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Tunner used six Japanese airfields and a fluctuating number of Korean bases, now steadily decreasing from a high of 20. As the demands on his command increased, Tunner acquired more personnel and aircraft until he had at his disposal about 5,200 men and 214 planes. Last week Tunner got the use of three more C-47s, flown by pilots of the Royal Hellenic Air Force. The Greeks helped fly wounded out of the northeast front, thought the show was fine. Said one: "A bad airstrip, hah! You should see some of the airstrips in Greece."
"What we've got here," says Tunner, "is a small-scale Berlin airlift operating from and to many more bases than we had there. And we deliver a hell of a lot more tonnage than most people realize." In the almost four months of its existence the Combat Cargo Command has carried 100,000 passengers, 52,500 medical evacuees, and vast loads of matériel—a total weight of 90,000 tons. This impressive tonnage included everything from napalm to nurses and from beer to Bibles, as well as certain items such as whisky carried on an unofficial "You can take it but we don't see it" basis. It also included band instruments shipped to Korea in response to a ist Marine Division plaint that it had no instruments to provide music for the triumphal entry into Seoul last October.
"Months & Years." Early last week, chain-smoking Will Tunner, the aerial moving man, took off on another of his missions to Korea. He went first to Yonpo on the east coast, then in rapid succession to Hagaru, Seoul, X Corps Headquarters, to Yonpo again and finally back to Ashiya. And at week's end he was boarding his staff C-54 once more to fly to Tokyo for a conference with his boss, General Stratemeyer.
But for all his flying trips and cavalier treatment of distance, publicity-shy Will Tunner has little in common with the legendary dashing airmen, the "wild blue yonder" boys. A man who has heard relatively few shots fired in anger, Tunner is far more akin in outlook and operation to the Detroit executive, the industrial leader who makes mass production tick. Like most such executives, he is preoccupied with costs and time-study. Said he last week: "The cost of an airlift compared with surface transport is really formidable on the face of it, but when you compare the cost of cargo perhaps rotting in ships at harbors whose docks have been heavily bombed or on a month's trip at sea, the comparison gets progressively more favorable.
"An airlift permits an army to accelerate its tempo . . . Where a campaign supplied by surface might take months or years, an airlift may make it possible to finish it in weeks or even days. Who can assess the cost of months and years?"