Versatile Whirlybirds

Last week, on the front north of the Punchbowl, a whole battalion of marines --nearly 1,000 men--was moved to a mountainous front-line sector by helicopter, in the largest operation of its kind to date. Twelve big Sikorskys made a total of 162 round trips, finishing the job, without a hitch or a casualty, in 6 hr. 15 min., almost an hour ahead of schedule. The landing point was within range of enemy mortar positions, but apparently the Reds could not see what was going on; no hostile fire was received.

Marines jubilantly talked about a new weapon of war. Since World War II, they have experimented with 'copters for amphibious assaults; the Korean experiment is an imaginative adaptation of this plan. If trucks had been used for last week's job, 175 would have been required, and the men would have arrived tired and shaken up after jouncing over rough roads. As it was, they disembarked fresh and alert.

The low-flying, slow (85 to 95 m.p.h.) 'copters--also known as "whirlybirds," "egg beaters," "windmills"--would be sitting ducks against hostile fighter planes, or, over flat terrain, against determined antiaircraft fire. But in Korea, the U.N. controls the air over the front lines, and the same mountains that make the 'copters so useful enable them to hug the valleys and screen themselves behind ridgelines. They have proved their versatility. For months they have been used as flying ambulances, as aerial telephone-wire layers, for command tours of the front, for quick shipments of emergency supplies and weapons. Emboldened, marines expect to try them out in night troop movements, working closer to enemy guns than they have up to now.

Other highlights of last week's action: P: Wielding flamethrowers and white-phosphorous grenades, gallant doughfeet of the U.S. 2nd Division and attached French overran the last, northernmost peak of Heartbreak Ridge, where a few diehard North Koreans were holding out from a fortified bowl-shaped depression on top. The attackers were aided by tank columns which ranged up the valleys on both sides of the ridge, blasting the Communist positions on top and on the slopes. The peak was so precariously held by the allies that they were dislodged--for twelve hours--by a Red counterattack in less than company strength. Then the U.N. forces took it again, and began mopping up in the nearby hills to prevent another counterattack.

P: Losses on both sides, for the past month, have been heavy (see box). An Eighth Army spokesman said that, according to "rockbottom" front-line estimates, the enemy had lost 16,700 men in the week ending Oct. 12. One captured North Korean officer said that his 4,000-man outfit had lost half its strength; another said that the North Korean army was "practically nonexistent." A Chinese corps of 30,000 men was observed moving eastward to back up the mangled Korean Reds. P: General Van Fleet appeared to be hitting the enemy with a sort of one-two punch. While his western-front offensive suddenly tapered off, a new drive involving three allied divisions (one U.S., two South Korean) was launched at Kumsong, the Reds' main supply and assembly base on the central front. P:The Reds proved that they had not been bludgeoned into inertia. In the west, they hit the 1st Cavalry Division with 5,300 artillery and mortar shells in two days, and with 300 rockets in one hour (World War II Katushas, fired from multiple launchers mounted on trucks). In the same sector, a weakened battalion of the 7th Cavalry Regiment* was attacked from three sides, overrun and cut to ribbons.

*The same regiment that was wiped out under Custer, at the Little Big Horn, in 1876.

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