July 1950
Han River Pontoon Bridge
Those tactics worked especially well on one “rough” mission, soon after the Mustangs were thrown into the war.
They were assigned the task of “trying to knock out a pontoon bridge the Reds had set up across the Han River at Seoul,” Biteman reported.
Heavy bombers had knocked out the road and railroad bridges across the river, but the Communists quickly brought in sections for a pontoon bridge, erected only at night, and dismantled and hidden during the day.
“The bombers were unable to knock it out, because they seemed to always be just a few minutes too late, and couldn’t catch the bridge in place. Since it was on their primary supply route and a choice target, the Reds had set up heavy anti-aircraft batteries on both ends of the bridge and in the towns on either side—one of the few such heavily defended sites in Korea at the time. Several of our fighter flights had been diverted by the heavy ground fire before they could take good aim on the bridge sections.”
Lt. Duane "Bud" Biteman
In late July 1950, 1st Lieutenants Bill Slater and Bud Biteman “were elected” to try again to knock out the pontoon bridge. Knowing the target was heavily defended, they planned the mission in more detail than most of their recent “armed recce” flights.
“We knew we’d have to arrive over the river before dawn’s first light to catch it in place or in use, but we’d need to have enough light to see and to aim at the bridge.”
They planned for two other ships to approach the area at higher altitude—above 10,000 feet and out of range of the flak—heading in a southwest to northeasterly direction. At the exact time that the decoy planes would be over the bridge, holding the attention of all flak batteries, Biteman and Slater “would sweep wide around the low hills in the east, coming down the river flat on the water, to skip bomb the pontoons—we hoped—then continue down river, staying on the water, and on out to sea near Inchon before climbing to return toward the south.”
Taking off at 0400 from the dark, unlighted, rough field at Taegu, blinded by dust from the two lead ships “was a memorable thrill in itself,” he remembered, “but once airborne we could navigate through the dark by following the line of burning villages.
In less than an hour we had reached our IP (identification point) south of Seoul, where the other pair of fighters continued their climb while Bill and I cautiously eased down into the dark hills, with just enough light growing in the east to tell when we were low enough for safety.”
After reaching the Han River, about ten miles upstream from the bridge, Biteman signaled the others, who turned toward Seoul, while he and Slater “put on full throttle and dropped down into the river bed.”
As expected, “all hell broke loose when the high flight approached the bridge, with four separate flak batteries lighting up the sky below them. We knew from their evasive action that they’d never be able to get a halfway decent bombing run on the bridge, even if they were foolish enough to try it, but their decoy was working well, because all of the guns were shooting skyward—not one was aimed at us, yet.”
Slater sighted on the south shore, when they got close enough to see the pontoons—with a tank and a truck still trying to make it across.
Biteman, on his right wing, picked the north supports.
The pair raced down the river and toggled their bombs off simultaneously, broadside against the bridge, “and immediately rolled hard to the sides to miss our bomb blasts.”
Lt. Bill Slater
Slater rolled up over the hill on the south, right over the flak batteries, and Biteman turned north over the town, momentarily, then rolled onto his back and angled back to the river just before coming abreast of Kimpo airfield. Rolling right-side-up again, he dropped as low into the river bed as he could “without hitting the water, and started making violent skidding turns from side to side, because when I looked behind me I could see a trail of large white puffs following each and every turn I made. The flak batteries at Kimpo had my altitude and range boxed in, but so far they hadn’t tuned in to my airspeed—and I damned sure was not going to hang around and let them test their abilities.”
As he jinxed away from the target as fast as he could, Biteman huddled lower and lower into the cockpit, “to get as much protection as I could from the sheet of armor plate behind the seat.”
He almost did not see the set of high-tension power lines strung across the river west of Kimpo airfield.
With a quick “pop” of the stick, he ducked under the lines, then pulled hard back, to climb for maximum altitude, still “towing” his trail of white flak puffs behind, “looking for all the world like a strange, surrealistic, giant popcorn string decorating a Christmas tree!”
He called Slater, who had stayed on the deck until he had passed the town of Suwon, before climbing to join the other pair of fighters, and told them he would meet them north of Taejon.
As far as they knew, none of them had been hit by ground fire, and they had knocked out the prized pontoon bridge—“with a tank and a truck for good measure.”
The successful flight “felt good” as they looked for more targets for their rockets and machine guns on the way back to Taegu. In fact, they “caught” several more trucks and “were back on the ground before breakfast—a very successful mission all the way around.”
The North Koreans replaced the pontoon bridge less than a week later, but the risky sortie delayed supplies and caused them “to jam up on the roads and railroads north of the Han River, where a flight of B-29s caught a mass concentration a couple of days later,” Biteman recalled.
By the end of July, North Korean military forces had conquered the entire Korean peninsula except the area southeast of Hamch’ang and bordered by the Naktong River—it was soon called “The Pusan Perimeter.”