
It must be remembered that Wang had never
seen a B29 before. He had, however, encountered Soviet Tupolev 4 bombers on
several occasions during training at Polnaya Chush; and the Tu4, as mentioned
above, was a reverse engineered B29 and externally identical to the American
bomber. Knowing of this similarity, and unable to decide which plane this was, he
flew in for a closer look.
And it was then that the Flying Flimflam’s
tail gunner, Cretini, opened fire on him.
Xavier, who was to interview Wang decades
later, said that the Chinese pilot’s reaction was of astonishment. “I had done
nothing to him,” Wang said, “but all of a sudden his cannon shells were flying
around my wings. I could not even turn away without exposing my flank to him as
a perfect target. So, with no other alternative, I began to shoot back.”
Wang had three cannon under the nose of his
fighter: a 37 mm gun with 40 shells on the right and two 23 mm cannon with 80
shells each on the left. The cannon were relatively slow firing, with low
muzzle velocity, and the much greater weight of the 37mm shells meant they
travelled on a different trajectory from the 23mm shells. Because of all this,
against a small, fast moving enemy fighter the MiG15’s cannon were not always
effective. But against a heavy bomber – and the MiG15’s combat role had been
envisaged as a bomber destroyer, not an air superiority fighter – they were
incredibly fearsome weapons. As the bomber fell into the centre of Wang’s
reflector gunsight, he pressed both cannon buttons at once. Even through his
earphones he heard the hammering of the guns firing, and felt the vibration of
the recoil as the shells hurtled for their target.
Within seconds of Wang’s first burst, a
puff of black smoke spilled out from the (to him still unidentified) aircraft,
and it began to turn away in a shallow dive, heading out over the ocean,
fragments falling away from its wings and fuselage. Wang dived behind it,
firing burst after burst, until it disappeared into the cloud. Getting low on
fuel, and unwilling to risk crashing into the sea by diving into low cloud,
Wang turned for home.
What happened to the Flying Flimflam will
be discussed in due course; but we will first tell the rest of Wang’s story. He
made his way back successfully to Antung, reported his battle, and submitted
his gun camera footage as evidence. And he found his victory claim turned down
flat.
There were good reasons for this.
First, the People’s Liberation Army followed Soviet practice of the
period, which insisted that in order for an aerial victory claim to be
accepted, not only should gun camera footage show the target being destroyed in
the air or actually crashing, but wreckage be subsequently retrieved by
personnel on the ground[16]. Not only did Wang’s gun camera not show
the target crashing, it did not even show conclusively what kind of plane he
had attacked.
And that led directly to the second problem. Because Wang had not
come anywhere close enough to distinguish national insignia, for all anyone
knew, he might have attacked a Soviet Tu4, not a B29. In fact, the possibility
of a single B29 being off the north-eastern coast – not far from the Soviet
border – was considered so unlikely that Wang’s superiors assumed that it was probably
a Tu4. They in turn contacted the Soviet liaison officer to the air wing, Major
Artyom Duraleyev, and he, too, agreed that this was most likely the case. Since
nothing further was heard from the Soviet side over the next days, it was
assumed that the Russians were covering up this piece of fratricide as
assiduously as the Chinese were.
Success, as they say, has many fathers; even
perceived failure is an orphan.
What happened to Wang afterwards? Though he
flew through the rest of the war, he never made the grade of air ace (five
victories or more). He finally was
credited with two victories later in the war, and after leaving the PLA Air
Force returned to his engineering studies. At the time the book was written, he
was 89 years old, still in good health and full control of his faculties, and
living in Dalian.
Dalian is, of course, today not just a
major port, but one of the greatest hubs of Chinese innovation and technology.
It is also in North East China, squarely across the Yellow Sea from Korea; and,
therefore, in the zone slated for destruction by MacArthur, in the campaign of
nuclear attacks of which Operation Rook was to have been the first shot.
But, due to Wang Zhejian, Operation Rook
was over before it had begun.
10th
April: The Aftermath.
By 10th April the failure of the
attempt to nuke Pyongyang was manifest in MacArthur’s headquarters. Not only
had the Communist capital not been incinerated under a mushroom cloud, nobody
had the slightest idea of what had happened to the bomber. Hornswoggle Hannah
and Bluffmaster, struggling through the
same weather conditions, had finally arrived at Point Zeke, but there had been no
sign of Finn and his Flying Flimflam, which should have arrived before them.
Also, though the escort of F86 Sabres finally arrived, only eleven (of a
promised squadron of sixteen) managed to make contact. After waiting for ninety
minutes, Hornswoggle Hannah and Bluffmaster returned to Guam. Nobody heard
anything from Flying Flimflam ever again.
Since Finn could not possibly be in the air
any longer, he had either been shot down, or he had crashed into the sea. Since
the North Koreans or Chinese had made no statement about shooting down any
“United Nations” aircraft, it was assumed both by 9th Bombardment
Wing and MacArthur’s headquarters in Japan that he had crashed into the sea.
His crews’ families were informed that their loved ones were missing in an operational
accident, and that efforts were being made to locate and rescue them.
No such effort was made, and later the crew
were declared presumed dead. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.
MacArthur was apparently informed of the
facts shortly after his morning conference; his reaction seems to have been to officially
pretend nothing had happened, and to try and arrange for a second attack on
Pyongyang as soon as possible. But someone
in his headquarters lost his nerve and – by late evening – contacted
Washington with the facts. Who this someone was is not known for certain; but
O’Brien and Xavier make no secret of their assumption that it was Humbug. After
all, Humbug was the only other person, apart from MacArthur himself, who was
privy to all the details of Operation Rook; and the authors point out that,
unlike MacArthur, Humbug never faced any consequences for his actions, and, in
fact, retired as a major general.
Jumping off a sinking ship can bring its
rewards.
Just when Truman received the news of
MacArthur’s attempt to start a nuclear war is not certain. It was either late
that evening, Guam time, or more likely early on the morning of 11th
April. He apparently reacted with one sentence:
“I’m not going to crucify a hero; thank God
I have his insubordination to go on.”
The rest is history. That day, 11th
April (which was 12th April in Tokyo), Truman issued the order to
dismiss MacArthur[1]. Truman’s message to him read:
“I deeply regret that it
becomes my duty as President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States
military forces to replace you as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers;
Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command; Commander-in-Chief, Far East; and
Commanding General, U.S. Army, Far East.
You will turn over your
commands, effective at once, to Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway. You are authorized
(sic) to have issued such orders as
are necessary to complete desired travel to such place as you select.
My reasons for your
replacement, will be made public concurrently with the delivery to you of the
foregoing order, and are contained in the next following message.”
MacArthur actually heard of the dismissal
over the radio news, half an hour before the actual order arrived.
The plan to nuke North Korea and China was
finished, and the saga of Flying Flimflam was apparently over and done with.
Until, that is, one night in June 1998.
The
discovery of the Dae Yong Su39:
On the night of 23rd / 24th
June, 1998, the North Korean trawler Dae
Yong Su39, out of Kimchaek, was trawling for pollock along the Donghae
coast between its home port and Chongjin to the north, just within North Korean
territorial waters. Around midnight, one
of the trawls snagged something large and heavy, and the captain, Ro Byung-Min,
ordered it to be brought aboard to prevent the net from getting damaged. The
crew members found that they had caught a large piece of metal, which from its
appearance was obviously aircraft wreckage. It bore traces of lettering in
English, and, more importantly, part of the easily recognisable insignia of the
US Air Force.
The trawler crew, of course, had no way of
telling the age of the wreckage; it could easily have been from an American spy
plane or even from one which had attempted to attack North Korea. In any case,
it was within North Korean territorial waters, where it had no business being.
Captain Ro, accordingly, immediately radioed Kimchaek and reported the find.
The information was passed on to Korean People’s Army – Navy (KPAN) authorities
there, who immediately replied, ordering the Dae Yong Su39 to remain at the
spot until KPAN vessels could get there.
It was early morning by the time KPAN
vessels reached the scene, relieved Ro of his wreckage, and scanned the bottom
with sonar and other sensors. What they found made them seal off a large square
of sea and order the Dae Yong Su39 to
leave at once. Happy at being allowed to get on with their work, Ro and his
crew sailed away.
A North Korean trawler of the same type as the Dae Yong Su39 |
Because of the secrecy of the North Korean
military, what happened next would have remained unknown to the outside world
but for one thing. A liaison officer from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army
– Navy (PLAN) was attached to the KPAN at Kimchaek. His name was Hai Jun (Naval
Force) Commander Li Xiuquan, and he was, importantly, a specialist in maritime
salvage operations.
As Li (now a retired Hai Jun Commodore)
told Xavier many years later, he was contacted early on the morning of 24th
June by the KPAN local command office, and informed that a trawler had found
wreckage from an American aircraft offshore. He was told that retrieving this
aircraft was a priority and that his help in this matter would be greatly
appreciated.
By midday, Li (who, of course, had asked
for and received permission from his own superiors) had been taken by ship to
the site of the wreckage. Sonar scans of the bottom soon showed him that the
wreckage belonged to a middle sized aircraft. It lay partly buried in the bottom
silt forty metres below the surface, and was in four large pieces. Divers who
went down found the wreckage and reported that the plane appeared to be an old
bomber.
“The tail and both wings,” Li recalled,
“had broken away and lay at short distances from the fuselage, but all the
pieces were largely intact. The wreckage lay oriented towards the south east,
pointing away from the coast. I supervised the retrieval and raising first of
one wing, then of the tail, and last of all the fuselage. An attempt to raise
the second wing was abandoned when it began to disintegrate.”
According to Li, the wreckage was surprisingly free of marine growth. “It bore, however, clusters of
holes of a kind I had never seen. It took me some time to realise that they
were shell holes. Someone had shot this thing out of the air, and given the age
of the wreck, it was no great challenge to understand who that might have
been.”
Diagram of wreckage, created from the description of Li Xiuquan. Graphic from O'Brien/Xavier. |
Li’s description of the wreckage and its
disposition gives a clear picture of the last moments of Flying Flimflam. As
stated above, it was a Silverplate/Saddletree model bomber, meaning that its
armour plating had been removed to improve range and performance. Wang’s cannon
shells would have grievously damaged even a normal B29, but they ripped through
the skin of Flying Flimflam like tissue paper, most probably killing or
wounding several members of the crew. Finn and Thomas, in a desperate attempt
to evade the attack, sought refuge from the MiG by a shallow dive at top
speed into the cloud layer, heading meanwhile south east for the safety of Japan. And
when they emerged from the cloud, they were still diving, with the sea right below
them.
At the last moment, Finn and Thomas must
have tried to pull out of the dive, but with their enormously heavily laden and
badly damaged aircraft, it was far too late. The Flying Flimflam must have
struck the water almost horizontally, on its belly, the impact snapping off the
wings and tail. The heavily weighted fuselage would have filled with water and
sunk immediately, with the tail and wings following soon afterwards. It is
likely that any crew member who had not already been killed by cannon shells or
the impact would have drowned at once, without being able to get out of the
sinking aircraft.
After decades under water, exposed to
decomposition and scavengers, there was little left in the way of human
remains. Li’s account does not even mention them.
What he does
talk about, though, is far more interesting. As the wreckage was brought aboard,
sensors immediately detected radiation in the fuselage. It was soon traced to
the nuclear weapon core, which was still in the “birdcage” where it had been
placed in Guam. Since plutonium 239 has a half life of 24,110 years, and uranium
235 has a half life of 703,800,000 years – that’s right, seven hundred and three million, eight hundred thousand years – the
composite core was perfectly intact. And not only was it found, but the Mark 4
bomb was soon located, still in the bomb bay, and also totally intact. Its
aluminium casing , radar fuses, and the explosive lenses within had not been
damaged at all.
The next day, on returning to port, the
wreckage was immediately whisked away, along with its core and the bomb, and Li
never saw either again. When he asked if he could be of any help, he was
thanked by the KPAN and politely informed that his aid would not be required.
Li said that on later reflection he
realised that the KPAN had probably detected the radiation as soon as they had
located the B29, and realised what it contained, which is why they had raised
what was otherwise a valueless and ancient wreck at all. And because he was the
only maritime salvage expert they had handy, they had had to call him in. Once
they had retrieved it, though, they no longer needed him, and proceeded
accordingly.
The
significance:
This episode, which is nearly unknown to
the world, was actually of profound
importance to North Korea and to the balance of power in East Asia. In
1998, the North Korean nuclear weapons programme was still just finding its
footing. Designing an effective nuclear weapon from scratch is far from easy;
and having a bomb, even of a primitive decades-old design, to study was a
windfall for North Korean scientists. It pushed ahead their design programme by
several years. In 2002, after George W
Bush designated the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with Iran and
Iraq, to be part of the fictional “Axis of Evil”[17], Pyongyang
decided to develop nuclear weapons in self defence; and the basic technology
for the first crude bombs was by then already fully mastered. After that the path to
the DPRK’s present thermonuclear weapons capability was open, and any regime
change war, no matter what the rhetoric, emphatically out of the question.
By plotting to destroy North Korea with
nuclear weapons, Douglas MacArthur inadvertently made such destruction
impossible.
The ironies of history are delicious, aren’t
they?
Bibliography:
Enter
the Dragon: China At War In Korea, Russell Spurr, HarperCollins
Publishers, 1988.
Korea:
The Limited War, David Rees, Pelican Books, 1964.
The
Korean War: A History, Bruce Cumings, Modern
Library Chronicles, 2011.
Operation
Rook: Douglas MacArthur And The Nuclear Strike On North Korea, Harold O’Brien and Alan Xavier, Ãœberhaupt Publishers, 2018.
Sources:
Notes:
This is, like all reviews, an unavoidably
abbreviated and therefore incomplete version of the information laid out in O’Brien
and Xavier’s book. I cannot urge readers strongly enough to acquire a copy and
read it for themselves. Order
information and additional reader reviews can be found here.
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