In the Devil's Shadow: Don Nichols and U.S. Air Force Special Air Mission.
Air Power History › Vol. 48 Nbr. 4, December 2001
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Summary
Korean War
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In the Devil's Shadow: Don Nichols and U.S. Air Force Special Air Mission.
If I were called upon to name the most amazing and unusual man among all those with whom I was associated during my military service, I would not hesitate for a second in picking out Donald Nichols as that individual.... I have often referred to him as a one man war.
Gen. Earle E. Partridge, Commander, Fifth Air Force, 1948 Maj. Gen. Earle E. Partridge first met MSgt. Donald Nichols in 1948, soon after the general arrived in Japan to assume command of the Fifth Air Force. (1) And though Partridge received periodic briefings from the Counter-Intelligence Corps sergeant during the subsequent two years leading up to the war, the general later admitted his sparse knowledge of Nichols's activities in Korea during this prewar period. Little wonder, considering that Nichols's world was found in the mean streets and back alleys of prewar Seoul, a long way from the plush offices found at Fifth Air Force headquarters in Tokyo. The war gave Partridge cause to take a deeper look into Nichols's operation in the summer of 1950, and he was astonished at what he found. For what the gruff, burly Nichols had established on the Korean peninsula during the prewar years was not simply an intelligence organization, but the genesis for what would become the most successful special operations unit of the war. It was by any account a bizarre organization to be run by the "wild blue yonder" air force. But then again, neither the newly arrived Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) nor the Far East Command's (FEC) army intelligence team could compete with the quality of sensitive information generated by Nichols's contacts, deep penetration agents established years earlier throughout Korea. By 1950, Nichols was a man with access twenty-four hours a day to both General Partridge and South Korean president Syngman Rhee, not to mention a host of shadowy Asian characters whose names will never see print. Possessing only a sixth grade education but fluent in the Korean language, Nichols was the sp...See the full content of this document
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