37. Strafing the Airfield
As Alton Quanbeck described the attack: “I positioned our aircraft for a strafing pass on the northern line of aircraft, then made a sharp, banking turn to the left and fired on the southern line. I could see tracers carving through the aircraft and knew we were getting lots of hits, but there were no explosions. On my last pass, I decided to make sure of one clear kill. I concentrated my fire at one plane and saw it start to burn.
Dief followed me closely in each pass. We exhausted our ammunition and were down to minimum fuel — 400 gallons. Time to go home. As I pulled off the target, turning right to our homeward course, I saw an island off the coast. “Oh, oh,” I thought, “there’s no island near Chongjin.” However, after comparing notes, the two pilots assured themselves that while they had not attacked Chongjin, they had struck an unimproved airfield at Rajin, 40 miles north of Chongjin and 20 miles south of the Soviet border.
