Shooting Blanks Top-Secret Cold War Recce Missions

- James P. Busha

Learning to Fly a Blowtorch and Shoot a Camera

We didn’t have a T-33 dual trainer to get us ready for the F-80, so they just gave us a blindfold cockpit check. You had to know where every switch was in that F-80, then they helped you fire it up and then said, “Go.” And of course, it had a 15-to-1 boost through the hydraulic system, which we weren’t used to. Comparatively speaking, the P-51 is pretty heavy on the controls, and everybody that took off wobbled on takeoff for about five minutes and then you slowly got used to it. We flew photography missions around California, assigned to make a mosaic of a certain area. Clyde East (WW II recce P-51 ace) was a flight commander, and I was a second lieutenant when I came into the squadron. I liked him, and we called him “Hundred Percent East.” If you were on his wing on takeoff, you better not be lagging because you wouldn’t catch him. Most leads would give you a couple percent in order to play with as a wingman, but Clyde was full up on the throttle. By 1952, I had almost 400 hours of recce time flying around taking pictures. And then in 1953, I went to Korea where I received my baptism by fire.

In April of 1953, I was stationed at Kimpo, K-14, home of the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, “The Cotton Pickers,” flying RF-80s and RF-86s. We shared our base with Aussies, flying Meteors, and the 4th Fighter Group, flying F-86s.