The following is quite a lengthy article that appeared in Collier's magazine in the October 14, 1950 issue. Collier's has since been discontinued as a periodical and I could not figure out who to ask for permission to reprint this article. Anyway, here it is...

"Captain Thach's Phantom Carrier"
By John Denson, Collier's WAR CORRESPONDENT

The Reds never knew where his Marine planes would strike next as he roamed the seas, pounding vital targets

Aboard the U.S.S. Sicily, headed for another walloping mission, Thach (left) and John Denisson of Collier's. (Melvin McClure and Louis Godin)

TOKYO - There were three of us. The U.S.S. Sicily, one of the Navy's CVEs (escort carrier) with a capacity of 24 fighter planes; the destroyer U.S.S. James E. Kyes, and the cocky little destroyer-minesweeper, the U.S.S. Doyle. That's all. The big brass, short of ships to hold the United Nations line on the vast Easters seas, must have smiled grimly when they designated our threesome a task group. But there were no more warcraft available and the hour was critical on that fading afternoon when the Sicily sailed form Japan's rusty port of Kobe to join the destroyers and take on the Marine piloted planes at sea.

The task group's mission seemed far too big for its size. Instructions were to harass the slippery enemy wherever and whenever he could be found; to provide close air support for ground forces; to give fighter cover to British warships bombarding seaports, and to raise general hell with the Communists who were still pressing down upon our positions in the southeast corner of crimson-stained Korea.

It was a ghostly kind of mission, too, but greatly to the liking of the group commander, Captain John Smith (Jimmy) Thach, the Navy's most celebrated fighter-plane tactician and a lean, savvy veteran of the Pacific war against the Japanese. To Jimmy Thach, the mission meant striking short jabs and body blows at the North Koreans, roaming and punching with his fighter planes--always, dawn to dark, roaming and punching.

The skipper's aim was never to let the enemy know where the air strikes came from, nor whether there were 20 pplanes or 200, nor whether there was one aircraft carrier or a dozen of them plying the heavily mined waters off the southern and western coasts of Korea. What he did was to turn the Sicily into a phantom with a terrific wallop, searching out targets and hitting them low with Corsair planes carring every ounce of destruction he could squeeze aboard.

First night out of Kobe was long, black and memorable, for this voyage was to be the Sicily's baptism of war. (The ship's keel was laid toward the end of World War II but she was not commissioned until it was over.) There wsa not much more than fitful sleeping among the Sicily's 950 sweating crewmen. Portholes closed tightly in a complete blackout and Diesels throbbing, the carrier set a lonly course straight for Tsushima Strait where the Russians and the Japanese fought a massive, historic naval battle just short of a half-century ago.

Captain Thach stuck out the night hours on the Sicily's bridge, ears strained for the ping-ping warning of sonar that submarines were nearby. There were numerous warnings. Fortunately, they faded and the Sicily sailed unmolested into a morning of sun and shower. By noon, the outline of the island of Iki, with a startling resemblance to Gibraltar, appeared far off. The rain came harder and a soupy mist rolled over the ship. It was the prearranged time for rendezvous twith the destroyer. The Sicily circled and waited. Suddenly, as though they had come up out of the sea, the Kyes and the Doyle were at our side. They gave brisk reports by blinker light and took positions to screen the carrier from underwater attack.

The formation, ranging between 15 and 18 knots and constantly alert on the chance that the Russians might start open submarine warfare, moved toward another rendezvous, this time with the Marine fighter squadron - famous VMF-214.

The weather cleared in the late afternoon and the waters of Tsushima became glassy smooth. There was to be another long, hot night with many warnings from sonar, before the task group was complete and ready to strike. At a dark hour, the warning of a tracking object got so persistent that the Kyes peeled off from the group to go hunting. The Kyes could find no surface trace of the object, yet the warnings continued. The Kyes skipper, Commander F.M. Christiansen of Coronado, California, dropped a couple of depth charges just to make sure that nothing got near the carrier. Identity of the object was never established, but there were no more ping-pings for a while.

Midafternoon of the next day the Marine Corsairs came. In groups of eight - three flights of them and a full load of 24 fighters for the Sicily - they flew in over the horizon from bases in southern Japan. The Sicily was to be home to the Marine fliers for a long time to come and, though few of them had much carrier training, they circled and landed smoothly as Captain Thach swung his ship downwind. Five of the pilots reported serious mechanical trouble so there would be only 19 of the planes available for quick use.

OFFICIAL US NAVY PHOTOGRAPH

Crewmen Tackle a Tough Job

Captain Thack's order for an immediate strike was waiting for the Marines. Darkness was not many hours away, and the skipper was determined to give our troops much needed support on the western front then under intensive attack by the North Koreans. Marine and Sicily crewmen, resplendent in brilliant yellow, red and green shirts and helmets to denote their assignment on the flight deck, were set to gas the planes and load on ammunition, five-inch rockets and 500-pound bombs.

The Corsairs (F4Us) are rugged, heavily armed, double-duty planes. They operate both as fighters and dive bombers, and are good to have around in any war, even in the age of jets.

Yellow-shirted flight directors drove the crews to utmost speed in getting off the Sicily's maiden strike. Crewmen sworked in steaming heat and this correspondent had never seen men so eager to do the dirty jobs that have to be done in war. There not much glory in handling a gas hose.

In less than three hours after the Marines had landed, the crippled planes stored on the hangar deck and a flight of eight Corsairs made ready with their powerful loads, Captain Thach gave the word to go. He told the pilots to get their directions to target from the intelligence center at advanced U.N. military headquarters in Korea. They were to hit where they were needed most.

The task group was cruising 65 miles southeast of Pusan, the vital and hard-pressed port on the southern tip of Korea, when the first plane wheeled onto the catapult. Flight Leader (in No. 8 with MARINES painted on the underside of the wings) was Major Robert Prescott Keller from Oakland, California. A flier of thirty, he had seen plenty of action in the South Pacific where he was wounded.

Major Keller gunned his Corsair and, in just another half-hour or so, he would be in another war. The Sicily's catapults shot off the planes at intervals of little more than 40 seconds, and they flew northwestward into the sun. What of this maiden strike of the Sicily? General Douglas MacArthur's communique from Tokyo the next day said tersely that "carrier-based Marine planes had gone into action for the first time in the Korean war in close ground support of the Army's 25th Infantry." The action took place near Chinju which U.N. forces had lost only days before.

MacArthur didn't say what carrier or where the carrier-based planes cam from, but it would not have made much difference if he had given the Sicily's name and exact location. We were beginning our swing around the Korean coast on Captain Thach's phantom voyage. The enemy would never dind us twice in the same place gbecause the skipper never launched two straight strikes from any on spot in all the days to come.

OFFICIAL US NAVY PHOTOGRAPH

That first day of action was to be the easiest the Marine fliers had aboard the Sicily. Captain Thach wanted the Communists to feel the Navy and its brother service, the Marines, down to their marrow. The skipper's brown eyes were intent when he told me:

"This is Navy and Marine country out here. We've been here before and we can do out here in the Pacific what we have been trained so hard to do. We can use our carriers as floating air bases to strike from places of our own choosing, not places we are forced to choose because there is ground under us. We can hit them from close up in support of ground forces - and that means hitting them often. We can get behind the weather. These peninsulas and islands, with the expanse of water, are just right for the Marines. Amphibious warfare might be called old-fashioned but it makes sense in the Pacific."

The task group sailed west in the night. On the second day, three pounding strikes went out from the Sicily while the ship's mechanics strained their backs to put more planes into commission. Captain Thach began feeding the North Koreans napalm bombs, a flaming concoction so hot that it sucks in oxygen and kills men untouched by the fire 30 feet away. These bombs, the skipper reasoned, could eat away the clever concealment of Communist tanks, vehicles, gun emplacements and troops, and they could burn their targets to shapeless steel and human cinder in a matter of seconds.

Napalms, whose main ingredient is fellied gasoline, are dangerous fusiness for those who mix them, too. Crewmen worked all night to get them ready for teh second day's strikes, and a deep voice boomed through the Sicily's loud-speakers at intervals of just a few minutes:

"The smoking lamp is out."

This maritime command meant no cigarettes and if anybody aboard took an extra puff or two after the warning, he was taking a chance with the lives of nearly 1,000 men. Aircraft carriers are floating explosives: gasoline by the thousands of gallons, fuel oil by the tens of thousands of gallons, scores of 500-pound bombs (any one of which could blow the ship into debris), five-inch rockets by the hundreds and 20mm machine-gun ammunition packed in deck-high stacks of boxes.

But napalms could make the enemy feel what the Sicily was delivering. Captain Thach's report on the second day was a masterful understatement of hell.

"Two napalm bombs dropped on Sinban-ni, and the western sector was left burning intensely. (Sinban-ni was smack in the middle of the fighting zone). Two napalm bombs dropped on a village five miles east of Singan-ni. Village burned intensely." (This village was a refuge, or so they thought, for Red troops moving up.)

Strafing Behind Enemy Lines

On top of this violent destruction, VMF-214 strafed behind enemy lines, shot their rockets (each plane carries eight) into troop concentrations and tallied hits on vehicles and vital bridges. But this ws only a warm-up for teh big week end Captain Thach had planned.

The Sicily and her chesty destroyers, flags whipping at the enemy in a kind of "go to hell" fashion, turned toward the Yellow Sea and the west coast of Korea. These are narrow waters with great mione fields left over from World War II. To the west lies Communist China, to the north the Red-controlled port of Dairen, Manchuria. Russian submarine pens are hidden in the coves and harbors.

Four British warships, two of them cruisers, were waiting for the Sicily when we arrived deep in enemy waters on a sunny Saturday morning. The objective: to bomb and bombard the port of Inchon which was being used extensively in Communist operations. Big Navy Neptune bombers had flown in from southern Japan to observe for the bombardment, and Captain Thach was to provide fighter cover. But the skipper would not be satisfied with mere patrol.

Under the captain's shrewd guidance, VMF-214 pilots gave one of the reallybrilliant low-level flying performances of the Korean war, and they were well-rewarded. First flight of seven Corsairs (many of 214's planes were still out of commission) was led by a chunky, quiet young man who knew what to do when he applied the seat of his pants to the seat of his plane. Major Kenneth L. Reusser, a preacher's son from Oregon, is the name, and he won a Navy Cross in the last war along with a Distinguished Flying Cross - and he had fought from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.

Major Reusser went hunting after he had carried out a rochet-machine-gun strafing mission. His suspicions were aroused by what looked like an assembly plant - two big buildings with a courtyard in the middle. There seemed to gbe activity there, so the major got down to about 30 feet and looked in the windows. He got a quick glance, and there seemed to be the outlines of vehicles and tanks inside the buildings. A burst of ack-ack assured the major that he had run onto something hot. Captain Thach ordered Reusser's flight reloaded with napalm, and the Corsairs were off again to hit the plant. By now, the communists knew they had been spotted and the Marines found them hurrying tanks and vehicles out of the buildings.

The flight hit with everything it had - napalms, rochets and 20-mm, and the pilots were flying so low that they could almost see the expressions on the faces of the enemy. Napalm crashed through the roof of one building and it billowed into flame. Two more napalm bombs dropped on the second building, but didn't explode. The Corsairs followed through with a barrage of rockets and ignited the bombs. The second building turned into a blazing torch. There were six tanks hidden in the shadows of the courtyard. The Marines hit these with rockets and they were left burning. The people in the courtyard tumbled in their tracks.

Major Reusser was convinced now that the only way to get good targets was to fly low - "on the deck," as airmen say. Returning to the Sicily, he got down to look around a bit. Over Inchon harbor, he saw a big square of planking extending from the docks. It didn't seem natural. He made another run and looked under the planking. There was an 8,000-ton tanker hidden there. He let go with 20-mm. incendiary machine gun fire because that's all he had left. The ship must have been loaded with oil. It exploded.

More flights of VMF-214 went out over the Yellow Sea to strafe airport hangers, burn freight cars, wreck oil refineries and power plants and, generally, to drive everybody in the Inchon area to whatever cover they could find. Only a few refugees straggled along the rural roads nearby. By midday, Inchon, under bombing by air and bombardment by sea, seemed a smoking ghost city. One mission found a train hiding in a railroad tunnel, a favorite trick of the Communists. Captian William Oliver (Curt) Curtis, a tall, big-boned pilot from Oklahoma, flew his squadron right up to the mouth of the tunnel and the Marines lobbed napalm inside. He saw a gush of flame and smoke as he and his following Corsairs swung homeward to sea.

This was that big week end Captain Thach had planned. The weary but successful pilots of VMF-214 gathered in Ready Room No. 1 to report.

On the flight deck, crewmen fell exhausted and slept despite the roar of planes being tuned up. Captain Thach gave them and the pilots a warm "Well done," and the Sicily circled to the south on her phantom course. The next day the planes would be striking far down the Korean coast. The skipper had ordered a mission to Mokpo, an important enemy-held port on the southwest coast, well-protected by islands and shallow waters. Mokpo had been getting a pasting from the east and south, but this was to be a destructive surprise. Captain Thach planned to hit the city from the west.

CONTINUE to Part Two...