MEN AT WAR: Story of a Helicopter

In the Korean war, U.S. helicopters with their big whirring rotors hover over the rugged battlefields, bringing supplies to cut-off units or rescuing the wounded from isolated spots that could not have been reached any other way. One of the men flying the ‘copters is Lieut, (j.g.) Charles Jones, a 28-year-old Kansan. Not long ago Lieut. Jones took off from the cruiser Rochester to find and rescue a Corsair fighter pilot who had been shot down over North Korea. The Navy does not consider it safe to use helicopters for night flying and Jones knew it would be dark before he could get back, but he volunteered to go on the mission anyway.

Just before sunset, Jones and his crewman, Marine Corporal Larry Whittall, spotted the downed fighter pilot. He had moved into an abandoned foxhole on top of a hill; U.S. fighter planes overhead were firing at swarms of Reds who were trying to get at him. Just as Jones was about to lower his helicopter for a landing, he ran into Red fire. “Guys were running out of a house taking pot shots at us,” Jones recalls.

Jones pulled back but decided to go in for a second try, hoping to lift the pilot out of his foxhole with a sling. “I was hovering over the pilot with the hoist sling down,” Jones reported later, “but he gave me a frantic wave-off, as small arms fire opened up all around us . . . I heard bullets hitting the helicopter and gas fumes began to fill the cockpit … I think he knew that he was done for and didn’t want us to get it too. He just wouldn’t take the sling . . .”

Finally, his rear gas tank hit and his controls damaged, Jones gave up. On the way back, Corporal Whittall had to lie on the floor of the cockpit, holding one of the controls in place with a knife. Jones knew he could not make it back to the Rochester, brought his craft down on the Han River in territory then still held by the Reds. Jones and Whittall took to their rubber life raft and reached an island in the river. As soon as the moon came up, they were rescued—by a helicopter.