Talons and Beak
As the new decade of 1950 began, the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing of the U.S. 13th Air Force was based at Clark Air Force Base, Philippines. Its component squadrons—including the three squadrons of the 18th Fighter-Bomber Group—67th FBS, 12th FBS and the 44th FBS—were still completing “the transition from combined forces to primarily an overall Air Force installation…”
Operations Office, 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing, 1949, Clarke Air Force Base, Phillippines.
Nearly 80 percent of its personnel were Air Force and 22 percent were still SCARWAF (Special Category Army with Air Force).
[Acronyms will be spelled out the first time they are used in the text. An extensive Glossary can be accessed in the Glossary tab above includes all of the acronyms and technical terms used in this history.]
On 9 November 1949, Lt. Col. Henry H. Norman was the newly designated 18th Fighter Group Commander, replacing Col Marion Malcolm, who had completed his tour and returned to the Z.I. [Zone of the Interior, i.e. the continental United States]. Lt. Col. Ira F. “Ike” Wintermute was the Group Operations and Training Officer.
At about the same time, the 18th Group was given its first Lockheed F-80C “Shooting Star” aircraft. Actually, it was not the first F-80 the 18th squadrons had flown.
Norman presented the F-80C to Major Louis J. Sebille, Commander of the 67th Squadron, since the 67th had been the first squadron in the 18th to receive the new jets in 1946, following the end of World War II. The Group had not kept the jets for long and there had been several different “primary aircraft” to fly in the nearly five years since World War II—from P-80s to P-51 Mustangs, to P-47s and back to F-51’s again.
The “new” U.D. Air Force redesignated many former Army Air Forces aircraft in 1947.
The “Pursuit” Mustang was now the “Fighter” Mustang.
As 1949 turned into 1950, the 18th Fighter Group was re-designated the “18th Fighter-Bomber Group” and were once again heavily involved in converting to the Lockheed F-80C jet aircraft, a much improved version of the aircraft over its WWII predecessor.
Component squadrons of the 18th Fighter-Bomber Group, whose motto was “Unguibus et Rostro,” meaning “with talons and beak,” were completing the transition from prop aircraft into jet fighter aircraft.
[Note: “Unguibus et Rostro,” was approved for the 18th Group on 21 Feb 1931 and for the 18th Wing on 17 Apr 1953 just prior to the Korean Armistice.]
“Our F-80’s arrived, and after four years I finally got my chance to fly it,” recalled Col. Howard “Scrappy” Johnson. “The group converted to brand new P-80C’s in late 1949. They arrived by ship and were assembled at our depot. They painted big lightening stripes down the side and our names just below the canopy. They looked great sitting on the ramp. My first flight in one was a wonderful thrill. We flew our old P-51s down to Manila and gave them to the Philippine Air Force. I did not know it at the time, but the P-51 and I would cross paths again in the near future.”
“The transition to F-80s did not go as smoothly as checking the kids out in the P-51,” Johnson noted.
“One day Lieutenant Lacy augured in on final approach. He’d obviously stalled it out turning on to final. I was the airdrome officer that day and was at the scene as the fire truck arrived. The plane was spread out over about one hundred yards. I found the firemen spraying foam on the tail section and angrily directed them to spray the cockpit. It wouldn’t have mattered though, the kid was already dead.”
Captain Harry “Mo” Moreland was “in the mobile control to witness his landing. We used an overhead 360 degree landing pattern,” Moreland explained.
Captain Harry "Mo" Moreland.
“His pattern was too tight and I instructed him to break it off, go around and try again. Instead he tried to pull it in tighter, stalled and crashed on the runway.”
There were other young pilots in the air at the time taking their first test flights in the F-80.
“As a result of that accident we almost had another one. A Lt. Lang was airborne at the same time on his first ride in the F-80. We had to close the runway due to Lt. Lacy’s accident and were using the taxiway to land on. Lang was so shook up that it took several passes to get him on the ground and it was a rough landing,” Moreland remembered.
There was an ironic but very sad aftermath to Lt. Lyle’s death, Johnson recalled. The following day, Lyle’s wife arrived. “He had met her in a bar in San Francisco and had married her the day his ship sailed, after having known her for only two days. Lieutenants do strange things.”