Youngest Flying Ace in Korea: Lt Col Hank Buttelmann

Ken Harbaugh:

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I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Lieutenant Colonel Hank Buttelmann. Buttelmann served in the Korean war as a fighter pilot, flying the F-86 Sabre, and at 24 he became the youngest ace of the war.

Lt Col Hank Buttelman:

I graduated in pilot training Class 52 EC in August of 1952. And at that time we knew we were going to Korea, and I went on to advanced gunnery training at Nellis Air Force Base. And when we got to Nellis, they didn't have a full complement of Eighty-Sixers, so I started my initial training in the P-80. They had both aircraft there, but apparently they did not have enough of the 86 models so that everybody could start in the F-86 and go through the entire program. Some people did. It just so happened that I didn't. I did my initial part in the P-80, and then someplace halfway through I started to fly the 86. My only jet time up to that point was T-33's in advanced training, and then the P-80 in the initial part. And of course the P-80 was the first operational jet the Air Force had, but it had a lot of limitations to it. It was not half the airplane that the F-86 was. So, when I made the transition, a major transition, just a simply great airplane to go into the 86.

It was a faster airplane. It accelerated faster. It could go through the Mach, which the P-80 couldn't go through, could turn tighter. The hydraulic system, the control systems were better, the guns were better. Just everything. You name it, it was better on the F-86.

Well, when we came through pilot training, the requirement was to fill a lot of fighter slots. There were not many bomber slots to fill, and most of the guys that came through the training program at that time were slated to go into fighters, and eventually go on over into Korea into the fighter, either in the day fighter or the fighter-bomber role. I don't know how they chose the people to go into one operation. They had a ground operation and the day-fighter operation. We all went through Nellis doing both air-to-ground work, the full spectrum of air-to-ground work, and also a day-fighter work.

And then we were assigned to Korea, and some went on to fighter bomber and some went on over to day fighter. How you wound up at one wing versus another wing, I don't know. I wound up being assigned to the 51st Wing, and of course at that time, most of the people had heard about the 4th Wing, so a lot of us were trying to transfer over to get into the 4th Wing, because it had received most of the publicity. But that didn't work out. So, I was assigned to the 51st and eventually went on down there.

Everybody went through it. There were six rides that we had in the F-86 before we started to fly our combat missions. And most of it was ... I honestly don't remember. Some of it was in the local area. And then I don't know if we went up north of the 38th parallel, it's just been too long. But what they were six rides. I had six rides, some of which may have gone across the 38th parallel.

When we left Nellis, we were ready to go either into the fighter-bomber role or into the day-fighter role. Everybody was. And we knew what our job was going through Nellis, and that was that as a wingman it didn't make a difference, two or four. You positioned yourself on the leader, and you cleared the area to three o'clock to nine o'clock to the rear and protected him.

And during normal patrol you flew one type of position, and as you got into an engagement, then you picked a position a little bit further back in trail. But that was it. You were not a shooter. You're not to think as a shooter, only there to protect him while he was shooting and while he was maneuvering, while he was looking, or while he was in an engagement. You made sure that nobody slipped up on that particular element.

Well, here was the big thing for the guys that wound up at the 51st: For myself, I transitioned into a shooting position, a number-three position on my 57th mission. Talking with the guys from the 4th, the guys that went over with me that came out of pilot training Nellis and went on to the 4th, because they had a 5th Air Force headquarters. I think they called it Rear, at Kimpo. A lot of the people at that headquarters would fly with the 51st, rather than coming down south to Suwon, which was 20, 30 miles south of there to fly with us. They would simply go over there. Consequently, the guys at the 4th Wing didn't get checked out in a number-three position until many missions down, maybe 70, and I've heard as much as 80 and 90 missions. I've heard some that never got to check out in that position. That was a big plus for guys flying in the 51st. They had no other pilots that would come in and fly those positions, group-headquarters-type people. So, it was great for us.

Well, two things I was fortunate… basically I was lucky on. Number one, that I was with the 51st, which allowed me to check out in a number-three position early. Number two, I got checked out in a number-three position in mid-June, 19th of June. And at that time, the word was already out that the war was going to be over soon. They felt that it would be another month or two months and the war would be over. Because of that, the communists started to fly a lot more missions, and they were flying a lot of missions south of the Yalu River.

So, from mid-June until the end of the war there was a lot more MiG activity south of the Yalu River, in what they call MiG Alley between the Ch'ongch'on River and the Yalu River. So, I was lucky from two counts, and I mean lucky, very lucky.

We were up in MiG Alley, and at that time, most of the people were going up at altitude 35, 40,000 feet and looking to meet the MiGs at that particular altitude. We happened to be around ... I think we were around 30,000 feet, not that much higher. But anyway, I spotted three or four MiGs in a very oddball loose formation heading north. And I called them out to the leader and he rolled in after the MiGs, and he went after one set of MiGs and he was a little bit too far behind. He had popped the speed brakes out on the dive in, and came out a little bit behind. We were approaching the Yalu River at that time, and I was sitting well above him, 5,000 feet above him, and I just punched my brakes in, and closed in on a MiG and was able to get behind him, I was able to shoot him down. And no maneuvering. He never moved from straight and level, and I hit him about two or three times and I saw his canopy come off. And then I put about two more bursts into him and then he ejected. It was pretty simple, really not much to it.

We had a long drought period from January of 1953 up until June. I saw MiGs once as a wingman or I saw MiGs once, period, for all the missions that I flew. And so, guys were getting frustrated and when they started to fly a little bit more in June, that's when at least guys in my squad got a little bit more aggressive and then we started going across the river. And that's when we would run into more engagements, and the more engagements you would run into, sometimes you'd run into the better pilots, the Russian pilots versus the Chinese or the North Korean pilots. The North Korean pilots just simply weren't that good. They would get into an engagement and they wouldn't leave. They'd stay there and they'd fight with you. I've had a couple of engagements where it was hard to believe, but the pilot would never go from straight and level. He'd never move, versus when you got into what they call the Honcho, whatever he was, he'd maneuver. He would break. He would break hard. He'd be pulling maximum G's on you, and he would engage with you and he wouldn't let you go.

And were all the Honchos Russian pilots? I don't know. I suspect that the better ones were. I just don't think the North Korean pilots were that good. So, as the war went on and as it progressed during that short time period, yeah, you ran into some pretty good pilots.

The day that the MiG-15 entered combat in 1950, every single aircraft that the Far East Air Force had in Korea became obsolete. Our first-line fighters were the P-51 that was a World War II vintage, and then we had the P-80. And the MiG simply just ate up the 51, and it ate up the P-80. Not only did it do that, it ate up every other airplane they had up there. The B-26s, it ate up the B-29s. Every airplane we had was out of business when the MiG came in. Had we not had the 86 ... I know we had the F-84, but the F-84 was in a fighter-bomber role. It was basically not a day-fighter aircraft. Had we not had the F-86, I don't know. Hard to say, but the air war would have been extremely different, and possibly might have even affected the ground war because when the 86 came there, we got control of the skies, so that at least for the ground forces, they weren't hampered by strikes from the enemy anymore.

So, it could have been ... even the ground environment could have changed drastically without the 86. The 86 was an awfully potent weapon that we had, and it came at the right time, and it was in the right place.

The weapon systems on the MiG was a potent weapon. They didn't have a lot of ammo. They had a limited amount of ammo, but when they hit, they really gave you a lot of problems. Whereas the 50 calibers that we had, you'd see an airplane spark, and I don't think that that 50 caliber was going into the airplane. I think in some cases they were bouncing off. So, you pretty much had to hit them in a vulnerable spot up the tailpipe, into the engine, or into the cockpit or into the wing where the fuel was. In a vulnerable spot. And not all of them bounced off, but I'm sure that a lot of them did.

I had a lot of respect for the MiG. It had some excellent advantages, and I think in the hands of some better pilots, the war could have been a lot different. It had a higher service ceiling, a lot higher service ceiling than we had. Because it was lighter, it could out accelerate the F-86. And again, because it was lighter, it had a better climb rate than the 86. I don't think it could maneuver as good as the 86. Above 40,000 feet, the MiG was a much better airplane than the 86. It's when you got it down to a lower altitude, I think the 86, because of the control system that it had on, it could maneuver better. I think it had better control at higher speeds. And so, when you got down to a lower altitude, it was definitely a much better airplane. But it was a good airplane. I compare the MiG and the 86 to the Japanese Zero. It was a lighter airplane and it was a good airplane, and in many instances it was as good, if not better, than the P-51. I've heard a lot of tales about those engagements.

I had a lot of respect for the airplane, and I had even a lot more respect when I was flying against what was considered a Honcho, or a Russian pilot or whoever it was. A Honcho in that airplane, you had your hands full. So, it wasn't one of these deals that every time you went up and you had an engagement with a MiG, that it was a sure thing. It was far from that. If you got the right pilot, then it was a sure thing. But in the hands of a good pilot, that was a good airplane. That was a good airplane.

On my first mission, when I was checked out as number three, I just happened to look down, and I just happened to spot the airplanes flying low. And we went down and we got into the encounter. On my second time that I got another airplane, which was just a few days later, again, I got them low. Consequently, from there on I didn't patrol at 35, 40,000 feet. I went up at 30, 35,000 feet. And when I got into the area and my drop tanks went dry and I got rid of the tanks, then I started to drop down. I went down to maybe 25, 20, 25,000 feet, and I would look for them, and I just would invariably run into them. I think I heard later on that what they were doing was because most of the eighty-sixers were going high, that they were slipping in some of the less ... other pilots at lower altitudes, getting them into the area, giving them some experience, this type of thing. That's what I heard, which could have been.

Again, I was fortunate for the two reasons I had said before. Number one, I got checked out very early. I consider myself lucky to have been checked out. And other people were checked out, but we were checked out around in our 50th-plus missions. That was one thing. And the other thing was, the MiGs were flying. Had this happened five months prior to that, it would have been a different situation. The MiGs simply were flying from June till the end of the war.

And I believe that in June or July, between the 4th and the 51st, and the fighter-bomber guys who were also getting MiGs, we recorded the highest daily kill. I think we had ... 14 aircraft between all of the units were knocked off in one day. I think we had the highest weekly total, and I think we had the highest monthly total during that timeframe. It was a simple fact. They were flying, and if they're not flying, you're not going to get them.

And so, those were two factors that were very important in my success over there. They simply were flying, and I happened to be at the right wing, and I happened to be there at the right time. Like I said, I could have been there six months earlier and I probably wouldn't have been as successful as I was.

Generally, you flew with the members of your own flight most of the time. Every once in a while you would fly outside of the flight. Tremendous amount of competition in the day-fighter mission. A lot of camaraderie between all of the units, but within a specific squadron, if you had run into something, something that you knew as far as the MiG activity was concerned, not only did it stay within the squadron, but many times it would stay within the flight. And because simply there were just not that many MiGs flying.

Consequently, when you found something out, or if your flight or your squadron was going across the river, you held that information pretty close. So, there was a lot of information that just simply wasn't being passed around.

Well, you pretty much knew within your flight and you knew the guys outside of your flight, and you knew pretty much if they were going across the river, or if they were going to go across the river. I don't ever remember briefing that ... a mission that we were going across the river. Our briefings were not like fighter-bomber briefings, because our takeoff direction was the same every day. Our climb schedule was the same every day. Our level off was the same. Our drop tanks, we would drop at that particular time. The tactics were there. We didn't have to brief that. We pretty much briefed just the basic things of the channel changes and things like that. Nothing major like in the fighter-bomber role. And generally you knew when you got up there who you were flying with. If you didn't run into any MiGs within the first five or 10 minutes, if the guy that was flying the flight wanted to go across, he went across. And generally the man that was flying knew the people he was flying with, and he would not take people across the river that didn't want to go across the river.

So, you never really ... at least in the 25th Squadron, the one that I flew in, we didn't brief that, "Today we're going across the river." It was just that we knew the guys that we were flying with, and we knew who the leader was, and we knew that he would go across. If he decided he wanted to go across, fine. We would all go across.

As you know, the rules of engagement stated we could not go across. In short, hot pursuit you could go across. Obviously, you could not go across the river and talk about the fact that you were going across the river on unknown common channels.

What you did, you obviously designated a channel that you were going to operate on, and the moment you were going across, everybody got the word to change channels. You wouldn't tell what the frequency was. Everybody knew what it was. You changed channels, and away you went. If they happened to be monitoring that frequency, well, that's the way it went. But most of the times they were not monitoring those channels.

When we went up on a normal mission, in many cases the activity was so heavy that you couldn't get a word in edgewise. And that was dangerous, because if you were being attacked, and you had to break and you had to change the maneuvers or do something of that nature, there were so many people on there, you couldn't get the word out. Many people, even though when they stayed south of the river, went to a different channel. And for sure when you went across it you went to another channel. And you had a better chance of making sure that if you had a message to get out to the rest of the flight, that they got it, that it wasn't blanked out by somebody else.

The flight that I was in, that I was aware of, we didn't have anybody that did not want to go across. Unfortunately, I didn't know what that was as far as the other flights were concerned. There were a few that didn't want to go across. Who they were, I just didn't know. And when you flew with the other ... when you had a mixed flight and the leader wanted to go across, that's the way it goes. The guy didn't want to go across, you just simply have to go across.

I did hear of cases where the leader said, "Number-three man, take your wingman and we're heading north." I never ran into that myself. But if you had somebody that did not want to go across, it really, honestly, it wasn't fair to take him across. Even a number-three man, if he didn't want to go across, it was not fair to ask him to go across. The best thing to do was just say, "Stay here, patrol south of the river. We're going north." And that's the way it was handled.

From your association with the guys having chow at the club, going R&R and things like that, you had a good feel as to what guys would go across and what guys wouldn't go across. And like I say, in the flight that I was in, we didn't have any problem. I was not aware of anybody in my flight that would not go across. Now, whether they went across reluctantly, I don't know. But I just never had that problem, and that was great. It was really good.

I believe that you really had to want to engage and you had to look to engage. Of course, if you wanted to engage and you looked to engage, and there were no airplanes, it wouldn't make any difference. You could fly 200 missions and you wouldn't get an airplane. And as I said before, if you stayed south of the river and you wanted to engage during certain parts of the Korean War, you're in trouble, because they simply were not flying.

If you decided to go across the river, you opened up a lot of problems for yourself, simply because of the fact that "supposedly" up in Manchuria they were not part of the war, and that was neutral. And if you went up there and you were invading sovereign territory, and consequently you left yourself open to a lot of problems, number one, not coming back, and a lot of things. This was something that some guys had to consider. Was it worthwhile going over there just to get the MiGs?

These were some of the main factors as far as getting MiGs. Some guys did go across. Some guys went across and didn't get MiGs. Some guys went across and did get MiGs. It was a combination of factors. I think one of the most important ones were certainly that you had to want to engage. And then number two, I think that you could have been the best fighter pilot in the world, and if you didn't run into them, it didn't make any difference.

The only difference between World War II and Korea was speed. In fact, the armament on some of the World War II aircraft were better than what we had on the F-86 ... Look at the lightning, what that had, look at the armament that that thing had. And so, the big thing was the maneuvering was same, the tactics were the same, and everything was pretty much the same. You had to get in behind somebody less than a thousand feet. It was that simple.

And the Korean War was ... Well, for the most part, that was the last war where you really ran into what is considered dog fighting. As we went into the Southeast Asia War, all sorts of air-to-air missiles came in. The short range, the Sidewinder missiles, the medium range, the long-range missiles. And that was a situation where in many cases you didn't even have to see the enemy airplane. If you had him on a blip and you knew he was an enemy guy, and he was in the envelope of the missile that you were carrying, you launched the missile. There goes the missile, and in most cases you got a kill.

Yeah, the Korean War was the last of it. World War I, World War II and Korea, that was dog fighting. There may have been a few dog fights, as we know it, in Southeast Asia but most of it was basically the missile. And dog fighting now is a backup capability for operations, like in Desert Storm. The primary now, they've advanced so far beyond the gun dogfight stage from the Korean days now. It's unbelievable.

If for some reason you wind up inside your missile envelope, you could find a situation where you're back down to dog fighting. Obviously, you're going to try to get them with a long-range missile. And then you go to a short range, and then from there you go to something, like I say, the GAR-8, the Sidewinder missile. And if you get below that envelope, then you only got one thing left and you've got a dog fight.

So, the guys nowadays are a lot different. They've got a lot of systems that they've got to be familiar with, and dog fighting is one of them. So, they still teach it, but I don't think we'll ever see is a hundred percent dog ... I know you won't see a hundred percent dog fighting like we did back in Korea, and times prior to Korea.

I think that air-to-air is pretty much a personal type of thing. Our mission in Korea, the day-fighter role had been attained. In other words, the MiGs were not coming down. We had gotten control of the skies, and we had had that, and we could do all of that south of the river. And we could do it even south of the next river, the Ch'ongch'on River.

So, really the mission was over with. The MiGs, we controlled the ski. Getting MiGs became more of an individual personal accomplishment, because the overall mission had been resolved. We had the skies and they couldn't do anything. They couldn't attack our ground forces, and they couldn't attack the fighter-bomber guys. So, we had that pretty well in hand. I have to admit, for myself personally, it now became a personal thing to do.

Interviewer:

One last question. The day you became an ace and got your fifth kill, what did you feel when you got that fifth kill?

Hank Buttelman:

Well, obviously it was a great feeling. Everybody is trying to get the airplanes, and you work hard for it. It's important, and it's a great feeling that it could have been 10 or it could have been three, whatever it was. In this case it was five. You knew you had reached it, and you attained that status and it was a fantastic feeling. And I still remember my first kill. The first was fantastic. Just getting one was great.

And to be truthful, four is nothing. Six is not that much. Seven or eight or nine is not that much, but five was the number you shot for. Anything below that was nice. Anything above that was nice, but nothing like number five.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Lieutenant Colonel Hank Buttleman.

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