RUDY ANDERSON ABHORRED war but loved his country and loved to fly. In fact, he was driven to become the best pilot in the world, and his enlistment in the US Air Force (USAF) gave him the opportunity to test his skills in the military’s most sophisticated aircraft against other top pilots, friend and foe.
In June 1950, the nascent Cold War reached its first point of crisis. An estimated 75,000 troops from the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea marched south across the Thirty-Eighth Parallel into the Republic of Korea. A month later, the United States, under the auspices of a United Nations police action, took up arms to defend South Korea.
Both Rudy Anderson and Chuck Maultsby would soon enter the fray, but with different objectives in mind. While Maultsby hungered for the opportunity to fight the enemy in the skies over Korea, Anderson decided he could better serve the cause flying reconnaissance missions to protect and alert North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops. He had no thirst for dogfighting.
Anderson was assigned to the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron based at Kimpo, Korea. His mission was to obtain photographic evidence of enemy troop movements and supply lines. The 15th Squadron, originally part of the Army Air Service, had provided key aerial reconnaissance for the D-day landings in June 1944. Its pilots prided themselves on serving as eyes in the sky for American military operations, a feeling handed down from the World War II airmen to the next generation serving in Korea. Rudy was trained on the elusive F-86 Sabre, the US Air Force’s premier jet fighter at the time. Developed after World War II as America’s first swept-wing fighter, the F-86 Sabre cut down on aerodynamic drag at superhigh speeds. It was fast and lethal: armed with six .50-caliber machine guns, three on each side of the pilot, it could reach speeds of 690 mph at sea level. It also offered the perfect solution for recon squadrons hampered by the Chinese-supplied MiG-15s that dominated the skies above the Thirty-Eighth Parallel. The 15th Squadron was tasked with identifying prisoner of war camps in a region known as MiG Alley, where the Yalu River spills into the Yellow Sea—a mission fraught with risk. The squadron had already lost twelve men since the beginning of the conflict, and the American reconnaissance planes—the RF-80 and RB-26—were slow and made for easy targets for enemy fighters. Finally, someone came up with the idea to modify the faster F-86 Sabre for reconnaissance missions. Cameras fitted on each side of the fuselage replaced the guns. The modified jets, renamed RF-86s, flew into the hostile area in mixed formation with F-86 fighters for protection, captured evidence of POW camps, and returned safely to base at Kimpo, “Home of the MiG Killers.”
Robert Ross flew with Rudy Anderson in Korea. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ross joined the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron in early March 1954, as it was moving from Korea to Komaki, Japan. He had trained with Rudy at Moody Air Force Base and was quick to admit that Anderson’s piloting and leadership skills were a cut above the rest.
“Everything impressed you about Rudy,” Ross recalled. “He was physically strong and vertically erect. You never saw him slouching. Most important was the way he handled the men. He wasn’t prone to shouting or beating his chest. Rudy led in the best way—quietly and by example.”1
Anderson was Ross’s first flying partner in Korea. They were assigned to fly to three different points across the Sea of Japan before returning to Komaki.
“I was flying wing on Rudy’s left, and I was reasonably close,” Ross remembered. “He was always watching me and charting my progress.”
Ross’s plane then leveled off at 13,000 feet instead of 23,000 feet—a dangerously low altitude that exposed his aircraft and Anderson’s to enemy fighters. But Rudy did not panic. He called out to Ross on the mic.
“Hey, Bob, we won’t make it in this altitude. Please readjust,” he said calmly.
Ross quickly realized his mistake and made the proper adjustments so both could return to base safely.
“We finished the mission as requested,” Ross said. “Rudy could’ve hammered me for making a mistake like that, but he didn’t. I thought he was the perfect flight leader.”
“Alone, unarmed, and unafraid.” This was the battle cry for all USAF reconnaissance pilots in Korea. But when it came to the most sensitive and dangerous missions, it was best to fly not solo but in pairs. Anderson and fellow pilot Robert J. Depew were teamed up for four daring, “off the books” missions. These top-secret flights took the pilots where they were not supposed to be. During predawn hours, Anderson and Depew climbed into the cockpits of their RF-86s, rolled down the runway, and watched the small base at Komaki disappear behind them. From there, they crossed the Sea of Japan and landed briefly at K-8, the air base at Kunsan, South Korea, where they loaded their cameras and refueled their drop tanks. There they received details for the next leg of their mission. Briefed on their targets, they headed back into the sky. Both pilots understood they were making an unauthorized flight out of North Korea and into China. If something went wrong, they would be on their own, with only one another to count on for their survival. Flying at approximately 54,000 feet, Anderson and Depew traveled across the Yellow Sea and over Dairen, China, home to Soviet-occupied Port Arthur. The pilots flew in tight formation, only five hundred to eight hundred feet apart. They had visuals on each other to look for contrails. If Anderson could see Depew’s contrails, that meant they could also be seen from the ground. The top-secret mission would be top-secret no more, and they would have to abort immediately. Fortunately for the pilots, they managed to meet their targets, take their photos, and return safely to friendly soil.
ALTHOUGH A RECONNAISSANCE pilot was utterly defenseless and susceptible to enemy attack at any time, the job suited Anderson’s personality perfectly as he was a closet pacifist who had confided to family members that he could not justify killing anyone—even in combat.
Upon his return home from the war, he was sent for additional training at Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, Georgia. The base was first used during World War II to train single-engine pilots to fly twin-engine combat aircraft. Moody had also served as an internment camp for German POWs. The base itself was massive, the largest Anderson had ever seen, with eight long runways and more than 160 buildings of various sizes and shapes spread out over 9,000 acres. The base was a temporary home for over 4,000 airmen all eager to prove their worth. Flight instructors schooled Anderson and his fellow pilots on navigational instruments of the F-80 Shooting Star, the USAF’s first turbojet-powered combat aircraft. They also received extensive training on aerial photography. Airmen like Anderson then photographed assigned targets, such as ports and the occasional communications line, at differing altitudes. A thorough understanding of geography was a key element in recon training. The airmen pored over maps and studied photographs to identify every river, hilltop, and valley deemed important to their mission. By all accounts, Anderson excelled both in the classroom and in the air. He also made the most of his brief time spent off base.
When he could break away from the classroom and the cockpit, he and a few air force buddies drove to Valdosta, nine miles south of Moody Air Force Base. Valdosta was a state college town lined with two-story brick buildings and storefronts that carried bold signs promoting anything from billiards to broomsticks. The town was also slowly emerging from the racial strife that plagued the South in the early to mid-twentieth century. In 1918, murderous white mobs lynched thirteen African Americans, including a young pregnant woman, in retaliation for the shooting of a white planter by a black farmhand. Twenty-five years later, the community celebrated a young Georgia high school student named Martin Luther King Jr. by voting him second place in a local scholastic oratory contest.
Anderson drove to Valdosta to pick up a friend who was taking courses at the state college there. It was here that he met a young coed named Jane Corbett. With flowing red hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a porcelain complexion that earned her the nickname “Doll,” Jane was the ideal catch for the fraternity boys on campus. In high school, a friend had pressured her to enter a beauty contest simply because she did not want to enter it alone. Jane reluctantly entered and won. She always said that it was the single most embarrassing moment of her life because she never sought attention and had always downplayed her good looks.
“On a good day, I won’t scare people off, or their pets,” she often said.
Jane was born and raised in neighboring Pearson, Georgia. Her parents, Francis and Lilla Mae Corbett, owned a small business in the heart of town, where they sold ice along with sausage and ham cooked in a smokehouse in the back of the store. But the family-run business barely turned a profit, and the Corbetts, like most folks in southern Georgia, survived week to week on meager earnings.
Jane was the typical middle child. She never received the same attention from her parents as her older sister, Frances, or younger brother, William, whom the family called “Boy.” Instead, Jane forged her own path, finding passion in education, art, and athletics. She skipped two grades in high school despite constant scolding for her reluctance to take notes in class.
“Taking notes is unnecessary if you pay attention,” she told her teachers.2
Jane loved to paint with oils and acrylics and was a pivotal player on her high school basketball team, which won a state title. She also demonstrated a real talent for horseback riding. Trained in the English style, using the reins for direction and speed, Jane raced across local fields and hills, experiencing a sense of freedom similar to the exhilaration Rudy felt soaring high above the Georgia countryside.
But their first encounter was anything but graceful. A heavy rain had begun to fall as Rudy waited for his friend under the portico of West Hall at Valdosta State College. At the same time, Jane was wrapping up a sorority chapter meeting and left the building with her head down and the hood of her coat shielding her from the squall. She barreled into Rudy, nearly toppling them both over. Jane was always convinced that the collision was no accident and that destiny had intervened. Both were smitten from then on.
Rudy and Jane were drawn together by their spirit of adventure and love of laughter. Jane’s beauty drew comparisons to screen siren Rita Hayworth, and although she attracted many admirers, some would-be suitors found her sharp wit intimidating. Jane was quick on her feet and fiercely independent. Rudy Anderson was the only young man with both the confidence and the keen sense of humor to impress her. They looked like the perfect couple—youthful and beautiful, as they strolled down Valdosta’s quaint Main Street during those brief moments when Rudy was on leave. Their closest friends described them as soul mates.
“I knew immediately that he was the one,” Jane would later tell their children.
But her parents had serious reservations about the air force pilot. Rudy was seven years older than Jane, had already graduated college, and had been to war. Jane Corbett was young and had never traveled far from home. When Rudy met Jane’s mother and father, he was polite but determined.
“I intend to marry your daughter as soon as she graduates from college, and I would like your permission to do so,” he told Jane’s father, Francis Corbett.3
The Corbetts saw both meaning and love in Rudy’s words and soon began to treat him like a second son. Jane joked that her parents only kept her around so Rudy would visit them.
Rudy’s parents also had initial misgivings about the union because Jane was so much younger than their son. She was twenty-one to his twenty-eight. They also knew nothing about her.
“I’ve met the only girl for me, and I’m going to marry her,” he told them.4
They later became smitten with Jane as well. She graduated from college in 1955. The two wed the following November and moved to Spokane, Washington, where Rudy was assigned to Fairchild Air Force Base.