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To provide the increased air supply required by the rapid U.N. advances after the Inchon landings, the Far East Air Force's General George Stratemeyer set up the Combat Cargo Command and called on the services of Will Tunner.
Tunner set up headquarters at Ashiya air base in southern Japan, brought with him, as usual, assistants of long standing. Tunner's chief of staff Colonel Glen R. Birchard had been with him in Germany. Both his communications officer, Colonel Manuel Hernandez, and his operations officer, Colonel Robert ("Red") Forman, were holdovers from the days of the Hump. Says Tunner: "When we start a new airlift, we start in a hell of a hurry. It is a whole lot easier to start with people you know."
Old friends, though they were Tunner's assistants, did not have an easy time of it. With Combat Cargo Command, as with all his other operations, Tunner worked 14 to 16 hours a day, pushed his subordinates to the limit. Along with his staff, Tunner moved into a stucco and plywood duplex house on the air base. In the evenings he brought work home and labored far into the night, frequently calling staff members in for consultation or for rawhiding rebuke. Ruefully, the staff christened their quarters "Soreprat-by-the-sea." Said one staff officer last week: "There are just two things we talk about around here—girls and tin birds. And the general sees to it that it's mostly just tin birds."
"Small-Scale Berlin." Combat Cargo Command's first big operation was the lift to Kimpo Airport outside Seoul. Once again Tunner worked for a pulselike beat in operations, and got it. After Kimpo, as U.N. forces drove farther north. Tunner's men flew supplies—mostly gas and rations —into one airfield after another right up the line of advance. For over a month.
Tunner believes, the Eighth Army advanced chiefly on supplies brought in by airlift.
Combat Cargo's priority system was a flexible one, permitting fast change when the tactical situation required it—which was often. Last month, when the early winter caught many front-line troops without winter clothing, Combat Cargo offloaded other supplies and flew in tons of shoepacs, parkas, woolen underwear and ski socks. And within hours after the ist Cavalry Division had run into the Chinese counterattack of last Halloween, the airlift had switched from gas and C rations to ammunition and medical supplies. Sometimes, too, the situation called for a fast switch in reverse. Just before the last transport plane pulled out of Sinanju last week, one of Tunner's men noticed on the airfield 25 loaves of specially baked and blessed Moslem bread, the remnants of four tons flown in to supply the Turkish Brigade. The pilot carefully poured gasoline on the bread and set it afire before he departed. Said he: "I thought the Chinamen would like some toast."