Christmas in the service can be lonely. The military does its best to help service members celebrate the holiday, but sometimes, missions don’t allow for many festivities. Such was the case in 1950 for the crew of one Coast Guard cutter. The crew had orders to patrol a five-mile square off Alaska, manning a radio beacon as a navigational aid to prevent commercial aircraft from entering Soviet airspace.
I’ve never been on the Bering Sea in December, but I’m betting it’s cold and that being on station for three months was hard on the crew.
Air Force Lt. Don White and his B-29 bomber crew were assigned to help out with a mission code-named Buzzard Dog. Based in Japan, he and his Air Force men secured a 12-foot Christmas tree to a condemned parachute. They gathered D-18 kits, waterproof survival units, 3 feet tall and a foot square, normally packed with emergency supplies and dropped to victims at sea. The D-18s had their own parachutes.
But instead of normal survival gear, White and his men packed one kit full of cakes, pies, and Christmas cards. Another D-18 was full of decorations for the tree. They roped the kits and tree in a chain so that they’d stay together, and they laid all of it on the bomb bay doors. Once the doors opened, the whole kit would drop, and parachutes would activate by lanyard.
The day before the mission, the squadron commander gave White’s crew a special briefing. The target vessel was at the edge of their B-29’s operational range. “If there is low cloud coverage, abort the mission. If the weather is bad, do not loiter looking for the vessel. Do not go below 1,000 feet. If you can’t find the boat, you don’t have the fuel to hang around. Return to base.”
White and his crew completed mission prep. “Everybody knew we were about to do something special,” White said. Before takeoff, he told his crew, “I have no intention to fly out with that Christmas tree and then turn around and come home with it.”
Up north, the weather was horrible, the kind of storm that turns back Santa Claus in the movies. But White and his crew would not turn back. In the military, we all stick together, regardless of service. Fierce winds blew, churning the ocean to resemble conditions in a typhoon. White descended to 500 feet as the only means of spotting the boat through the snow.
“You violated your orders,” I said to White.
“We broke all the rules,” he replied. “We knew we were doing something special, and we didn’t want to fail.”
Inbound, White radioed the Coast Guard vessel. “I need to speak to your captain.” The captain was not to be disturbed. White insisted. Finally, an irritated captain came on the radio.
“I’m a B-29,” White explained. “I’m descending with a special delivery package for you.”
In the background, White heard the order aboard the boat, “All hands on deck.”
White’s crew found the boat, and the crew opened the bomb bay doors to drop the Christmas cheer. The drop was so accurate that the Coast Guard men hooked the package before it even hit the water.
Mindful of fuel, White and his B-29 crew immediately began to return to base. The Coast Guard captain returned to the radio in a much better mood than before.
“Captain was happy as a clam,” White said. “He was laughing and joking.”
It all happened at Christmas, 70 years ago, and even now, White has trouble talking about the incident. “It was a pretty emotional time for me.”
As White and his B-29 headed for Japan, a radio operator on the boat asked, “What airline do you represent?”
White radioed back, “The world’s greatest airline: the United States Air Force.”
It is the world’s greatest airline, thanks to people like Don White.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
