sought our help, and the United States was determined to come to the aid of our friend. As far as Americans were concerned, North Korea’s unprovoked attack against South Korea was an example of communist aggression, and many people felt certain that the communists would not stop at Korea, that this was a blatant step toward communist world domination.
Consequently, by July 1950, American troops entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. Although I still had another year to go at West Point, I knew that if the war continued, I would soon be fighting in Korea.
My father had urged me to attend the Naval Academy—“You can still fly in the Navy,” he said, but my friends and I wanted to be where the action was—and that was in the skies above Korea. Of course, my natural interest in aviation nudged me more toward enlisting in what had until recently been known as the Army Air Corps and eventually became a separate branch of the military, the U.S. Air Force.
By the end of the summer, U.S.-led allies pushed the North Koreans out of Seoul and back to their side of the 38th parallel. But as American troops crossed the boundary and headed north toward the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and communist China, the Chinese started squawking about what they called “armed aggression against Chinese territory.” Chinese leader Mao Zedong even sent troops to North Korea and warned the United States to keep away from the Yalu boundary unless we wanted to engage them in a full-scale war. With China threatening to get involved and images of World War II still fresh in our minds, many people worried that we were getting dangerously close to World War III.
I graduated number three in my class at West Point, and by December 1952, even though negotiators were trying to bring the war to a close, I put in for combat duty stationed in Korea. I had already earned my wings and qualified as a pilot of the Sabre F-86; I soloed in prop T-6’s at Bartow Air Force Base in Florida and then flew jets at Bryan Air Force Base in Texas, so I sure didn’t want a desk job!
Flying the Sabre F-86 swept-wing fighter jet and chasing the enemy’s superagile, Soviet-made MiG-15 jets were some of the most exciting moments of my life. I flew 66 missions over the war zone, had a few close calls, and I shot down two enemy MiGs.
The MiGs could fly higher and faster than our fighter jets, and they carried a vicious 37-millimeter cannon and two 23-millimeter automatics that could shred an F-86 with one burst of fire. But what the American-made planes lacked in altitude and speed, we more than compensated for with advanced technology, much as we would in the space race in the 1960s and 1970s.
On May 14, 1953, I was flying on patrol, hunting for enemy aircraft in the skies just south of the Yalu River. Because the North Korean ground war effort had almost disintegrated, they had moved many of their best planes as far north as possible, close to the Yalu in a location my buddies and I referred to as “MiG Alley.” On a good day, it could be like picking off ducks in a shooting gallery, with “free” shots at enemy planes still on the ground. On a bad day, an F-86 pilot could experience his worst nightmare—a faster killing machine with deadly firepower on his tail, or worse yet, two or three MiGs surrounding him in a dogfight that was certain not to last very long.
On that day in May, I was the pilot with the advantage. Flying just south of the Yalu, I spied a MiG cruising ahead of me, straight and level. Apparently, he didn’t know that I was nearby or he would not have been so lackadaisical. I aimed my guns at him and fired, lighting up the MiG.
The enemy fighter jet spun hard and pitched toward the ground. The pilot, still alive, succeeded in ejecting from his cockpit, but his plane streaked toward the Earth. The camera on the gun of my F-86 recorded the whole episode, including the pilot’s ejection and the plane veering toward destruction. Actually, I’m glad the pilot ejected, and I like to think that he escaped harm, even though I shot down his plane. I’ve always thought of myself as a “gentle” fighter pilot!
Our military public relations guys, however, loved those videos of “kills,” and several