Low, slow: the T6 mosquitoes

The 6147th badge.

Gus Breen boards his T6 Texan for a spotting mission. Photo provided by AWM

Lt AE (Gus) Breen (right) shakes hands with Col J Greening (USAF), after the presentation of the US Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal.

Gus Breen at the door of the Ops room.

A T6 Texan at rest.

The wreckage of Gus’s aircraft. Note the barely-opened aft canopy – no one knows how he got clear, complete with his parachute.

Life got very interesting watching Chinese tracer rounds whip past your canopyaccording to Gus Breen. A 2RAR platoon commander in Korea, he’d been seconded to the US Air Force as a navigator and spotter. Gus tells his story to Cpl Cameron Jamieson

Lt Gus Breen couldn’t believe his luck when the decision was announced. Three junior Australian officers were to be seconded to the 6147th Tactical Control Group, US Air Force, for three months, to work as observers with the unit’s airborne tactical air control aircraft.

Breen had arrived in Korea as a reinforcement platoon commander for 1RAR, but had stayed on to serve with 2RAR after 1RAR’s rotation back to Australia.

The idea of being assigned to flying duties amused Breen, as his record for flying consisted only of his flights from Australia to Korea via Japan.

His new job would have him provide navigation and target spotting support for the American pilots who flew the unit’s T6 Texan aircraft.

These planes were World War 2 propeller-driven training aircraft that had been pressed into active service to mark ground targets for jet aircraft.

Jets, a fairly new weapon during the Korean War, suffered from a lack of range, with fuel consumption one of the greatest threats to their chances of returning from a mission.

There was also a need for the fighter-bombers to deliver their ordinance against targets very close to friendly forces.

This led to the use of T6 aircraft as spotting and target marking platforms for the attacking jets.

The slow speed of the Texans allowed them to loiter in their patrol areas, accurately mark the targets and then call in their fast-moving brothers.

The T6s could then carry out a post-strike inspection to assess damage.

The trouble was, the slow-moving T6s were armed only with smoke rockets and the pilots’ individual Colt .45 pistols – not much use for defending yourself against a nest of angry Chinese soldiers armed with automatic weapons, anti-aircraft artillery and all the hatred they possessed.

Mosquito squadron

Breen joined 6148 Tactical Control Squadron on Easter Sunday 1953, one of two tactical control aircraft squadrons that made up the 6147 Tactical Control Group, known as the “Mosquitoes”.

The Chinese themselves had given the insect nickname to the unit.

It was derived from the constant drone the T6 engine made as it plodded over enemy terrain in search of targets.

And just like its namesake, the Chinese quickly learnt that while small and noisy, the Mosquitoes were very deadly.

It became apparent that if the T6s spotted and marked you as a target, then very soon you would have an avalanche of bombs landing on your lap.

The solution was simple: shoot down or make the Mosquito turn away, and then you wouldn’t get marked and bombed.

You could even have a second chance at killing the Mosquito when it returned to inspect the damage.

Naturally, the Chinese solution made life very interesting for the T6 crews, as they watched the enemy’s tracer rounds whip past their canopy.

Behind the lines

Australians were few and far between at K-47 airfield in Chunchon.

Breen remembers how he and his fellow Australian officers walked into the officer’s mess to find the Americans rolling dice to win drinks.

“We had no American money, but one guy said ‘God damn, it’s an Aussie! I’ll give you fifty dollars for your hat!’

“We were really welcomed and made to feel completely at home.”

The first week was spent undergoing medical examinations, being issued flying gear and attending briefings.

Finally, Breen was released to fly, and he spent his time flying missions in the US IX Corps sector based on the Chorwon Valley and the Iron Triangle areas in the central region of Korea.

The Mosquitoes flew from dawn to dusk in relays, with one aircraft allocated to each of the five Corps sectors across Korea.

They operated up to 12 miles behind enemy lines, looking for hidden enemy targets such as artillery and mortar positions, anti-aircraft emplacements, bunker systems and storage caves.

It was a busy time, as the Mosquitoes were in high demand from the UN forces, and received plenty of attention from the communist forces.

Under fire

“The Chinese used 20mm cannons, and when they go past the canopy they look like golf balls, you can see the red flashes going past,” recalls Breen.

“We constantly did evasive action, we’d fly up, down, do rolling turns, ducking and weaving, particularly when we went behind the Chinese lines.

“We would fly at about 3000 feet above ground level, which isn’t very high, and when you’d pull out of a rocket run you’d be well under a thousand feet.

“I was hit twice, the first time on my 11th mission.

“Two 20mm cannon shells hit the port wing, and I heard the ‘bang-bang’ and wondered ‘what the hell was that?’

“The pilot went straight down into a dive, because he knew what it was.

“On my 48th mission an enemy bullet left a furrow along the wing, but we only knew about it when we returned to base and the crew chief pointed it out.”

Up to this stage, Breen had been fairly lucky.

But luck is a finite thing, and soon Breen’s luck took a change for the worse.

Crash landing

Breen isn’t sure if it was enemy fire or mechanical problems that caused the engine to suddenly run rough that day.

“I was on my 52nd mission, flying with Danny Reale (US Air Force), and we were controlling air strikes over a hotspot on Whitehorse Mountain, to the west of the Chorwon Valley.

“Danny thought we wouldn’t get home, so he decided to do an emergency landing on an L strip.”

The L strips were rough airfields used by the light aircraft employed in artillery spotting.

The strips weren’t made for use by jets and Mosquito aircraft, but they at least offered a fairly safe place to crash-land in an emergency.

“As we turned to land, we noticed there were about 30 Korean laborers chipping away at the far end of the strip, cleaning it up and filling in holes.

“As on every L strip there was a control jeep, and Danny was yelling over the radio for the controller to get the laborers off the strip.

“The controller was doing his best, but he wasn’t fast enough.

“We didn’t hit the strip until we were about a third of the way along, and the Koreans were still there, leaning on their hoes and looking at us coming at them.

“We would have gone straight through the middle of them, because we didn’t have enough strip left on which to stop.

“So Danny hit the power and we had climbed up about 30 feet, just clearing some communications cables, when the motor quit and we came down like a stone.

“We hit the ground and the plane came apart.”

Reale’s harness broke on impact, and he was left dazed and bloodied when his head hit the instrument panel.

Breen had quickly evacuated the aircraft and immediately went to his pilot’s aid, conscious of the smoldering white phosphorous rockets that had broken away from their wing-mounts and lay scattered around the aircraft.

Together they ran from the aircraft and were met by members of the nearby artillery unit.

Reale was taken to their RAP, and the following day they returned to their unit for more missions.

Indestructible youth

When asked about the prospect of being shot down behind enemy lines, Breen remembers the optimism of youth.

“I didn’t have too many thoughts about that,” Breen recalls.

“I always had a strange feeling, during my 12 months in Korea, that nothing was going to happen to me.

“I worked on that premise and nothing did happen to me.”

After completing 75 missions, Breen returned to 2RAR as a platoon commander and saw further fighting during the battalion’s occupation of the area known as “the Hook”.

He returned to Australia after a stint in Japan and later received the US Distinguished Flying Cross and Flying Medal for his service with the Mosquitoes.

He later went on to a successful civilian career in marketing, but his time spent in the skies of Korea is still very much a part of his life.