On the minus side, the 1st Marine Air Wing this last month of the war suffered a higher rate of personnel losses on combat flights than in any month since June 1952.[505] Captain Lote Thistlethwaite and Staff Sergeant W. H. Westbrook, of VMF(N)-513, were killed in an air patrol flight on 4 July. (Two nights earlier, the same squadron had lost a Navy pilot and crewman on temporary duty with the night-fighters when their F3D-2 similarly failed to return to Pyongtaek.) Another MAG-12 casualty was Captain Carl F. Barlow, of VMA-212, killed 13 July on a prebriefed CAS mission when he crashed while flying instruments.
[505] Wing casualties for July 1953 were listed as three killed, seven missing, and two wounded in action. Names of enlisted crew members on flights are not always given in air diaries, which accounts for the discrepancies.
On 17 July, Captain Robert I. Nordell, VMF-311, flying his third mission that day, and wingman First Lieutenant Frank L. Keck, Jr. were hit by intense automatic weapons fire while on an interdiction flight. Their planes reportedly went down, at 2000, over the Sea of Japan. After a four-day air and surface search conducted by JOC, they were declared missing and subsequently reclassified killed in action. Another MAG-33 pilot listed KIA was Major Thomas M. Sellers, VMF-115, on exchange duty with the Air Force, shot down 20 July in a dogfight after he had scored two MIG-15s. Two days earlier a VMO-6 pilot, First Lieutenant Charles Marino, and his artillery spotter, First Lieutenant William A. Frease, flying a flak suppression mission, were struck by enemy fire and crashed with their ship in the 5th Marines center regimental sector.
Fall of the Berlins[506]
[506] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: PacFlt EvalRpt No. 6, Chap. 9; CG, 1stMarDiv, Berlin Rpt; 1stMarDiv ComdD, Jul 53; 1stMarDiv G-3 Jnls, 19–21 Jul 53; 1stMarDiv PIRs 933–934, dtd 19–21 Jul 53; 1stMar ComdD, Jul 53; 5thMar, 7thMar, 11thMar, 3/1, 3/5, 1/7, 2/7, 3/7, 1/11, 2/11, 3/11, 4/11, 1stTkBn ComdDs, Jul 53; 1stMar Preliminary Special Action Report, period 8–27 Jul 53 in ComdD, Jul 53, hereafter 1stMar SAR “Berlins”; MAGs-12, -33, VMAs-121, -212 ComdDs, Jul 53.
Despite their preoccupation with other corps sectors on the central front of the Eighth Army line, the Chinese had not forgotten about the Berlin complex held by the Marines. On the night of 19–20 July,[507] the enemy lunged against the two Marine outposts in reinforced battalion strength to renew his attack launched 12 days earlier. Beginning at 2200, heavy Chinese mortar and artillery fire struck the two COPs and supporting MLR positions of the 3d Battalion, which had advanced to the front on 13 July in relief of 2/7.[508] In the center regimental sector, 5th Marines outposts Ingrid and Dagmar, and the line companies were also engaged by small arms, mortar, and artillery fires. An attempted probe at Dagmar was repulsed, aided by 3/11.
[507] The 19th of July, ironically, was the date that truce negotiators working at Panmunjom had reached final agreement on all remaining disputed points. Staff officers were scheduled to begin drawing up details of the armistice agreement and boundaries of the demilitarized zone. USMA, Korea, p. 51.
[508] Company E and a detachment of the 81mm mortar platoon from the 2d Battalion remained on line. They were attached to the 3d Battalion when the sector command changed.
Concentrating their main assault efforts on the Berlins, however, the Chinese forces swarmed up the slopes of the outposts at 2230, with more troops moving in from enemy positions on Jersey, Detroit, and Hill 139, some 700 yards north of Berlin. The Chinese struck first at East Berlin, where 37 Marines were on duty, and then at Berlin, held by 44 men. Both positions were manned by First Lieutenant Kenneth E. Turner’s Company I personnel and employed the maximum-size defenses which could be effectively utilized on these terrain features.
By 2300 hostile forces were halfway up Berlin. Continuous volumes of small arms and machine gun fire poured from the defending MLR companies. Defensive boxes were fired by 60mm, 81mm, and 4.2-inch mortars. Eight Company C tanks augmented the close-in fires, with their lethal direct-fire 90mm guns tearing into Chinese troops and weapons. Within two hours after the initial thrust, the 11th Marines had fired 20 counterbattery and 31 countermortar missions. Artillerymen from 2/11 and 1/11 had expended 1,750 rounds. In addition, 4/11 had unleashed 124 of its 155mm medium projectiles. More countermortar fire came from the TAFC Field Artillery Battalion. Despite the heavy fire support, by midnight the situation was in doubt and at 0146 the twin outposts were officially declared under enemy control. Nearly 3,000 rounds of incoming were estimated to have fallen on division positions by that time, most of it in the 7th Marines sector.