[710] Montross, SkyCav, p. 108.
Landing with the brigade in August 1950, the choppers performed invaluable service from the earliest days of Pusan, Inchon, Seoul, and the Reservoir. During the most critical phase of the Chosin operation, the helicopters provided the only liaison between isolated commands. Wire-laying by air was first employed by VMO-6 during the second battle of the Naktong River, in September 1950. The ground had changed hands several times and control was uncertain. Using makeshift communication rigs, VMO-6 pilots unreeled telephone wire at a mile a minute. This method of putting telephone lines across Korean mountains became routine through the rest of the war, and Marine choppers strung miles of lines in rain and wind with the enemy blasting away at them. Wire was laid over terrain in a matter of hours where it would have taken men on foot weeks—if it could have been done.
Perhaps the greatest innovation of VMO-6, however, was its night casualty evacuation techniques first employed at Pusan. Darting in and out at treetop level around the Korean mountains, the light, easily maneuverable craft could land on a tiny patch of earth to evacuate injured men or bring in supplies. Once, during the early part of the war, when the aeronautical pioneer Igor Sikorsky was asked how his revolutionary vehicles were performing in combat, Mr. Sikorsky, bowing from the waist in his Old World manner, replied:
Thank you. Our things go very well in Korea. The helicopter has already saved the lives of several thousands of our boys in Korea and the score is still mounting.[711]
[711] Marine Corps Gazette, v. 39, no. 10 (Oct 55), p. 61 quoting Eugene E. Wilson, Wings of the Dawn (Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Printers, Inc., 1955).
With the advent of the helicopter, as little as 43 minutes elapsed between the time a Marine was hit and the time he was on board the USS Repose or other hospital ships. Later on when the Marine transport copters arrived in Korea, HMR-161 pilots felt a new record had been set when only 30 minutes[712] intervened between the time a frontline Marine was hit and delivered to a hospital facility 17 miles from the zone of action. The Consolation had been outfitted with a helicopter loading platform in July 1951, and eventually all hospital ships had such landing platforms. In Korea the flying ambulances could make the trip from rear area aid station to ship in five minutes and unload the wounded and clear the deck in 45 seconds flat.
[712] By contrast, in 1945 World War II campaigns the Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal had visited hospital ships and praised the air evacuation methods then in use when he commented, “I went aboard the Samaritan, where Navy surgeons and corpsmen were already dealing with the casualties from the day and night before.” Capt Clifford P. Morehouse, The Iwo Jima Campaign, (Washington: HistDiv, HQMC, 1946), p. 139.
Throughout the war nearly 10,000 wounded Marines were evacuated by helicopter; more than 1,000 such missions were carried out at night. Records indicate that VMO-6 flew out 7,067 casualties and that another 2,748 medical evacuations were made by HMR-161, for which the task ranked as a secondary mission. Although these humanitarian gains were important, major tactical innovations made by the helicopter were even more significant.
In the fall of 1951, HMR-161 successfully executed the first combat troop resupply mission in history. At this time while the division was deployed in the jagged razorback-ridge Punchbowl area, “a glimpse of future warfare was provided when Marine helicopter lifts on a company scale led to the lift of an entire battalion and its organic equipment.”[713] Arriving in Korea on 31 August, the squadron had a complement of 15 new 10-place HRS-1 transport vehicles, with cruising speed of 60–85 knots. Developed specifically to meet Marine Corps combat requirements, the HRS marked a new era in Marine airborne support to ground troops. Both VMO-6 and HMR-161 came under operational control of the division. (With 1st Division and Wing headquarters separated geographically by more than 200 miles, it was particularly expedient to have the two squadrons under division control.)
[713] HistBr outline, p. 4.