Monday, April 16, 2001

By Jim Lea, Osan bureau chief

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — The 31st Special Operations Squadron, as its name implies, has flown many missions in its nine years in South Korea that can be spoken of only in whispers between people who that need to know.

But when its MH-53J Pave Low helicopters lift off the Osan tarmac for the last time later this year, the squadron will leave behind a life-saving legacy in the Pacific that’s hard to match.

For the nearly 50 years it and its predecessors have spent in the Western Pacific, the squadron has accounted for saving more than 1,000 lives in combat, natural disasters and accidents.

The latest of those "saves" took place Feb. 27 when one of the squadron’s Pave Lows sped through dense clouds and a snowstorm at night to rescue three South Koreans on tiny Paeng Nyong island only seven miles from North Korea in the Yellow Sea. The two most seriously injured likely would have died, said Lt. Col. Brendan G. Clare, if the 31st hadn’t been available to fly them to Seoul for treatment.

But rescue has always been part of the 31st’s job. It traces its roots to the 31st Air Rescue Squadron activated at Clark Air Base in the Philippines in November 1952. Since then, it has evolved through several unit designations including Detachment 1, 33rd Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron and 31st Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron.

It became the 31st Special Operations Squadron at Clark in 1989. As such, it was part of the 353rd Special Operations Wing headquartered at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and the Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Air Force Base, Fla.

In 1990, the unit was called on to perform its biggest humanitarian mission. Three hours after a massive earthquake devastated the city of Baguio in the northern Philippines on July 16, four 31st helicopters and crews made night flights to the city to deliver medical supplies and personnel.

Over the next several weeks, the unit evacuated more than 8,000 people from the area and delivered some 54 tons of food and supplies.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted a year later, burying much of Clark Air Base in volcanic ash, the squadron moved to Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Okinawa, from where it operated until moving to Osan in 1992.

At the squadron inactivation ceremony Brig. Gen. Richard L. Comer, Air Force Special Operations Command vice commander, called the deactivation a "sad occasion." People who have been assigned to the 31st over the years have carried out "an untold number of humanitarian-like individual rescues and medical evacuations," he said.

"They have had the attitude that, ‘whatever you want done, we’ll do it. If it’s rescue or airlift or special operations, we’ll find a way to do it,’" he said.

Comer said that when the squadron flies its Pave Lows out of Osan for the last time, "it will mark the end of U.S. Air Force MH-53 operations in the Pacific."

The long-range, all-weather aircraft has the capability of flying at very low altitude at night.

During their three decades of use by the Air Force in the Pacific, Pave Lows took part in combat operations in Vietnam evacuating Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975 then rescuing the 19-man crew of the merchant ship Mayaguez, which was captured by Cambodian forces in the Gulf of Siam.

When the 31st leaves South Korea in June, its Pave Lows will be transferred to Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

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