Q: You were also involved in the bombing campaigns in the Korean War. Can
you describe that campaigns?
JE: Yeah, I sure can. We were flying out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, and I
had my 30 airplanes, 30 crews...We bombed around the Pusan perimeter, where the
American forces and the South Korean forces were back down...and we banged
around there until they...started moving north. We bombed Seoul, oil
refineries and manufacturing plants on up, all the way up to the Russian
border....
When we ran out of factories to bomb, we started in on bridges. And the
bridge operation was quite interesting. I'd go up with a list. We maybe would
have, oh, 15 airplanes up on that day. And I'd be up with one of the crews,
and each would have been assigned a bridge to hit, dropping bombs one at a
time. And we'd figured out the best fusing on our bombs for the various kinds
of bridges, and the best angle at which to hit them. And then the [crews]
would check in with me when they had knocked their bridge into the water, or
when they'd used up all their bombs and their bridge was still standing, so I
was able to keep track of it and shuffle them around. Somebody's sunk his
bridge and--and still had some bombs left, I could switch him over to another
target.
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