CENTER FOR U.S. WAR
VETERANS' ORAL HISTORIES
Korean War
Fred J. Chemidlin Jr.
Korean War Oral History Interview
US Air Force, 92nd Bomb Squadron
Date: February 15, 2008
Interviewer: Carol Fowler
Summarizer: Andrea Espinoza
Veterans History Project
Summary
Fred J. Chemidlin, Jr., was born in Plainfield, New Jersey on August 22, 1930. He served as an enlisted man, officer, and pilot in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War era from 1950 to 1956.
Chemidlin recalled that he was only eleven years old when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. He was playing basketball when the news broke, and so went home and listened to what was happening on the radio. Chemidlin followed World War II in the newspapers and was very interested in its progress. His father did not serve in the war, as he had 11 children. Chemidlin recalled that his father lost several jobs and had a hard time feeding their family. At the same time, his father told the family that the government only offered wartime ration cards to five people in a family (although this seems unlikely), so his father put him and all his siblings to work. Chemidlin worked on a chicken farm, but his family also raised animals and sold them to others to survive.
It was a different period of time. That was not being poor, that was life. We enjoyed it.
During the war, Chemidlin and his siblings went down to the train tracks to collect coal to bring home for a fire. Trains passing by often carried soldiers headed to Newark or New York to go overseas. Chemidlin remembered the soldiers as somber and would wave them a soft goodbye. He also recalled seeing trains going in the other direction with injured soldiers, or exchanged POWs, and those men would be cheering and clapping from being so happy to come home from war.
At the outset of the Korean War in 1950, Chemidlin was a student at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, New Jersey, but could not afford to pay his next installment of tuition. By dropping out, he would be subject to the draft; he chose to enlist, because he thought he would at least have a choice in how and where he would serve. Chemidlin joined the Air Force, intending to become a pilot, and was sent to San Antonio, Texas for Basic Training, which he recalled as intense and hard. He was also put in charge of supervising other new soldiers, even though he had only been training for less than three months. After Basic Training, Chemidlin was sent to radar school in Biloxi, Mississippi, where he spent eleven months and became a radar mechanic. He was then sent to the Cambridge Research Center in Massachusetts, where he worked on a top-secret task called Project Lincoln, consisting of setting up radar and devising electronics codes.
After six months in Massachusetts, Chemidlin was sent to flight school. He was not very happy about this, because he no longer wanted to be a pilot. Chemidlin spent a year in an Aviation Cadet program in what he recalled as the best and worst year of his life. He spent the first six months of the program in Columbus, Mississippi, at a civilian airfield where he trained on an aircraft known as the North American T-6 Texan. Chemidlin was then sent to Texas Regional Airport in Perrin, Texas, for another six months of training, after which he was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Despite misgivings, Chemidlin grew to like flying, because he had good training. In March of 1953, he was sent to survival school in Reno, Nevada, and recalled it as an interesting experience. Chemidlin and three other men were left in the mountains and had to eat wildlife and bugs to survive. He was then put in a mock POW camp, where former POWs of World War II and the Korean War trained him and his other crew and taught them how harsh war could be. After his first experience in survival school, Chemidlin was sent back again for a second time. The second time he was very harsh on his crew to make sure they all passed.
At the end of Spring 1953, Chemidlin was sent to Guam as a stop on his way to Korea. The war ended, so he spent several months in Guam as part of the 92nd Bomb Squadron, since he had been trained to fly B-26 and B-52 bombers. The B-26 was infamously nicknamed the “widow maker” due to its high accident rates during takeoffs and landings.
Chemidlin also flew C-47 transport planes. In November of 1954 one of the engines in a C-47 plane failed when he was flying from Oklahoma City to Spokane, with a stop in Denver to refuel. As Chemidlin approached Colorado, he and his crew were met with a blinding snowstorm over Colorado Springs. Within minutes, their plane smashed into the side of a mountain. Chemidlin was the only one who was conscious after the crash, and he wrapped his three crewmen in parachutes to keep them warm. He said that the crash was all over the newspapers that week, and he was told that they were lucky they survived.
Although the Korean War was over, Chemidlin still had to serve three years after as a mandatory part of his service as an officer. He was assigned to a base in Spokane, Washington, where, as a first lieutenant, he had the role of a base operations pilot, transporting passengers all over the country. After serving his three years, Chemidlin applied to become a test pilot but was denied, and so he decided to leave service.
After his service, Chemidlin went home to New Jersey with his wife, who he met in Spokane, and returned to Seton Hall to finish his degree in Business under the GI Bill. After that, he opened his own investment firm, which became a family business.
Fred J. Chemidlin, Jr., lived to the age of 89. He passed away on May 18, 2019, surrounded by his loving family.
