In the book Air Commando One, a biography of Aderholt, author Warren A. Trest gives a sense for the pressure-boiler tempo:
“During the brutal battles raging up and down the Korean peninsula in 1950-51, Aderholt’s detachment of C-47 Gooney Birds flew a punishing schedule of special airlift missions in support of the ground campaign. These included parachute drops into the thick of combat and perilous low-level night penetrations as far north as Manchuria to airdrop Korean partisans and secret agents behind enemy lines. These intrepid men and women became a vital source of human intelligence during this critical phase of the war.”
The C-47 detachment sometimes seemed to be fighting the brass as much as the enemy. When Aderholt asked for exhaust shields and camouflage paint, to make his C-47s less visible at night, it took months for the Air Force to cough up the money.
The detachment received significant backing from the Central Intelligence Agency, which had a role in its behind-the-lines drops.
The C-47s carried out other missions. Some, equipped with the SCR-300 infantry radio and a trailing coaxial cable antenna, orbited near the front lines and relayed field reports from agents. Two C-47s were equipped with loudspeakers for aerial psychological warfare broadcasts, and also dropped psychological warfare leaflets. On at least one occasion, a C-47 used racks intended for parachute supplies to drop two napalm bombs in a surprise morning raid on a North Korean headquarters.
So secret were the ARCWs that when a 581st H-19 helicopter piloted by 1st Lt. Robert Sullivan rescued the top U.S. air ace, Capt. Joe McConnell, after his F-86 Sabre went down in the Yellow Sea, the Air Force reenacted the rescue at a freshwater lake in Japan to create a much-published photo that gave the impression McConnell had been picked up by the Air Rescue Service rather than the clandestine unit.
Flying repeatedly into Chinese and North Korean gunfire, the detachment lost just one C-47 in combat, plus one that was damaged so badly it had to be written off.
The Korean War saw many other kinds of special operations, including Air Force troops using crash boats to insert ground agents into North Korea.
More Korean Ops
Very late in the Korean era (in January 1952), the Air Force created the 580th, 581st, and 582d Air Resupply and Communication Wings (ARCWs) for unconventional warfare. The 580th served at Wheelus Field, Libya. The 581st was at Clark Field, Philippines and the 582nd at Molesworth, England. In great secrecy, they operated B-29s, C-47s, SA-16 Albatrosses, and helicopters, and took their orders from Air Force officers in an unmarked building on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C.
On Jan. 15, 1953, a B-29 crew known as Stardust 40, led by 581st ARCW commander Col. John K. Arnold, Jr., was shot down during a leaflet drop in a coordinated effort by MiG-15s and ground searchlight crews. Its nine survivors became the last American POWs released after the Korean War in 1955.