They Spread Their Wings (31 page)

Another type of operation undertaken was that of night-time weather reconnaissance, mainly, judging by the entries in Alan’s logbook, gathering ‘met’ data on the east side of Korea, which took some aircraft to within 50 miles of Vladivostok, but occasionally along the west side of Korea, over the Sea of Japan. Patrols were made both by day and night, with durations varying between eight and twelve hours or more, influenced by detours made to investigate shipping ‘targets’ and the weather conditions encountered. The roomy, on-board galley was a boon on these long-duration flights. During the intense cold of the winter, flying in the unheated Sunderland was extremely uncomfortable and hot food and drink, prepared by ‘off-watch’ crew members, became indispensable. The only problem was that the cold could be so bad that hot food and drink was best consumed in the galley out of the cooking utensils because it was liable to go stone cold if it was carried through the aircraft. In addition to his radio duties, Alan frequently manned the centimetric Mk 6C ASV search radar, which was considered very effective (some said it could detect a floating sardine tin at 10 miles) and played a key role in the detection of surface vessels during these Korean patrols. When within 50–70 miles’ range of a coastline this radar also became a useful navigation aid in poor weather or to assist the navigator in obtaining a pin-point ‘fix’.

Take-off from Iwakuni on 16 July 1950 was at 06.20, with Alan flying in PP114 as WOp/AG and ASV radar operator, under the command of Flt Lt Hunter. This first patrol, a daylight reconnaissance in area Fox Able, lasted twelve hours thirty minutes, but was uneventful and the flying boat landed at Okinawa. A short ten-minute hop to White Beach, Okinawa, for refuelling allowed them to make the four-hour trip back to Iwakuni a couple of days later. On 27 July Alan’s crew was rotated back to Kai Tak to be replaced by a different aircraft, but just half an hour into the flight, the radio packed up and they had to turn back to Iwakuni. Since these Sunderland crews were each made up of, and ran like, a close-knit independent ‘family’ of highly qualified tradesmen and technicians, they were able to carry out most of the routine maintenance and repair tasks. Based on experience, too, each boat carried a wide range of spares for just such occasions. This problem was sorted out and the next day they took off again, completing the twelve-hour flight non-stop, but this time with some VIPs aboard: the AOC Far East and AOC Hong Kong, no less! The remainder of August at Kai Tak was spent in practising photo recco, air gunnery and bombing in Kowloon Bay, mixed with general flying and air testing in the local area. On the 8th, however, Alan was in PP114 on a photo recco of some Chinese gun positions near Lemas, on the frontier with China, when the peace of the day was shattered by ugly black splodges of AA bursts. Alan noted in his logbook: ‘… fired on by the Reds, AA quite accurate.’ Fortunately no damage was done.

A week later Alan was back at Iwakuni and his second and third ops, as WOp/AG, came on 10 and 16 September. They were both twelve-hour night reconnaissance flights over the Yellow Sea in Sunderland ML745 ‘B’ – which was now the crew’s regular aircraft – with Flt Lt Hunter in command. Both were equally uneventful, although on one of the days in between, three aircraft had to fly to Okinawa to dodge a typhoon. On the flight back to Iwakuni, Alan noted that ML745 ‘B’ flew in formation with Sunderlands ‘A’ and ‘C’. On reaching Iwakuni they did the second op, then on 18 September all three aircraft returned to Kai Tak. A week’s rest then back they went to Iwakuni for a slightly longer spell of ops this time. On the 27th the crew of ML745 did an uneventful twelve-hour patrol over the Yellow Sea, then with Alan manning the radar set on the 29th they did a six-hour patrol searching for shipping from Pusan north to the 38th parallel and back. By the end of September Alan had accumulated fifty-five Korean operational hours by day and night.

October 1950 was a varied month for the crew. Operation No 6, made in RN277 ‘D’, was a ten-hour air surveillance patrol along the Korean coast and the Tsushima Strait. While the Sunderland crews were rotated on ops, the ‘resting’ crews picked up a number of odd jobs. For example, on the 6th, Flt Lt Hunter and crew in ML745 were ordered to do the one-hour transit to Sasebo (the US Navy Fleet’s base) to collect some VIPs: C-in-C Far East Station Admiral Sir Patrick Brind and his staff. Alan’s crew was briefed to fly Sir Patrick to Yokosuka then return to Iwakuni with twenty-seven US Navy ratings. After that interlude it was ML745’s turn to go on ops again. With Alan on wireless and radar, op No 7 was an air surveillance patrol to the Wonsan area of Korea, during which the aircraft stood guard over the US Navy aircraft carrier USS
Leyte
, part of TF–77, circling it while it was being refuelled at sea. Op No 8 was a special transit trip in ML745 carrying a certain Captain Bauer of the US Navy from Iwakuni to Chinghai Bay in Korea and back.

Alan flew operation No 9 as WOp/Radar in ML745 ‘B’ with Flt Lt Sims in command for the first time and Fg Off Boston as co-pilot. Take-off was at 06.10 on 15 October and involved a ten hour twenty minute recco from Iwakuni to Area Fox and back via Inchon and Taegu. Op No 10 came a couple of days later when Alan carried out air gunner and radar duty in ML745 flown by Flt Lts Sims and Laidlay. They flew to Area Fox again with a prowl down the west coast of Korea on the lookout for floating mines. On the 19th it was back to Kai Tak in PP155 ‘P’, where Alan took some would-be flying boat air gunners up for a couple of hours’ turret gunnery instruction and firing on splash targets out in the bay. By the end of October 1950, Alan had logged 101 hours on Korean ops and worked for a while at Kai Tak before he was sent back to Seletar on 21 November for a couple of weeks’ leave; he made the ten-hour air trip via Saigon in a RNZAF Dakota, NZ3543, flown by Fg Off Innes. On 4 December he made the long trek back to Kai Tak in Sunderland NJ272 ‘A’ and it was 22 January 1951 before he returned to Iwakuni for his next (eleventh) operational flight. This was on the 24th as signaller and air gunner in ML745 ‘B’ once again. With Flt Lt Hunter in command they made an air surveillance patrol to the Wonsan area and also gave top cover to a US Navy refuelling operation. Four days later, on the night of the 28/29th, the crew, with Alan on ASV radar duty, carried out a mundane night weather and ‘met’ recco along the Korean east coast.

February and March 1951 were busy months for the flying boats and Flt Lt Hunter’s crew completed op Nos 13 to 21 before being relieved. The Korean winter weather was pretty severe and during this mixture of day and night-time flying the Sunderland encountered icing conditions on several occasions. Alan carried out a combination of ASV radar, signaller and air gunner duties on these ops:

Flt Lt Hunter’s crew left for Kai Tak on 10 March 1951 in ML882 and spent the next three months at this base, honing the crew’s skills in each of their trades during comparatively short sorties. In Alan’s case, he manned the ASV radar, practised radio homings and fired on splash and towed targets with the beam. 50in guns while the turret gunners did likewise. Flt Lt Hunter and the navigator practised bombing routines – all of this seemed to signify that their efforts might soon be directed towards Malayan operations.

Indeed, the next phase of Alan Summerson’s flying career – it might even be regarded as only an ‘interlude’ in his Korean ops – came on 15 June 1951 when No 88 Squadron moved from Kai Tak to Seletar to begin air operations in support of the British Army fighting a counter-insurgency campaign in the Malayan jungle against communist terrorists (CT). This campaign was known as Operation Firedog, and since these sorties were classed as ‘operations’, Alan’s number of combat ‘ops’ began to mount up once more. Sortie briefings were given by an army liaison officer who, acting on intelligence material, allotted a specific target area of about 5 or 10 square miles in which the aim was to disrupt terrorist movements. The general idea was for the army to loosely encircle a suspected CT area with troops who would liaise by radio with the RAF. The area might be ‘softened up’ first by Avro Lincolns dropping 500-pounders or Bristol Brigands bombing or firing rocket projectiles (RPs). The Sunderland would transit to the designated area, with the signallers such as Alan in contact with the ground, then fly a pattern up and down dropping bombs from about 1,700ft, or a bit lower depending on the cloud base, and laying down gunfire until ground troops closed in to take up the fight. The flying boats carried up to 260 x 20lb HE fragmentation bombs fitted with proximity fuses. The bombing method was an ‘interesting’ procedure (to say the least!).

Explosive bedfellows! Crates of 20lb bombs aboard a Sunderland, Operation Firedog, 1951. (V.M. Reeve via John Evans & Pembroke Dock Sunderland Trust)

Before take-off, the moveable universal carriers on the four bomb rails – two each side – which could take sixteen of the 20lb bombs, were loaded. Once that first stick had been dropped conventionally by the navigator from the bomb-aimer’s position, the process of reloading the racks in flight was found so awkward, time-consuming and fatiguing in the hot climate that the crews adopted a ‘local method’ of dropping the remainder of their lethal cargo by hand. The ‘reloads’ of 20-pounders were therefore stored in wooden crates, tucked into any spare space on the floor of the bomb room and the galley, and then dropped out of one side hatch of the bomb room or the galley hatch
by hand
, as instructed by the navigator. He stood on the flight deck with a stopwatch, target photo and bombing pattern and gave orders over the intercom when to start and stop bombing. Two or three of the crew would organise a human chain so that a bomb was picked up, its arming pin removed, handed to the ‘dropper’, who on the command ‘start bombing’ would let it go. The ‘dropper’ then continued to throw out a bomb every two or three seconds until ordered to ‘stop bombing’. The pilot would bring the aircraft round on to a new bombing track and the process was repeated until all the designated area had been covered and all the bombs dispensed. The number of bombs to be carried and the drop interval required was carefully worked out by the navigator prior to the sortie. Primitive but effective! The bombing element of the sortie usually lasted about two hours and this was followed by an hour of low-level strafing by all the guns with the exception of the four fixed. 303s – the angle was too flat for those – while flying at around 100ft above the dense jungle canopy.

For Flt Lt Hunter’s crew, with Alan as signaller and air gunner, the first Firedog sortie began at 08.55 on the morning of 19 June 1951. Sunderland V, ML882 ‘A’ took off from the sheltered waters of Seletar for a sortie lasting seven hours ten minutes to an area east of Ipoh, 40 miles inland from the Malayan coast and about 700 miles north of base. Over the target area a total of 120 x 20lb HE bombs were dropped into the jungle canopy before the flying boat turned for home. Firedog (FD) ops 2 to 4 came at two-day intervals during the rest of the month, with Nos 2 and 3 being shorter, three-hour sorties during which 120 x 20lb HE bombs were dropped on targets in the Johore district. Alan also came into his own during these sorties with the opportunity to exercise his air to ground gunnery skills. The three air gunners on board managed to fire off a total of 6,000 rounds between them during the second sortie and 4,500 on the third. On 26 June the fourth sortie took ML882 back to Ipoh where the usual bomb load was dropped and 4,000 rounds fired.

The next day it was ‘all change’, and Alan’s crew flew back to Kai Tak. While there, Alan had several opportunities to display his other skills at the ASV radar with some successful interceptions on RN surface vessels and a submarine. There was no time for complacency, though, and ML882 winged its way back to Seletar on 6 July. In the days between 10 July and 2 August ML882, captained by Flt Lt Hunter, took Alan and the crew on Firedog op Nos 5 to 14. These sorties of between three and seven hours all had similar profiles and took them to targets in the Raub, Ipoh, Malacca, Perak, Rompin, Pahang and Johore Baeru areas. Bomb loads were usually 160, 232, 240 or 264 x 20lb HE – larger quantities being carried on shorter sorties – and in those ten sorties 2,140 x 20lb bombs were deposited on the jungle, while the turret air gunners, with Alan manning one of the beam. 50s, had plenty of firing practice by loosing off a total of 45,000 rounds on to the heads of the insurgents.