Flying Blind : Korean War Pilot Recalls Terror of Losing Sight During Mission

Blinded by shrapnel that tore the canopy off his plane and sliced into his eyes, pilot Kenneth Schechter flew out of enemy territory, obeying the radioed directions of a nearby pilot, and safely landed his Skyraider on a dirt air strip just behind battle lines.

That was 43 years ago, during the Korean War. In honor of that feat, Schechter today will receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, an award bestowed upon several thousand military aviators for heroism.

“Better now than posthumously,” quipped the 65-year-old La Canada insurance broker.

Schechter, who only recovered sight in one of his eyes, has prepared with military precision for the ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier Constellation in San Diego. He practiced his acceptance speech, honing it to a brisk 3:32. He tracked down his buddies from Fighter Squadron 194, nicknamed the Yellow Devils. He printed programs for the presentation. He purchased a new uniform of summer white. After the medal was relegated to his care by Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Glendale), a family friend, Schechter toted it to San Diego, turning it over to Navy officials so they could present it to him.

Each step gave him the precious sensation he lacked when he hurtled blindly through the air at 200 m.p.h.: control.

Ensign Schechter and his colleagues aboard the aircraft carrier Valley Forge began the war with 76 planes. They lost 64. Of the 112 Navy pilots, 24 were killed and 17 wounded. Schechter, like most of the young men, flew his missions with cockiness, sauntering up to his propeller plane with a swagger. They believed they would never be hit, that enemy fire would always fall short as they soared above the destruction they wreaked.

At 8 a.m. on March 22, 1952, Schechter was a standby pilot, an experienced 22-year-old who had flown 30 missions and logged more than 700 flight hours. After fellow pilot Charlie Brown discovered a failure in his hydraulic system, Schechter launched from the black decks of the Valley Forge.

It was a routine mission to bomb rail and truck lines. But on the sixth run, pilot Howard Thayer heard a scream over the radio:

“I’m blind! For God’s sake, help me. I’m blind!”

*

Lt. Thayer searched the sky for signs of a crippled plane; he could see no smoke. Three thousand feet above him, a Skyraider rocketed up toward a solid-looking cloud bank.

“Plane in trouble: Rock your wings,” Thayer radioed to the unidentified pilot over the circuits shared by the squadron.

He saw the plane rock back and forth. Then it continued climbing. In a few seconds, the plane would be lost in the clouds.

“Put your nose down! Put your nose down!” Thayer barked, “Push over. I’m coming up.”

No response. Thayer throttled his plane. He reached the wounded pilot just as he was about to pierce the thick white layer. “This is Thayer. This is Thayer,” he radioed. “Put your nose down.”

Schechter had been blinded while flying much lower, at 1,200 feet, over Wongsang-ni in North Korea. An enemy aircraft shell had struck his plane, knocking him unconscious. When he instinctively pulled back on his stick, he sent his plane into a sharp climb.

When he came to, he realized his world was completely black. He could see nothing.

One thought bled into another. For a split second, he considered dying, letting go of the controls. But he angrily rejected the possibility when he thought about how his parents would react. Besides, he didn’t want his death added to the war’s toll, which eventually included more than 54,000 Americans.

This was not something he had trained for. This was not something that had happened to other pilots.

“This must be some mistake,” he thought woozily. “This cannot possibly be happening to me.”

Passing in and out of consciousness, he fought to stay awake. He reached for his first aid kit, hoping to get the morphine, but he passed out before his hand located the kit. The next time he came to, he radioed for help.

And then, stunned and bleeding, Schechter finally heard Thayer’s voice.

My God, he thought, it was Howie, his roommate and closest friend on the Valley Forge. Suddenly, the blackness didn’t seem so dark.

“I can do this. I will do this or I will die trying,” he told himself.

Meanwhile, Thayer’s mind was racing.

“We were climbing pretty fast. There was an overcast . . . I was afraid he might climb into the overcast and I’d lose him,” Thayer told a Navy officer in a taped conversation made hours later. (Thayer was killed in 1961 during a night aircraft carrier training flight.)

*

As Thayer flew close to Schechter’s plane, he saw that much of the cockpit had been smashed by a shell. Schechter sat amid blood-splattered panels. His face was a bloody pulp. Shrapnel had ripped a gash from his right nostril across his right cheek, creating a gaping flap of skin.

“My God, my God. How is he alive?” Thayer recalled asking himself in a conversation with a Saturday Evening Post writer shortly after the incident.

Over the radio he heard Schechter’s voice. “Get me down, Howie,” the flier pleaded. “Get me down.”

Thayer checked Schechter’s plane. Seeing that he still had bombs, he directed him to drop the ordnance.

Because Schechter was badly hurt, Thayer figured they would fly to a safe area of water patrolled by American destroyers near Wonsan. He could talk Schechter through the flying. But the clock was ticking. It looked like Schechter had lost so much blood that he would soon faint.

“We’re headed for Wonsan,” Thayer radioed. No response. When he looked over, he could see Schechter trying to splash water on his face. “Get me down, Thayer,” the injured pilot said.

“Roger, we’re approaching Wonsan now. Get ready to bail out.”

“Negative. Negative. Not gonna bail out. Get me down,” Schechter replied.

Remembering an earlier incident, Schechter was determined to avoid bailing out in the icy water. On his second mission in Korea, he had flown near pilot Lt. Cmdr. Tom Pugh, whose plane was hit. Pugh landed his plane in the water near an island controlled by U.S. forces and signaled to Schechter that he was OK. Schechter figured the island helicopter would pick up Pugh. But within two hours, Pugh was dead. The helicopter was broken. Pugh’s life jacket didn’t work. There was a leak in his immersion suit. The young man never reached his life raft.

“I wasn’t about to jump out of that plane,” Schechter recalled. “Wild horses weren’t going to get me to bail out. Jump out in that icy water blind? You’d have to be insane.”

He would rely on Thayer’s eyes and expertise. He would land his Skyraider or die in a fire ball while trying. Thayer understood.

“We’re at the battle line now, Ken. Will head you for Geronimo [the code name for an American air base about 30 miles south of the battle area]. Can you make it, Ken?” Thayer radioed.

“Get me down, you miserable ape, or you’ll have to inventory my gear,” Schechter told him.

Long before, each pilot had named a person to take care of his belongings if he were killed. Schechter and Thayer had delegated each other to handle the task.

Thayer saw that Schechter’s head kept falling forward, as though he were passing out and waking up. Geronimo was out; they would never make it that far. A rice paddy would do. Or perhaps, the beach. Thayer figured he had only minutes. He searched the ground for a viable landing spot. Suddenly, he spotted an abandoned airstrip. Perfect.

*

It was the “Jersey Bounce,” a short gravel strip once used for reconnaissance planes. It still had a ground crew. Thayer began directing Schechter to lower his plane. He gazed at the shot-up plane with its bloody pilot. Perhaps they should head further south to a bigger airstrip. No, this was it.

“Left wing down slowly, nose over easy,” he radioed as the planes banked and headed toward the runway.

“Gear down,” he called.

“The hell with that!” Schechter yelled back. Blind and wounded, Schechter remembered that it was safer to land on the plane’s belly in an emergency landing than to use the wheels.

“I thought he was feeling pretty good by that time, or feeling better at least,” Thayer said. He told himself to concentrate, to talk Schechter through the landing step by step. A small oversight could kill his friend.

Thayer took a deep breath, steadied his voice and began: “We’re heading straight. Hundred yards to runway. You’re 50 feet off the ground. Pull back a little. Easy. Easy. That’s good. You’re level. You’re OK. You’re 30 feet off the ground. You’re OK. Twenty feet. Kill it a little. You’re setting down. OK. OK. OK. Cut.”

The plane set down about halfway down the runway and slid for several yards. Thayer was exhilarated.

“I had somebody’s life in my hands, so to speak, and if I somehow fouled up, I would take the fellow’s life,” Thayer said later. “I can’t describe the feeling of relief that came over me. It was like Christmas, New Year’s, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one.”

Schechter was awarded a Purple Heart, and the drama was memorialized two years later in the movie “Men of the Fighting Lady,” starring Van Johnson as Thayer.

Schechter says the paperwork for the Distinguished Flying Cross was lost by the Navy, and he took it upon himself last year to seek Moorhead’s help in renewing the application. For its part, the Navy says it has no record of the paperwork ever being filed in the 1950s.

Until Thayer’s death, the two men stayed close. Thayer was the best man at Schechter’s wedding and the hymn that is played aboard the Constellation today will be the same one played at Thayer’s funeral. Schechter believes he will sense his friend’s presence, and believes Thayer would have been proud to see him finally get the medal.

“If you look at the ceremony, it’s sort of a metaphor for what’s good in the United States of America,” Schechter said. “It’s somebody doing his duty for his country.”