The servicing and packing log, which is marked with the same USAF serial number as the parachute pack and canopy, is signed by the rigger and inserted in a pocket on the pack assembly During WW2 and on into the '50s USAF certified military and civil service parachute riggers prepared parachutes for service.
Time Line Actions
The following events on the Korean War time line had logistics implications.
— 1948 April 8 - US troops ordered withdrawn from Korea on orders from President Harry S. Truman. — 1949 June 29 - Last US troops withdrawn from South Korea. — 1950 June 30 - President Truman orders US ground forces into Korea and authorizes the bombing of North Korea by the US Air Force. US troops are notified of their deployment to South Korea.
I recall that the morning following President Truman's order to the Armed Forces to initiate military action in Korea the military chief of the Hqs AFMC Equipment Division, Directorate of Supply, strode along the 'supervisors' row in the office where I worked. He was accompanied by my Branch Chief who was responsible for specified categories of military equipment and supplies, including those assigned to me. Pointing to each supervisor (or desk if it was unattended at the moment) the Division Chief briefly consulted with the Branch Chief, then read off a dollar amount from a spreadsheet he held in his hand. The dollar amount for my area of responsibility was $25 million, as a starter.
Immediately upon the Division Chief's departure, the Branch Chief assembled his subordinate supervisors and directed that the $-amounts cited were mandatory totals for Purchase Requests (PRs) from each to be his office at the start of business the following day. He would review them and, upon his approval, have them hand-carried to the Division office. The PRs were to be for most urgently needed equipment and supplies to support current and 'programmed' USAF operations in Korea.
Priorities
My highest priorities for USAF in Korea were aircrew parachutes, aircraft emergency life preservers, aircrew emergency bailout survival kits (attached to parachute harnesses), oxygen masks, and components ('components,' for instance, took into account that inflatable life preservers are not much help to an aircrew member floating in the sea if the CO2 inflation cartridges had not been checked and installed or had been discharged for an unauthorized purpose. Life vest checklists directed that inflatable life vests would be examined by the wearer or a technician before donning to ensure that the neoprene inner bladders, mouth inflation tube connections, and inflation CO2 cartridges and levers were intact. It was not unusual to find that the CO2 cartridges were missing or the cartridge seals pierced and the cartridge empty.
Insofar as parachutes were concerned, 'components' included replacements for damaged ripcords (pins bent, cable kinked), pilot chutes, harnesses, canopy containers (packs), attached emergency kits, etc.
As US-UNCommnd forces in Korea intensified combat operations, the urgent need for parachutes, aircraft life preservers and other survival and escape-and-evasion gear increased. The United Nations Command included the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Belgium, Greece, Canada and Thailand and other nations.