Army doc is back to run in Boston

A year ago, Army Reserve Lt. Col. (Dr.) David King crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon with a time of 3 hours, 12 minutes — a slow pace for the experienced runner but a thrill nonetheless for the Cambridge, Mass., resident.

King rendezvoused with his family and hopped in a cab to go home. But just minutes into the ride, his cellphone suddenly began buzzing with texts asking him if he was all right.

He didn’t know it at the time, but two pressure cooker bombs had exploded on Boylston Street, killing three and injuring hundreds.

Within minutes, the Massachusetts General trauma surgeon was back on the scene and hard at work — the start of a 30-hour odyssey of surgery and treating Boston bombing victims, relying on the skills he had honed in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military Times caught up with King on April 17, two days after the first anniversary of the attack — and four days before he was due to run in this year’s 117th Boston Marathon.

Q. A year ago, you had hoped to run the 2014 race beside four-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers and those who had been injured, had treated the injured or whose families were affected. Is that going to happen?

A. It sounded like a great plan, but because of the entry requirements for Boston, it became complicated. There are qualification times and race requirements not everyone could do. If it were an open race, it would have happened. And Bill wanted to run it but he’s had a few injuries, so he’s going to be on the course on the lead motorcycle ahead of the first wave. I’ll be right behind him.

Q. Besides the fact that it’s your hometown marathon, why are you running this year?

A.There are lots of people running it this year for many reasons — for the victims, for their patients, for their love of the city. Like many people, I wear multiple hats. But I’m really running it this year as a citizen-soldier, in outright defiance of the purpose the terrorists were trying to achieve. They tried to scare us last year, and I want to show that we are not scared. We are going to run louder, faster, stronger, more boisterously than we have ever run before.

Q. You saved lives last April 15 and escorted President Obama during a visit to Massachusetts General. This year, Vice President Joe Biden mentioned you in his speech in Boston on the anniversary of the bombing. How did that feel?

A. It was cool to get a shout-out from the vice president. I didn’t know it was coming. I thought it was just great to be there and then to have Vice President Joe Biden nod and point at me during his speech ... well, it was cool.

Q. Have you reflected on the experience? What are the lessons learned?

A. One of the things we do well in the military but has been poorly translated to civilian medicine is the use of tourniquets. All soldiers — not just medics, not just corpsmen — carry tourniquets in their pockets. And they know how to use them. What struck me is that many emergency medical services responders don’t have them. That needs to change. A T-shirt with a knot in it isn’t going to work. I’d like to see tourniquet availability and the knowledge to use them as common as the Heimlich maneuver or CPR.

Q. What’s ahead this year for you?

A. After Boston, I’m going to do another marathon and two Ironmans — Ironman Texas and Mont-Tremblant. I wanted to run the New York City Marathon in November too, but I’m getting deployed. I’m considering doing it remotely, using a virtual program or one of those digital things, but I haven‘t really looked into it yet. I need to get through Boston first.

S. Korean president: Ferry crew's actions 'murderous'

JINDO, South Korea --- South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Monday that the captain and some crewmembers of the sunken ferry committed "unforgivable, murderous behavior" in the disaster, which left more than 300 people dead or missing.

The captain initially told passengers to stay in their rooms and waited more than half an hour to issue an evacuation order as the ferry Sewol sank Wednesday. By then the ship had tilted so much it is believed that many of the roughly 240 people missing could not escape.

Park said at a Cabinet briefing, "What the captain and part of the crew did is unfathomable from the viewpoint of common sense, unforgivable, murderous behavior." The comments were posted on the website of the presidential Blue House.

Park said instead of following a marine traffic controller's instructions to "make the passengers escape," the captain "told the passengers to stay put while they themselves became the first to escape."

"Legally and ethically," she said, "this is an unimaginable act."

The captain and two crewmembers have been arrested on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need, and prosecutors said Monday that another four crewmembers have been detained. Senior prosecutor Ahn Sang-don said prosecutors would decide within 48 hours whether ask a court for arrest warrants for the four --- two first mates, a second mate and a chief engineer.

The captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, has said he waited to issue an evacuation order because the current was strong, the water was cold and passengers could have drifted away before help arrived. But maritime experts said he could have ordered passengers to the deck --- where they would have had a greater chance of survival --- without telling them to abandon ship.

Video showed that Lee was among the first people rescued. Some of his crew said he had been hurt, but a doctor who treated him said he had no fracture and only light injuries.

Lee spoke of "pain in the left rib and in the back, but that was it," Jang Ki-joon, director of the orthopedic department of Jindo Hankook University. Jang said he did not realize Lee was the captain until after he treated him.

Many relatives of the dead and missing also have been critical of the Park administration, angry over the search and rescue response and mistaken assurances in the early stages that loved ones were alive. On Jindo island, near the sunken vessel, about 100 relatives marched for six hours Sunday, intending to travel to Park's office 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, before police stopped them. Families also blocked the prime minister's car and cursed at and pushed the fisheries minister.

So far, 64 bodies have been recovered, and about 240 people remain missing. About 225 of the missing and dead are students from a single high school near Seoul who were on their way to the southern tourist island of Jeju.

As divers increasingly make their way into the submerged ship, including a new entryway through the dining hall Monday, there's been a big jump in the discovery of corpses. And that means that on Jindo, an island near where the ferry sank, relatives of the missing must look at sparse details such as gender, height, hair length and clothing to see if their loved ones have been found.

There are no names listed as relatives huddle around white signboards to identify bodies from a sunken ferry --- just the slimmest of clues about mostly young lives now lost. Many favored hoodies and track pants. One girl painted her fingernails red and toenails black. Another had braces on her teeth.

"I'm afraid to even look at the white boards," said Lim Son-mi, 50, whose 16-year-old daughter, Park Hye-son, has not been found. "But because all the information is quite similar, whenever I look at it, my heart breaks."

Relatives have already lined up to give DNA samples at the gymnasium where many of them are staying, to make bodies easier to identify when they are recovered.

A transcript released by the coast guard Sunday shows the ship, which carried 476 people, was crippled by confusion and indecision well after it began listing Wednesday.

About 30 minutes after the Sewol began tilting, a crewmember repeatedly asked a marine traffic controller whether passengers would be rescued if they abandoned ship off South Korea's southern coast.

That followed several statements from the ship that people aboard could not move and another in which someone said that it was "impossible to broadcast" instructions.

An unidentified official at Jindo Vessel Traffic Services Center told the crew that they should "go out and let the passengers wear life jackets and put on more clothing."

"If this ferry evacuates passengers, will you be able to rescue them?" the unidentified crewmember asked.

"At least make them wear life rings and make them escape!" the traffic-center official responded.

"If this ferry evacuates passengers, will they be rescued right away?" the crewmember asked again.

"Don't let them go bare - at least make them wear life rings and make them escape," the traffic official repeated. "The rescue of human lives from the Sewol ferry ... the captain should make his own decision and evacuate them. We don't know the situation very well. The captain should make the final decision and decide whether you're going to evacuate passengers or not."

"I'm not talking about that," the crewmember said. "I asked - if they evacuate now, can they be rescued right away?"

The traffic official then said patrol boats would arrive in 10 minutes, though another civilian ship was already nearby and had told controllers that it would rescue anyone who went overboard.

Ahn said Monday that a number of Sewol crewmembers, but not the captain, took part in the conversation.

The cause of the disaster is not yet known, but prosecutors have said the ship made a sharp turn before it began to list.

More than 170 people survived the sinking of the Sewol, but the confirmed death toll climbed over the weekend after divers finally found a way inside the sunken vessel and quickly discovered more than a dozen bodies. They had been hampered for days by strong currents, bad weather and low visibility.

Many relatives of the missing have been staying in a gymnasium on Jindo island, but dozens of relatives have started camping out at the port there to be closer to where the search was taking place, sleeping in tents. A Buddhist monk in white robes stood facing the water and chanted in a calm monotone as several relatives stood behind him, their hands pressed together and heads bowed in prayer.

The Sewol's captain was arrested Saturday, along with one of the ship's three helmsmen and the 25-year-old third mate. The third mate was steering at the time of the accident, in a challenging area where she had not steered before, and the captain said he was not on the bridge at the time.

Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin said the third mate has refused to tell investigators why she made the sharp turn. Prosecutors have not named the third mate, but a fellow crewmember identified her as Park Han-kyul.

Kim reported from Mokpo, South Korea; Foster Klug, Youkyung Lee, Jung-yoon Choi and Leon Drouin-Keith in Seoul; and Minjeong Hong in Jindo contributed to this report.

After 70 years, WWII prisoner opens up about capture, march across Europe

BUHL — A sleeve full of potatoes.

For 70 years, that story remained buried in the mind of Ervin Pickrel, an Army Air Corps radio operator who was taken prisoner during World War II. Those starchy hunks along with a can of meat were the genesis of Pickrel’s escape from “the Black March,” one of the most horrendous marches in war history.

Pickrel and thousands of other WWII prisoners of war were forced to march 600 miles across Germany over 86 days by Nazis hoping to skirt invading British and Russian forces.

Pickrel, 92, said he didn’t talk much about his traumatic experience in the march after the war. When Veterans Affairs doctors recently asked him about his war experiences, he said, he “got tied up in a knot” and was nauseated thinking back on it.

“Right now I’m quite a bit shaky after all these years,” he said. “I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.”

On his farm, Pickrel’s children heard bits and pieces. But Pickrel decided to open up more to his family after reading a Times-News article about Paul Kelly, an 88-year-old Twin Falls man who was part of the same march and held captive at the same prison — Stalag Luft IV.

This winter, the two former prisoners sat for four hours in Pickrel’s Buhl kitchen and discussed their experiences.

Pickrel said he was tied in knots again, even in the presence of someone who’d been through the same event.

Each time he retells the journey, Pickrel said, he gets more comfortable.

“I’ve done more this morning than I ever have,” he said after an interview of more than an hour. “It just ties you up in knots, and I don’t know why.”

Without a stick to fight

Pickrel joined the military at 21. The Nebraska native was trained as a radio operator and served aboard a bomber, flying several missions and taking many close calls.

In Northern Ireland, his pilot couldn’t get the landing wheels down on the plane. The crew dropped the ball gunner in a lake and landed in a meadow. Like a plow, the gunner’s hole scooped up the sod and filled the back end of the plane with dirt, Pickrel said.

On his sixth mission, the plane was hit, and the crew was rescued from the English Channel.

On his 12th mission, he wasn’t as lucky. A few days after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, Pickrel was on a bombing mission when his plane was hit. The crew bailed over northern France.

“You bet your life I wouldn’t want to do that again,” he said with a smile.

The plane’s navigator — a substitute on his last mission — was killed. Except for two waist gunners, the men were taken prisoner together. The two who escaped eventually ended up in German concentration camps, he said.

Pickrel landed in an open pasture, with nowhere to hide.

“I could see that old car coming down the hill and see that guard running down to see where I was going to land,” he said. “When I raised up, he cut loose with his little machine pistol. B-r-r-r-rapt. I just laid down flat because I didn’t have even a stick to fight with.”

‘Numb’

Interrogated and stripped of his comfy heated flight jumper, Pickrel and the other captives were loaded on a railroad train and shipped across Germany. In Berlin, the car stopped, and air raid sirens blew.

“We figured, ’Oh brother, here we are locked in those railroad cars.’ And the guards were scattering for cover. Those were the main (bombing) targets, those rail yards.”

They escaped unharmed, but it would not be the last time he and others were unsure of their fate.

“You were just kind of numb,” Pickrel said. “You just followed orders — you run off, and you’ll be shot.”

Life was grim in Compound A of Stalag Luft IV. He often thought of home and kept hoping for mail that never came. “You knew you were captured, and you just lived with it.”

The prisoners’ two main forms of entertainment were playing cards delivered by the Red Cross and walking around the perimeter of the compound.

Provisions were meager. Each morning he got a piece of bread and a cup of hot water. Most nights they’d be fed soup of boiled kohlrabi, a German turnip, which he now refuses to eat.

The Red Cross dropped off rare treats — coffee, canned meat, chocolate, crackers and, most precious, cigarettes.

“If you didn’t smoke, you could use those to bargain for food,” he said. “Those people who were hooked on cigarettes would trade their grandmother for a pack.”

He and a friend often summoned the strength to walk around the camp two or three times a day. That paid off when they were forced to march, he said.

“The guys who sat on their butts in the barracks the whole time, when they got out on the road their feet wouldn’t hold up.”

The long walk

Eight months passed before Pickrel and the others were forced to march west to avoid Russian forces charging in from the east.

The long overcoat he was issued always was “flip-flopping around your feet.” Pickrel said he tried to cut a hole in it to button it away from his feet. His knife slipped and sliced his knuckle open.

“That’s my war wound,” he said, laughing.

The prisoners slept in crowded barns at night. Many soldiers had dysentery and no water other than what they were given to drink twice a day. Pickrel luckily avoided the disease. “if you pooped your pants, you still had to wear those damn pants.”

“The back end of my heels peeled off just from walking in the wet ground,” he recalled. “For 80 days, we didn’t have a change of shoes or clothes.”

The German guards had it almost as bad as the prisoners, he said. “You kind of felt sorry for them.”

“We stopped at noon one time, and the soldier lay on the ditch bank there, took his shoe off and he had a hole in the bottom like that,” Pickrel said, making a zero with his fingers. “He got a wad of grass and stuffed it down in his shoe to plug that hole up. I thought, ’My God — what are you guys fighting for if you have to do things like that?’”

Time to escape

As they neared the end of their march, the exhausted prisoners could hear British guns in the distance. Their captors stopped. In a barn, the prisoners found a stash of potatoes.

“The guard was good enough to let us go in there and get a handful of potatoes,” he said. “…We emptied that sucker quick. I got a sleeve full of potatoes, tied a knot in my shirt and filled it full.”

The next day, they started marching the prisoners east — the direction from which they had come. Pickrel, throwing up from all the potatoes he’d eaten, pulled his friend aside. They agreed he couldn’t walk anymore. They found the back of the line and stayed near a sick guard in worse shape. “When he wasn’t lookin’, we scooted across the line, into the trees and laid down,” Pickrel said.

The march trudged on, and they were alone. For a few days they hid in the trees, startled by deer that rattled the brush.

They joined some British soldiers, and the group hid while three Germans ominously carried a large machine gun up a creek. Not far behind, the British forces gave chase.

Pickrel said his rescuers were eager to feed and transport him. He was flown to Paris and deloused.

“The minute you stepped through the door, the guy was there with his spray gun full of DDT,” he said. “… They just soaked you with DDT because you were covered in lice. ... It’s a wonder it didn’t kill me.”

‘Just carry on’

Returning to Idaho, Pickrel picked up farm life. He never thought about therapy and didn’t put in for veterans medical benefits until recently.

“I didn’t let it bother me. The kids always wanted me to write a book or something on it, but I never could do it.”

He said he didn’t suffer many ill effects from the war, though other soldiers, such as Kelly, struggled to readjust to society.

“For him, it’s just carry on,” said daughter Diane Clemens. “I think a lot of men were like that.”

Although he mostly avoided the subject, Pickrel did react one night when he and his wife, Velma, were playing cards. With news of the Iraq invasion on the television, Pickrel slammed his cards down and ran to the bathroom.

“He wasn’t like Ervin,” Velma said. “Ervin wouldn’t do that. We had never any trouble with that. … Around that time, we had heard of other veterans having flashbacks.”

Clemens said she feels fortunate to hear her father’s incredible story, as so many other veterans’ experiences were never told.

“I’m even learning more things today,” she said. “Like the potatoes in the sleeve — I’d not heard that one.”

“Yeah, well, we cleaned that poor old farmer out,” Pickrel said.

Soldier who may have killed Pat Tillman haunted by remorse

Ten years after Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire, it’s still not certain who shot the NFL player-turned-Army-corporal in Afghanistan. But one of the three Army Rangers who opened fire says he can’t shake the fact that he might be at fault.

“It would be disingenuous for me to say there is no way my rounds didn’t kill him, because my rounds very well could have,” Steven Elliott said in an interview with ESPN that aired Sunday. Elliott, discussing the incident in the media for the first time, said he has been able to cope with the April 22, 2004, tragedy because of therapy. He said he was speaking out because he wanted to give hope to other soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Elliott said the incident was his first firefight. Months later, he and the others who mistakenly fired at Tillman were demoted out of the elite Rangers unit.

“Even if somebody else was identified through forensic science as to have fired the ‘fatal shot,’ that doesn’t change how I feel,” Elliott said in the interview. “I still fired on a friendly position and that wouldn’t change my sense of responsibility.”

Elliot, now 33, left the Army in 2007. He told ESPN that he hasn’t spoken to the two other soldiers involved since early on. They declined to comment to ESPN.

Elliott also hasn’t spoken to Tillman’s family.

Asked what he would say to them if he did get the opportunity, Elliott replied, “You just want to tell them how sorry you are and how completely inadequate those words feel.”

Hindered by a setting sun and weak radio reception in a mountainous area, two caravans of soldiers fired upon each other after one of the groups was ambushed. Elliott said he followed the lead of his commander and fired at shadowy figures on a hillside. Those shadowy figures turned out to be Tillman, Bryan O’Neal and an Afghan contractor, who was also killed.

Tillman and his companions had been firing at an enemy position, but Elliott’s truck of soldiers misinterpreted the gunfire, Army investigators determined.

O’Neal told ESPN in a televised interview that he wasn’t ready to think about or to forgive the Rangers who fired at him and Tillman.

“To forgive them would mean I have to acknowledge they exist, and to me, they are nothing. All of them,” he said. “Their lack of taking that five seconds to really understand what they are shooting at — two people died and it changed my life.”

Tillman, an NFL defensive back, was celebrated as a hero after declining a contract extension from the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army eight months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Tillman’s patrol was charged with killing or capturing suspected “high-value” Taliban and al-Qaida targets along the border with Pakistan. He had conducted previous patrols in the Spera district, and in one village, he became known as the soldier who handed out small sums of cash — $2 for children and $10 for men — and small, hand-cranked radios.

His death at age 27 drew national attention, and he was hailed as a hero who had been killed by enemy fire. After a month, however, the Army disclosed he had been killed accidentally by U.S. troops.

Now, Tillman’s widow, Marie Tillman, runs a foundation in his name that awards education scholarships to veterans. In an interview with the Arizona Republic, Marie Tillman said this month that she’s found a balance in her life. She has remarried but says Pat’s legacy is always close by.

“The impact of his decisions and the way he lived his life and just ... who he was, affected many, many people,” Marie Tillman said. “(But) I can still have my relationship with him and my feelings about the impact that his life had on me and sort of bring all those things together.”

———

Times staff writer David Zucchino contributed to this report.

Tens of thousands set to evacuate Italian city during defusal of WWII ‘Blockbuster’ bomb

VICENZA, Italy — Tens of thousands of city residents and U.S. Army soldiers here will evacuate their homes, offices and barracks Thursday as military explosives experts, seasoned by duty in Afghanistan, attempt to disarm a gargantuan bomb that was among thousands dropped during a single Allied mission 70 years ago.

The 4,000-pound British “Blockbuster” bomb rests in what’s now a field adjacent to the U.S. Army’s Del Din base, formerly Dal Molin airport, which, in 1944, was controlled by the German air force and Benito Mussolini’s Italian Republican National Air Force.

Since its discovery in October, the bomb has been under constant police guard. Over the past six months, the Italian army has built five huge blast walls made of soil and green Hesco barriers.

Explosives experts from the 2nd Regiment of the Julia Alpine Engineers, veterans of many Afghanistan deployments, were enthused about the job.

“One as big as this, we’ve never done before,” said Lt. Giovanni Contini. “It’s a challenge for us.”

The most dangerous part will be removing the bomb’s three fuses, the engineers said. If that’s not possible, the plan is to shoot hot water at high pressure into the bomb to “melt” the explosives before hauling it away to a cave.

They’ve named their mission, out of respect, they said, for its British origin and age, Operation Old Lady.

Local officials were looking forward to getting the bomb out of the ground and away, despite the cost — about $2 million — and disruption — a daylong evacuation of the 30,000 or so residents within about two miles of the site.

“We have to do it,” said Vicenza Prefect Eugenio Solda.

Del Din, home to the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, is to be evacuated by 6 a.m., except for emergency crews, and most of its soldiers will get the day off. Army officials planned trips and a variety of activities.

“Nothing, pretty much, can go wrong,” Maj. Dennis Williams, plans officer for U.S. Army Garrison Vicenza, said at a town hall meeting this month.

That confidence is widely shared.

“This is my third bomb,” Solda said. “Usually, everything goes as planned.”

The bomb is by far the biggest of 133 found by experts in the area, which is to be developed as a “peace park” to placate Vicenza citizens who opposed the creation of Del Din.

It was one of a staggering 16,000 bombs dropped on or around the former airport Nov. 17 and 18 of 1944 by more than 100 Allied aircraft.

“It was a sort of devil house that night,” said the 2nd Regiment’s Lt. Col. Mauro Altieri. The British Royal Air Force bombed at night; U.S. bombers followed by day.

Dal Molin and Aviano were among four airports targeted that night, according to “Bf 109 Aces of North Africa and the Mediterranean,” a book about Axis fighter pilots. Strategic bombing, in which non-military targets are hit, was used extensively by the Allies in World War II, including in Italy, even after it switched to the Allied side in 1943.

“Since German forces were in occupation, northern and central Italy remained a target for allied bombing until the very last days of the war,” British historian Richard Overy writes in his new book, “The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945.”

“Throughout the campaign, the political necessity of defeating Germany overrode any political considerations toward the population held hostage on the battlefield,” Overy writes. By his account, some 60,000 Italian civilians were killed by bombs, either because, as often happened, the bombs missed their target, or because population centers were targeted.

Blockbuster bombs, used only by the British Royal Air Force, were basically huge cylinders full of explosives, designed for their blast effect to cause damage to buildings. In particular, they were supposed to blow off roofs so incendiary bombs could reach the building interiors.

The British believed bombing Italian civilians would cause them to revolt against their Fascist government and their German colleagues-turned-occupiers, Overy writes. The bomber pilots and crews were themselves at great risk of death, Overy writes, either from enemy defenses or, more often, accidents, bad weather or mechanical failure.

Another 4,000-pound unexploded Blockbuster — found in Vicenza’s city cemetery in 2001 — dated from the same November 1944 bombing raid as the one now near Del Din, according to local military historian Giuseppi Versolato. Some 500 Vicenza citizens were killed in the Allied bombings, he said.

Removal of the cemetery bomb required the evacuation of two-thirds of the city, or 77,000 people.

April 25 happens to be Liberation Day. That’s Italy’s national holiday commemorating the day in 1945 when Italian partisans seized power from Mussolini’s fascist government in the north, a puppet regime of Nazi Germany, marking the end of the war for Italy.

“Many people still remember,” Vicenza Mayor Achille Variati said of Italy’s suffering in World War II, although he said the subject had only recently been introduced in schools.

But if the evacuation for the bomb removal brings up bitter memories, it also provides opportunity, he said, to train for emergencies and practice public safety measures, and as a reminder “of the great value peace brings.”

montgomery.nancy@stripes.com

Pilot's career stalls after criticizing oxygen system

The Air Force has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past two years correcting problems with its premier jet fighter -- issues that Capt. Joshua Wilson helped expose by speaking up, both to his bosses and on national television.

Since then, Wilson's career as an F-22 Raptor pilot has stalled. A member of the Virginia Air National Guard's 149th Fighter Squadron, Wilson hasn't been permitted to fly the jet since early 2012. He's fighting disciplinary actions that he sees as retribution for going public.

"I'm a fighter pilot. I worked my entire life to get in the cockpit and to that job," said Wilson, who is 37. "Right now, I'm fighting the Air Force when I should be fighting our enemies."

Almost two years ago, Wilson and Maj. Jeremy Gordon told CBS's "60 Minutes" that the F-22 had a defective oxygen system that was endangering pilots.

The veteran aviators, dressed in their Virginia Air National Guard flight suits, shared their personal accounts of mid-flight oxygen deprivation that left them disoriented. Other pilots had similar life-threatening experiences but were reluctant to speak publicly, they said.

The Pentagon's top brass took notice.

Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demanded that Air Force leaders accelerate their efforts to fix the problem. He asked NASA and the Navy to help, and he restricted Raptor flights so pilots experiencing problems would be close to a landing field. Members of Congress weighed in, too.

Back at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia Air National Guard leaders were also taking action. Even before the "60 Minutes" segment aired in May 2012, the squadron's leadership began a series of punitive measures against Wilson.

In April 2012, they stopped his planned promotion to major, and they threatened to take away his wings, jeopardizing his military career.

They also forced him out of his full-time desk job with the Air Force's Air Combat Command at Langley.

During that time, Wilson alerted the Department of Defense's office of inspector general, which is investigating. He and his lawyers say the Virginia Air National Guard's actions are reprisal for speaking out.

Cotton Puryear, a Virginia National Guard spokesman, declined to discuss the actions against Wilson. Guard leaders are waiting for the inspector general's probe to be completed before they "take appropriate action to resolve any outstanding issues," Puryear wrote in an email.

No such disciplinary problems haunt Maj. Jeremy Gordon, who sat next to Wilson in the interview with "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl.

Gordon, a decorated pilot who flew an F-16 in the Iraq War, voluntarily stopped flying the Raptor in mid-2012. He remains a part of the squadron, flying a T-38 trainer jet.

"There are not and never were any personnel actions initiated regarding Maj. Gordon," Puryear wrote.

Wilson said he has refused overtures from his leaders to walk away. He wants a chance to clear his reputation and get back in the cockpit.

"If you guys can prove I'm a bad officer, kick me out of the military," he said. "If not, let me get back to my job. Let me get back to what I love to do, what I'm good at and what I trained my entire life to do."

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican and Air National Guard pilot, said he believes Wilson is being punished both for speaking out and for aggressively pushing, internally, to solve equipment problems.

"I have no doubt that this is reprisal," said Kinzinger, who attended officer training with Wilson a dozen years ago and helped arrange the "60 Minutes" interview. "There's no excuse for what's happened.... I think they basically believe they could outlast Josh."

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia has also pressed the Air Force to fix the plane and is critical of how Wilson has been treated.

Warner said Wilson's treatment doesn't necessarily constitute reprisal.

"But I am going to say something doesn't smell right when the Air Force has had to acknowledge there's a problem and takes a fix. And somebody is still hanging out two years later with his career in jeopardy," Warner said.

The F-22, which entered active service in 2007, was plagued with problems with its oxygen system. Pilots reported hypoxia-like symptoms, including becoming disoriented, nauseous and extremely fatigued. In November 2010, an Alaska-based Raptor crashed, killing the pilot, after the plane's oxygen system malfunctioned.

Wilson's firsthand experience came on Feb. 16, 2011, when he became so disoriented while flying off the Virginia coast that he was unaware his hand movement on the controls was causing his plane to rock. He had unknowingly changed his radio frequency so that ground control couldn't reach him, and he couldn't read his own writing. Sensing he was having a problem, he tried to find the emergency oxygen supply ring he knew was on the left side of his seat. But in his bewildered state, he couldn't find it.

When he finally engaged the backup air supply, Wilson's head cleared, and he landed at Langley. Afterward, he suffered severe headaches, vertigo and bouts of exhaustion. It was only after three stints in a hyperbaric chamber -- used to treat oxygen deprivation -- that Wilson felt he had recovered.

A few months later, the Air Force grounded the entire Raptor fleet.

When the F-22 was cleared to fly again in September 2011, the Air Force had added a charcoal filter to the breathing system in the hopes of trapping contaminants. But that fix appears to have presented new problems.

In the months that followed, pilots discovered the filters were releasing charcoal dust inside their oxygen hoses. The result, according to a letter Wilson's lawyer sent to the inspector general: coughing fits and other respiratory ailments.

Members of the squadron, including Wilson, told their commander they wanted to fly without the filter but were informed that anyone who refused would face disciplinary action.

After about 40 hours of flying with the filter, Wilson developed an "uncontrollable cough, dry, scratchy, sore throat and the inability to take a deep breath," he said in a memo sent to Col. David Nardi, then commander of the 192nd Operations Group.

Feeling that not all pilots were reporting problems with the Raptor, a small group of officers at Langley -- including Wilson and medical personnel -- developed a confidential survey for F-22 pilots. They wanted to learn more details about symptoms of oxygen deprivation from aviators, who are generally reluctant to discuss health problems that might ground them. Before it could be administered, the 106-question survey was rejected by Virginia Air National Guard and Air Force leaders.

Wilson didn't stop asking questions, though. He sent several emails to senior Guard officers asking specifically about the charcoal filter and other health monitoring equipment that Raptor pilots had begun to wear.

He acknowledged both those activities irritated his commanders, but his resistance to flying with the charcoal filter appears to be the central issue in the disciplinary action against him.

In the early months of 2012, pressure from his superiors to fly using the filter grew more intense. They would demand he fly with the filter; he would respond by saying that an Air Force flight doctor and a pulmonologist advised him that doing so would damage his lungs.

Things came to a head in April 2012. Wilson described the chain of events in a complaint letter to the inspector general:

In an April 5 meeting, Col. Howard Purcell, the vice wing commander, pressed him to fly with the filter and told him his expected promotion to major -- in the works for several months -- had been suspended.

That evening, Nardi called Wilson to tell him that he was no longer permitted to work at Air Combat Command, where he was involved in planning air security during the 2012 presidential election. As a Guard pilot, he needed Nardi's permission for the desk job, which paid $60,000 a year -- most of his income.

A little more than two weeks later, Nardi gave Wilson a letter of reprimand for failing to fly the F-22.

The April 21 letter made no mention of Wilson's explanation that his military doctors told him not to fly with the filter. Nardi also wrote that Wilson needed to "immediately rectify" his combat-ready status by flying the F-22 or he would "face far more severe consequences, to include the untimely end of your military career."

If the reprimand was meant to provoke Wilson to get back in the cockpit, he wasn't given much time to comply. The next day, the Virginia Air National Guard blocked him from flying.

On April 22, he was given a second letter, this one signed by Col. Thomas Wark, Nardi's boss, stating that a flying evaluation board would convene to consider whether to take away Wilson's wings -- and his livelihood. His aviation privileges were suspended immediately.

"Your apparent fear of flying the F-22 is evidence of a habit, trait of character or personality characteristic that makes it undesirable for the command to continue using you in flying duties," Wark wrote.

The correspondence noted Wilson had been reprimanded a day earlier and said his failure to fly "constitutes a conscious decision" not to meet training requirements. It did not mention that military physicians had told Wilson that he should not fly with the filter.

Wilson insisted he never refused to fly the F-22; he asked for a waiver to fly without the filter and was denied.

Even as Wilson was being pressed to fly with the charcoal filter, senior Air Force leaders had decided to stop using it. The canisters were removed in April 2012 partly because they were making it more difficult for pilots to breathe -- exacerbating the problem they were attempting to solve.

Wilson's annual performance evaluations have suffered since speaking out.

Four years of reviews by his superiors at Langley and in New Jersey, where he flew the F-16, were filled with praise and talked of his promise as an officer.

In February 2012, the Virginia Guard leadership called him a "premier tactician" who was making "outstanding progress" in flight lead upgrade training that would prepare him for a leadership role. His commander wrote that Wilson was "one of my top wingmen" and a "superb officer, aviator and volunteer."

But the tone turned sharply critical -- bordering on sarcastic -- in a review written after he went public about the F-22.

It described Wilson as an "average officer" during 2012. Without mentioning his television appearance, the review, which Nardi approved, described Wilson as a "photogenic, driven and vocal officer; willing to express and share views regarding F-22A operations at all levels."

Maj. Gordon, who appeared on "60 Minutes" with Wilson, declined to be interviewed for this report.

Given Gordon's war record and aviation experience, his decision to stop flying the F-22 apparently troubled Gen. Mark Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff. The four-star general, who, like Gordon, began his career as an F-16 pilot, telephoned Gordon last year to ask whether he wanted to fly the F-22 again, according to a source familiar with the conversation. Gordon declined.

The Air Force says it has significantly addressed the Raptor's oxygen system problems, and it notes there haven't been any unexplained physiological incidents in more than two years. It is installing a new backup emergency oxygen system in the Raptor that starts automatically when sensing a pilot is having trouble. As of last week, the system has been installed in 20 of Langley's 46 Raptors. All are expected to be upgraded by September.

Wilson said he is glad that the plane is being fixed but is frustrated his career remains in limbo. The inspector general's office, which has visited Langley for interviews, hasn't indicated when it will conclude its investigation.

Despite the controversy, Wilson said, he's never lost his love of the F-22.

"It's a huge honor to fly this airplane.... It's an unbelievable machine," he said.

He doesn't regret his activism.

"Somebody's got to take a stand," Wilson said. "It's no doubt that if we had continued on the path we were on, we would've had another accident.... We were waiting for it to happen."

bill.bartel@pilotonline.com

Divers pull bodies from sunken ferry; toll tops 50

MOKPO, South Korea -- The confirmed death toll from South Korea's ferry disaster rose past 50 on Sunday as divers finally found a way inside the sunken vessel, quickly discovering more than a dozen bodies in what almost certainly is just the beginning of a massive and grim recovery effort.

About 250 people are still missing from the ship, which had been packed with high school students on a holiday trip, and anguished families are furious with the pace of rescue efforts. Divers had previously failed to enter the ferry, officials said, because of extremely strong currents and bad visibility due to foul weather.

Beginning late Saturday, when divers broke a window, and continuing into Sunday, multiple teams of divers have found various routes into the ferry, discovering bodies in different spots, coast guard official Koh Myung-seok said at a briefing. Thirteen bodies have been found in the ship, while six other bodies were found floating outside Sunday, bringing the official death toll to 52.

At least 23 of the dead are students, according to coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in. Divers have yet to find any survivors in the ship.

A 21-year-old South Korean sailor, surnamed Cho, also died from injuries he sustained Wednesday while working on a warship going to help rescue passengers in the ferry, said Cmdr. Yim Myung-soo of the South Korean navy.

The penetration by divers into the ferry follows the arrest of the captain Saturday on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Two crew members also were taken into custody, including a rookie third mate who a prosecutor said was steering in challenging waters unfamiliar to her when the accident occurred.

Meanwhile, on an island near the submerged ferry, about 200 police in neon jackets blocked about 100 relatives of missing passengers who'd been walking on a main road in an effort, they said, to travel to the presidential Blue House in Seoul to voice their complaints to the president.

"The government is the killer," they shouted as they pushed against a police barricade.

"We want an answer from the person in charge about why orders are not going through and nothing is being done," Lee Woon-geun, father of missing passenger Lee Jung-in, 17, said. "They are clearly lying and kicking the responsibility to others."

Prime Minister Chung Hong-won on Sunday visited the gymnasium where relatives of the ferry's missing passengers have been staying, but he met only with a number of representatives of the family members in a side office. The representatives were to brief other relatives about the meeting later.

Relatives are desperate to retrieve bodies before they decompose beyond recognition, Lee said.

"After four or five days the body starts to decay. When it's decayed, if you try to hold a hand it might fall off," he said. "I miss my son. I'm really afraid I might not get to find his body."

The ferry's captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, was arrested along with one of the Sewol's three helmsmen and the 25-year-old third mate, prosecutors said.

Lee, speaking to reporters Saturday morning as he left the Mokpo Branch of Gwangju District Court to be jailed, defended his much-criticized decision to wait about 30 minutes before ordering an evacuation.

"At the time, the current was very strong, the temperature of the ocean water was cold, and I thought that if people left the ferry without (proper) judgment, if they were not wearing a life jacket, and even if they were, they would drift away and face many other difficulties," Lee said. "The rescue boats had not arrived yet, nor were there any civilian fishing ships or other boats nearby at that time."

The Sewol had left the northwestern port of Incheon on Tuesday with 476 passengers on an overnight journey to the holiday island of Jeju in the south, including 323 students from Danwon High School in Ansan. It capsized within hours of the crew making a distress call to the shore a little before 9 a.m. Wednesday. Most of the missing passengers are believed to be trapped inside the 6,852-ton vessel.

With the chances of survival increasingly slim, it is shaping up to be one of South Korea's worst disasters. The loss is more keenly felt because of so many young people, aged 16 or 17, on board. The country's last major ferry disaster was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.

By the time the evacuation order was issued, the ship was listing at too steep an angle for many people to escape the tight hallways and stairs inside. Several survivors told The Associated Press that they never heard any evacuation order.

Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin told reporters that the third mate was steering the ship Wednesday morning as it passed through an area with lots of islands clustered close together and fast currents. According to investigators, the accident came at a point where the ship had to make a turn. Prosecutor Park Jae-eok said investigators were looking at whether the third mate ordered a turn so sharp that it caused the vessel to list.

Yang said the third mate has six months of experience, and hadn't steered in the area before because another mate usually handles those duties. She took the wheel this time because heavy fog caused a departure delay, Yang said, adding that investigators do not know whether the ship was going faster than usual.

Helmsman Park Kyung-nam identified the third mate as Park Han-kyul. The helmsman who was arrested, 55-year-old Cho Joon-ki, spoke to reporters outside court and accepted some responsibility.

"There was a mistake on my part as well, but the steering had been turned much more than usual," Cho said.

Lee has four decades of experience at sea. A representative for his employer, Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd., told Yonhap News Agency that he has sailed the company's route from Incheon, near Seoul, to the southern island of Jeju for eight years.

But he was not the Sewol's main captain, and worked on the ship about 10 days a month, helmsman Oh Yong-seok said.

Lee was not on the bridge when the ship began to list. "I gave instructions on the route, then briefly went to the bedroom when it happened," he told reporters.

According to the court, Lee faces five charges, including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law, and the two other crew members each face three related charges.

Lee was required by law to be on the bridge helping his crew when the ferry passed through tough-to-navigate areas, said Yang, the senior prosecutor.

Yang said Lee also abandoned people in need of help and rescue, saying, "The captain escaped before the passengers." Video aired by Yonhap showed Lee among the first people to reach the shore by rescue boat.

Yang said the two crew members arrested failed to reduce speed near the islands and failed to carry out necessary measures to save lives.

It's not clear why the two crew members made the sharp turn, Yang said. He said prosecutors would continue to look into whether something other than the turn could have made the ferry sink, but he added that there were no strong waves that could have knocked down the ferry at the time.

rosecutors will have 10 days to decide whether to indict the captain and crew, but can request a 10-day extension from the court.

Three vessels with cranes arrived at the accident site to prepare to salvage the ferry, but they will not hoist the ship before getting approval from family members of those still believed inside because the lifting could endanger any survivors, said a coast guard officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.

Associated Press writers Youkyung Lee and Jung-yoon Choi in Seoul and Gillian Wong in Jindo, South Korea, contributed to this report.