ARMED FORCES: Incident in Death Alley

Prowling the uneasy aerial no man’s land between East and West one clear day last week, a U.S. Navy P4M Mercator patrol plane lumbered along at 7,000 ft. above the Sea of Japan, 55 nautical miles east of the North Korean coast. A few minutes after noon, Tail Gunner Donald E. Corder, 20, aviation electrician’s mate, spotted two red-starred MIGs, already boring down in a gunnery run on the Mercator. Their guns began to spit bullets. “They’re firing at us,” he shouted into the intercom. Lieut. Commander Donald Mayer, 35, barked a fireback order. But cross-conversation blocked the intercom, and the command came too late. Communist armor-piercing bullets ripped up the Mercator’s two 20-mm. tail guns, riddled Corder with 40 shrapnel wounds, set his flight suit ablaze.

Lame and defenseless, the 395-m.p.h., four-engined Mercator (curiously designed, with two turbojets and two piston engines) was a sitting duck. The 670-m.p.h. Red jets swooped down in six passes altogether, scored 15 to 20 damaging hits, knocked out both starboard engines, and left the rudder usable only by its trim tabs. While Plane Commander Mayer kept a lookout, Lieut. Commander Vincent Joseph Anania, 39, the copilot at the controls, put the plane into a steep, top-speed dive and leveled out just 50 ft. above the sea. The MIGs broke off. Mayer ordered all movable equipment dumped overboard and, alternating at the controls with Anania, lucked his smoking, limping Mercator back 300 nautical miles to a landing at Miho, Japan.

No Guns. Unfortunately, the Navy then performed with far less skill on the public-relations front. After Tail Gunner Corder was taken to a hospital (his condition: very good), the 13 other crewmen were hustled into a press conference. Why, correspondents wanted to know, had the Mercator not fired back with its other weapons — two .50-cal. guns in the top turret and two 20-mm. guns in the nose? Replied Pilot Mayer: The guns were inoperative. Why? Well — because of a lack of spare parts, which “are very difficult to get.” Would the Navy make gun parts available for future hazardous missions? Answered Rear Admiral Frederic Stanton Withington, 57, U.S. naval commander in Japan: “I will sure do my best.”

It was a gaffe heard round the world. Editorialists were reminded of Pearl Harbor, exploded in wrathful indignation. The press and the politicos cried for courts-martial of the brass responsible for the parts goof. President Eisenhower demanded an immediate report.

No Reason. Navy Chief Arleigh Burke grabbed a radio telephone to Admiral Withington in Tokyo and learned the embarrassing truth: the Mercator lacked no parts. Its nose and top guns had been dismantled to make room for top-secret radar and infra-red gear, used in mapping and aerial photography. And the damaged Mercator was returning from a reconnaissance mission along the North Korean coast when it was fired upon.

There was no reason for the Navy to be red-faced about the truth. The mission was perfectly legal; electronics-crammed planes patrol regularly outside the Communist-claimed twelve-mile limit. Their missions are essential; it is the prime duty of U.S. forces to keep track of the relentless Communist buildup at key Asian jumping-off points. The Mercator’s flight was part of the hazardous duty that crewmen long ago came to accept as normal in the Asian aerial no man’s land. Since the Korean armistice of 1953, Communist and U.S. planes have exchanged fire no fewer than 14 times along Asian coasts. The grim results: 36 U.S. airmen lost, ten Communist fighter pilots shot down.