"Out on a limb"

Flight Journal, Aug 1999 by Dietz, Jim

The North Koreans called them "mosquitoes" because when they looked up and saw a T-6 buzzing around them, they knew they were in for it. Shortly after the annoying buzz of the aging Texan ceased, the screams of rocket-laden P-Sls or the new jet fighter/bomberson their way downhill to deliver death and destruction to the Communist supply lines-would come. The T-6 tactical coordinators (TACPs) of the 6147 Tactical Control Group may have been old and outdated, but as deadly hunting dogs that pinpointed game for heavily armed aerial hunters, they were universally feared by the enemy.

The speed of the fast fighter/ bombers, particularly the jets, did not allow the pilots to adequately see and target the highly camouflaged positions and vehicles of the North Koreans. They needed a small, slow yet maneuverable aircraft with an observer who could mark the enemy positions with smoke bombs or rockets. The T-6 was fast enough to evade enemy attacks, had adequate visibility to truly observe targets, could be equipped with the necessary communication gear (eight-channel AN/ARC-3 radio sets) to talk fighter/bombers into targets and could carry target rockets to mark sites.

The men called to fly these missions learned to live a kind of gypsy life; they were moved from air base to air base as U.N. forces retreated southward from the North Korean flood. They were quite literally "out on a limb," not only needing to complete their operational objectives in the air, but also having to leave the ground staff of the group to move all their equipment to the next airfield down the line.

We have largely forgotten the role of these daredevils in the T-6s, but without the "mosquitoes"-a ragtag outfit of professionals of one stripe or another-the Korean air war might have been a different story.