Captain Ken Jackson
8th Air Force - Pilot
318th Fighter Interceptor Squadron
Osan, Korea/Suwan, Korea
6/54-10/58
8th Air Force - Pilot
318th Fighter Interceptor Squadron
Osan, Korea/Suwan, Korea
6/54-10/58
Growing Up During the Great Depression
Ken Jackson was born in 1930 in the little town of Baconton, Georgia. Ken was the youngest of four children with two brothers and one sister. Ken comes from a family with a tradition of military. His grandfather, being from Georgia, fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. His oldest brother enlisted in the Navy and served on a submarine chaser. He was on a ship off the coast of Normandy on D-Day. His middle brother enlisted in the Army and served in the Korean War as an MP guarding POW’s.
Ken’s dad was a very successful pecan farmer. He owned significant acreage covered with pecan trees and a pecan shelling factory. As his success grew he borrowed money to buy other pecan plantations. The family was living a very comfortable life. “The 1929 crash wiped my dad out. He had loans with the federal land bank used to buy up pecan plantations. When the market crashed, the land bank called in all the loans.” The only thing they were able to keep was an old caterpillar tractor.
“During this time we had three cows, a Gurnsey, a Jersey and a Holstein. We had plenty of milk and butter but then the bank took away the cows.” Food was hard to come by. Ken’s mother was able to bake biscuits and make jelly out of wild blackberries they picked.
Ken recalls all of the neighbors having difficulties during the Great Depression, although the farmers who didn’t have the loans fared better.
The 1930’s were a very difficult time for the family. They moved from one house to another house until in 1940 they finally moved into an old sharecropper house. Ken described it as a shed with no indoor plumbing, an outhouse and no heat. The family eventually moved to Cuthbert, Georgia to live with his maternal grandparents. Cuthbert was a small agricultural town of less than 4,000 people with the main crop being peanuts.
Ken remembers playing football on a Sunday afternoon in 1941 when he was 11 years old. While he was playing his mother came along and told him he had to come home. When he got home he learned that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. As the United States prepared for World War II, his father landed a job with the Defense Department as a Supervisor of the repairs of the B 17 bombers.
When Ken turned 12, he worked in the family Drug Store as a soda jerk, just like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. “I was paid ten cents an hour.” The country was gearing up as quickly as possible for the war effort and this led to rationing of many day-to-day necessities. Because of the rationing the store was unable to get coca-cola, cigarettes and ice cream. “Dad had to sell his car because we couldn’t get any gas. It was only 19 cents a gallon”, but the gas was rationed. “You had an A, B, or C sticker for your car. A was a farmer, and he could get all of the gas he wanted. B was semi restricted and C was a civilian and maybe you could get a gallon a month.” Ken recalls being friends with the son of a farmer and they were able to get gas so they were able to go on dates. The rationing left a lasting impression on Ken. “Today I don’t think people today could survive with those restrictions.”
Despite the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II Ken and his friends managed to make the most of their childhood. “There’s not a lot of entertainment in a little Georgia town. Go out in the summertime in July and steal watermelons. There’s an art to stealing a good watermelon. You thump it. The resonance that comes back tells you if it’s ripe.”
Before his father was wiped out by the Great Depression, Ken recalled his father saying the Yankees up north love watermelon. “So he planted 100 acres. That’s a lot of watermelon!” The watermelons sprouted and were growing nicely. Ken recalls his father saying, ‘next week they’ll be ready.’ Then it started raining and it kept raining and raining and the creek next to the watermelon field flooded and washed all of the watermelons into the Flint River. He later learned the folks in Apalachicola, Florida enjoyed a big watermelon feast.
In 1948 Ken graduated from Cuthbert High School with a graduating class of 20 people. Despite the small enrollment the school had enough boys, including Ken, to form a basketball team. After graduation Ken attended Georgia Southwestern College, a community college in Americus, Georgia with an enrollment of 350 students. “So, you knew everybody.” He went on to the University of Georgia (UG) to major in business. Ken found it to be a little overwhelming with an enrollment of 4,000 students but he settled in and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.
During college Ken did his best to avoid the draft. If he could avoid the draft and enlist at a later date, he could avoid being part of the Army ground troops which was his goal. He took a test for Naval Aviation while at Georgia Southwestern and did well enough to receive a deferment and be selected for the Aviation Cadets. Ken wouldn’t be in the ground troops, he would be piloting a plane.
Korean War and the Cold War
Ken graduated from UG in 1952 and headed to San Antonio, Texas for boot camp with the Aviation Cadets. 12 weeks later he headed to flight school in Hondo, Texas. Population 300. “We lived in converted chicken houses. No heat. The food was terrible because we had a Mexican chef and he spiced up all the foods. I thought I had the flaming Mimi’s because of all the spicy food. But we survived.”
Ken headed for additional training near Texas A&M where they moved from flying Piper Cubs to flying jets. Much of the training involved “tracking” which was to fly over a fence line to see which way the wind was blowing. “I got bored with that and on one flight I saw a buzzard and I took off after the buzzard.” Ken tracked the buzzard and got close, until the buzzard made a turn. Ken turned around also and was able to get behind him again. Just as Ken pulled up behind the buzzard, “he pulls up, stalls and went straight down and just missed my leading edge. That would have been hard to explain how I had a hole in my wing.” Ken survived his first dog fight with a tie.
When training was complete Ken had a choice of going to Korea or Alaska. Being a Georgia boy, Ken didn’t like cold weather, so he chose Korea. After a brief stop in Japan Ken arrived in Korea in June 1954. He arrived just in time for the monsoon season. His initial sleeping quarters was a Quonset hut. “It rained 11 inches in one day. I had a cot and put it up on blocks because the water was coming through the Quonset hut.” Ken was instrument qualified, so he was assigned to an all-weather squadron known as the night fighters. “We had radar in the nose, and we could see things at night or in bad weather.”
The Korean War began in June of 1950 with the United States entering the fray in July. An armistice was signed in July of 1953 so the fighting was over by the time Ken arrived. He was based 30 miles from the 38thparallel, which divides North and South Korea. Although the hostilities had concluded, “about every two days a Bed Check Charlie would come over and drop 100 pound bomb. They didn’t do any damage, they were just harassing people.”
Ken flew an aircraft that carried two men. The front seat was the pilot and the rear seat was the radar operator. Ken’s rear seater had the last name of Mullin. At the time there was a comic strip known as Moon Mullen. Ken’s rear seater earned the call sign, Moon.
The flight crews would stand alert, which meant they would be airborne within five minutes of the scramble bell sounding. Ken recalled his first scramble. The bell went off and Ken and Moon ran to the aircraft and were airborne in five minutes. Ground radar directed Ken to the incoming Bed Check Charlie and gave him permission to engage. Moon had radar lock on the enemy aircraft and Ken had his finger on the trigger of the 50 caliber machine gun when the radar went dead. Ken and Moon missed their opportunity for a kill and headed back to base. On their return to base the sky below them was lit up like a 4th of July fireworks display. Ken realized it was U.S. anti-aircraft artillery conducting their nightly practice. Ken radioed ahead and requested they halt their fire so he could land. Fortunately, there was no blue on blue incident that night.
Their squadron moved from Korea to Japan because they couldn’t get the necessary supplies for the maintenance required to keep the aircraft air-worthy. Ken spent time in Tokyo, Ngyoa and Chitose. “I got to go to Chitose once. I’d never seen so much snow.” On one flight Ken was returning to base in the middle of a snowstorm and approached the runway on instrument control with ground control talking him in. “When I broke out of the snowstorm I could only see a light path with a yellow marker up the middle.” After a nail-bitter of a landing the control tower radioed Ken and asked him to confirm when they had cleared the runway. Ken thought this was odd and replied, “can’t you see me tower?” The response was negative, and they instructed Ken to look out to the side of his aircraft. Ken, a Georgia boy who had little exposure to snow, saw 26-foot high snow banks.
Ken returned to the United States in late 1955 and was based at Bunker Hill Air Force Base in Kokomo, Indiana. The squadron received a new and faster aircraft, the F94 C. After six months in Kokomo Ken began dating Carol Sue Sleeth and the couple was married on July 14, 1956.
In the mid-1950’s the United States was involved in the Cold War with Russia, then known as the Soviet Union. The squadron’s mission was to defend the United States against Soviet attacks. The belief at the time was, if Soviets were to attack the U.S they would likely come over the North Pole and come down through Canada. Ken’s squadron would be directed by ground radar to intercept Soviet bombers. These aircraft, F89, were equipped with atomic rockets under each wing. If a Russian bomber was entering U.S. airspace with nuclear weapons, the U.S. pilots would launch the rockets from five miles away and break hard to the left or right to avoid the fallout from the nuclear explosion. Ken explained that on training missions they carried dummy rockets.
Life After the Military
Ken and Carol had three daughters and Carol was worried about Ken flying. Ken left the military in October of 1958 and took a job with a local foundry in Kokomo making jet engine turbine blade. Ken recalls taking a big pay cut when he left the service. “I don’t know how we made it, but we did.” Ken was in sales and his biggest customer was Lycoming. He was able to expand that relationship and when the sales rep handling Pratt & Whitney, the company’s largest customer, resigned Ken was promoted to handle the Pratt & Whitney relationship.
Ken was eventually hired by Pratt & Whitney and he ultimately was transferred to their East Hartford, CT location in 1961. Ken was responsible for qualifying new vendors and the various manufacturing processes. In 1999 Ken retired after 20 years of service.
“I’ve had a good retirement.” Ken keeps busy with his flower and vegetable gardens, he is also an accomplished painter and has had several paintings displayed in exhibitions. He also enjoys spending time at his cottage in Otis, Massachusetts. The cottage is on a reservoir that was built in the early 1800’s to supply power to the Collinsville Axe Company in Collinsville, CT. “If they needed more water, they sent a telegram up to Otis to open the dam.” Ken also took up sailing and had a catamaran for a period of time. Ken and Carol have 4 great grandchildren. Sadly, Carol passed away in 2022 after 62 years of marriage.
Ken, we all owe a big thank you to you and your family for all of your sacrifices. The Jackson family carried the load for all of us with three boys all serving their country and being deployed to combat zones. And we hope no one is stealing your watermelons from your garden!
Ken Jackson was born in 1930 in the little town of Baconton, Georgia. Ken was the youngest of four children with two brothers and one sister. Ken comes from a family with a tradition of military. His grandfather, being from Georgia, fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. His oldest brother enlisted in the Navy and served on a submarine chaser. He was on a ship off the coast of Normandy on D-Day. His middle brother enlisted in the Army and served in the Korean War as an MP guarding POW’s.
Ken’s dad was a very successful pecan farmer. He owned significant acreage covered with pecan trees and a pecan shelling factory. As his success grew he borrowed money to buy other pecan plantations. The family was living a very comfortable life. “The 1929 crash wiped my dad out. He had loans with the federal land bank used to buy up pecan plantations. When the market crashed, the land bank called in all the loans.” The only thing they were able to keep was an old caterpillar tractor.
“During this time we had three cows, a Gurnsey, a Jersey and a Holstein. We had plenty of milk and butter but then the bank took away the cows.” Food was hard to come by. Ken’s mother was able to bake biscuits and make jelly out of wild blackberries they picked.
Ken recalls all of the neighbors having difficulties during the Great Depression, although the farmers who didn’t have the loans fared better.
The 1930’s were a very difficult time for the family. They moved from one house to another house until in 1940 they finally moved into an old sharecropper house. Ken described it as a shed with no indoor plumbing, an outhouse and no heat. The family eventually moved to Cuthbert, Georgia to live with his maternal grandparents. Cuthbert was a small agricultural town of less than 4,000 people with the main crop being peanuts.
Ken remembers playing football on a Sunday afternoon in 1941 when he was 11 years old. While he was playing his mother came along and told him he had to come home. When he got home he learned that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. As the United States prepared for World War II, his father landed a job with the Defense Department as a Supervisor of the repairs of the B 17 bombers.
When Ken turned 12, he worked in the family Drug Store as a soda jerk, just like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. “I was paid ten cents an hour.” The country was gearing up as quickly as possible for the war effort and this led to rationing of many day-to-day necessities. Because of the rationing the store was unable to get coca-cola, cigarettes and ice cream. “Dad had to sell his car because we couldn’t get any gas. It was only 19 cents a gallon”, but the gas was rationed. “You had an A, B, or C sticker for your car. A was a farmer, and he could get all of the gas he wanted. B was semi restricted and C was a civilian and maybe you could get a gallon a month.” Ken recalls being friends with the son of a farmer and they were able to get gas so they were able to go on dates. The rationing left a lasting impression on Ken. “Today I don’t think people today could survive with those restrictions.”
Despite the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II Ken and his friends managed to make the most of their childhood. “There’s not a lot of entertainment in a little Georgia town. Go out in the summertime in July and steal watermelons. There’s an art to stealing a good watermelon. You thump it. The resonance that comes back tells you if it’s ripe.”
Before his father was wiped out by the Great Depression, Ken recalled his father saying the Yankees up north love watermelon. “So he planted 100 acres. That’s a lot of watermelon!” The watermelons sprouted and were growing nicely. Ken recalls his father saying, ‘next week they’ll be ready.’ Then it started raining and it kept raining and raining and the creek next to the watermelon field flooded and washed all of the watermelons into the Flint River. He later learned the folks in Apalachicola, Florida enjoyed a big watermelon feast.
In 1948 Ken graduated from Cuthbert High School with a graduating class of 20 people. Despite the small enrollment the school had enough boys, including Ken, to form a basketball team. After graduation Ken attended Georgia Southwestern College, a community college in Americus, Georgia with an enrollment of 350 students. “So, you knew everybody.” He went on to the University of Georgia (UG) to major in business. Ken found it to be a little overwhelming with an enrollment of 4,000 students but he settled in and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.
During college Ken did his best to avoid the draft. If he could avoid the draft and enlist at a later date, he could avoid being part of the Army ground troops which was his goal. He took a test for Naval Aviation while at Georgia Southwestern and did well enough to receive a deferment and be selected for the Aviation Cadets. Ken wouldn’t be in the ground troops, he would be piloting a plane.
Korean War and the Cold War
Ken graduated from UG in 1952 and headed to San Antonio, Texas for boot camp with the Aviation Cadets. 12 weeks later he headed to flight school in Hondo, Texas. Population 300. “We lived in converted chicken houses. No heat. The food was terrible because we had a Mexican chef and he spiced up all the foods. I thought I had the flaming Mimi’s because of all the spicy food. But we survived.”
Ken headed for additional training near Texas A&M where they moved from flying Piper Cubs to flying jets. Much of the training involved “tracking” which was to fly over a fence line to see which way the wind was blowing. “I got bored with that and on one flight I saw a buzzard and I took off after the buzzard.” Ken tracked the buzzard and got close, until the buzzard made a turn. Ken turned around also and was able to get behind him again. Just as Ken pulled up behind the buzzard, “he pulls up, stalls and went straight down and just missed my leading edge. That would have been hard to explain how I had a hole in my wing.” Ken survived his first dog fight with a tie.
When training was complete Ken had a choice of going to Korea or Alaska. Being a Georgia boy, Ken didn’t like cold weather, so he chose Korea. After a brief stop in Japan Ken arrived in Korea in June 1954. He arrived just in time for the monsoon season. His initial sleeping quarters was a Quonset hut. “It rained 11 inches in one day. I had a cot and put it up on blocks because the water was coming through the Quonset hut.” Ken was instrument qualified, so he was assigned to an all-weather squadron known as the night fighters. “We had radar in the nose, and we could see things at night or in bad weather.”
The Korean War began in June of 1950 with the United States entering the fray in July. An armistice was signed in July of 1953 so the fighting was over by the time Ken arrived. He was based 30 miles from the 38thparallel, which divides North and South Korea. Although the hostilities had concluded, “about every two days a Bed Check Charlie would come over and drop 100 pound bomb. They didn’t do any damage, they were just harassing people.”
Ken flew an aircraft that carried two men. The front seat was the pilot and the rear seat was the radar operator. Ken’s rear seater had the last name of Mullin. At the time there was a comic strip known as Moon Mullen. Ken’s rear seater earned the call sign, Moon.
The flight crews would stand alert, which meant they would be airborne within five minutes of the scramble bell sounding. Ken recalled his first scramble. The bell went off and Ken and Moon ran to the aircraft and were airborne in five minutes. Ground radar directed Ken to the incoming Bed Check Charlie and gave him permission to engage. Moon had radar lock on the enemy aircraft and Ken had his finger on the trigger of the 50 caliber machine gun when the radar went dead. Ken and Moon missed their opportunity for a kill and headed back to base. On their return to base the sky below them was lit up like a 4th of July fireworks display. Ken realized it was U.S. anti-aircraft artillery conducting their nightly practice. Ken radioed ahead and requested they halt their fire so he could land. Fortunately, there was no blue on blue incident that night.
Their squadron moved from Korea to Japan because they couldn’t get the necessary supplies for the maintenance required to keep the aircraft air-worthy. Ken spent time in Tokyo, Ngyoa and Chitose. “I got to go to Chitose once. I’d never seen so much snow.” On one flight Ken was returning to base in the middle of a snowstorm and approached the runway on instrument control with ground control talking him in. “When I broke out of the snowstorm I could only see a light path with a yellow marker up the middle.” After a nail-bitter of a landing the control tower radioed Ken and asked him to confirm when they had cleared the runway. Ken thought this was odd and replied, “can’t you see me tower?” The response was negative, and they instructed Ken to look out to the side of his aircraft. Ken, a Georgia boy who had little exposure to snow, saw 26-foot high snow banks.
Ken returned to the United States in late 1955 and was based at Bunker Hill Air Force Base in Kokomo, Indiana. The squadron received a new and faster aircraft, the F94 C. After six months in Kokomo Ken began dating Carol Sue Sleeth and the couple was married on July 14, 1956.
In the mid-1950’s the United States was involved in the Cold War with Russia, then known as the Soviet Union. The squadron’s mission was to defend the United States against Soviet attacks. The belief at the time was, if Soviets were to attack the U.S they would likely come over the North Pole and come down through Canada. Ken’s squadron would be directed by ground radar to intercept Soviet bombers. These aircraft, F89, were equipped with atomic rockets under each wing. If a Russian bomber was entering U.S. airspace with nuclear weapons, the U.S. pilots would launch the rockets from five miles away and break hard to the left or right to avoid the fallout from the nuclear explosion. Ken explained that on training missions they carried dummy rockets.
Life After the Military
Ken and Carol had three daughters and Carol was worried about Ken flying. Ken left the military in October of 1958 and took a job with a local foundry in Kokomo making jet engine turbine blade. Ken recalls taking a big pay cut when he left the service. “I don’t know how we made it, but we did.” Ken was in sales and his biggest customer was Lycoming. He was able to expand that relationship and when the sales rep handling Pratt & Whitney, the company’s largest customer, resigned Ken was promoted to handle the Pratt & Whitney relationship.
Ken was eventually hired by Pratt & Whitney and he ultimately was transferred to their East Hartford, CT location in 1961. Ken was responsible for qualifying new vendors and the various manufacturing processes. In 1999 Ken retired after 20 years of service.
“I’ve had a good retirement.” Ken keeps busy with his flower and vegetable gardens, he is also an accomplished painter and has had several paintings displayed in exhibitions. He also enjoys spending time at his cottage in Otis, Massachusetts. The cottage is on a reservoir that was built in the early 1800’s to supply power to the Collinsville Axe Company in Collinsville, CT. “If they needed more water, they sent a telegram up to Otis to open the dam.” Ken also took up sailing and had a catamaran for a period of time. Ken and Carol have 4 great grandchildren. Sadly, Carol passed away in 2022 after 62 years of marriage.
Ken, we all owe a big thank you to you and your family for all of your sacrifices. The Jackson family carried the load for all of us with three boys all serving their country and being deployed to combat zones. And we hope no one is stealing your watermelons from your garden!