While this was going on, General Douglas MacArthur set in motion his daring amphibious assault on Inchon, designed to bisect Korea, cut North Korean supply lines and trap the North Korean People's Army between two United Nations forces. Operation chromite, supported by aircraft from the U.S. carriers Philippine Sea, Valley Forge, Boxer, Sicily and Bodoeng Strait, and the British carrier Triumph, achieved complete surprise, the landing on September 15 meeting with little resistance. The only appearance made by the NKAF consisting of two Yak-9s which made a hit-and-run bombing attack on the cruiser line, They scored no hits and one was shot down by anti-aircraft gunfire from the ships, the other Yak managing to retire undamaged. Two days later, the Marines fought their way to Kimpo airfield, only to find it completely evacuated by the retreating North Koreans. Only three aircraft, two Il-10s and a Yak-9, remained behind to suggest that the Communist had ever occupied the field.
Panther
On September 28, Mustang pilot 1st Lt. Ralph Hall of the 35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron downed a Yak. More significantly, by that date the North Korean People's Army had been driven back across the 38th Parallel and was still in full retreat. South Korea was free again and General MacArthur proposed to go on to eliminate Pyongyang's Communist government as well. By the end of October, it appeared unlikely that anything would prevent him from doing so.
That measure of success had not been achieved without sacrifice. Even without air opposition, the Allied squadrons were taking heavy losses to ground fire. By the middle of October, the 8th Fighter Group had lost 26 pilots, including the commanders of all three of the squadrons--the Mustang-equipped 35th and 36th and the F-80-equipped 80th.
On October 9th, HMS Theseus relieved HMS Triumph and commenced operations with her two squadrons of Fireflies and, in place of the Seafires, Hawker Sea Fury FB-11 fighters.
Late October 1950 found U.N. forces at the Yalu River and American squadrons able to operate out of Pyongyang, less than 250 miles from the Yalu. The Mustang outfits of the 18th Wing were being joined by South African unit, No. 2 Squadron, SAAF. But ominous reports were coming in of scattered but growing numbers of Chinese troops massing along the border. The Chinese government declared them to be "volunteers" sent to assist their North Korean comrades; be that as it may, Peking had no intention of tolerating a hostile American army on her border.
On November 1, Yak-3 fighters--nimble, wooden lightweight relatives of the Yak-9--flew over the Yalu to have a go at the Mustangs of the 67th Squadron, only to lose two of their number to Captains Robert D. Thresher and A.R. Flake.
On that same day, four Mustangs from the 18th Wing were working with a T-6 that was engaged in forward air control duties a few miles north of Sinanju when, without warning, they were jumped by six swept-wing jet fighters. It was immediately apparent that the Mustangs would have no chance of outrunning such aircraft, so they wisely limited their response to evasive action. The enemy aircraft soon concluded that they could not turn inside the Mustangs, broke off, and returned to their Manchurian air base.
F-80 Weapon Load
The bloodless encounter near Sinanju was the harbinger of a turning point in aerial combat. The Communist aircraft were Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s, the latest addition to the Soviet arsenal. If such modern fighters were being committed to the fighting in Korea, they represented a threat to U.N. air superiority that could not be ignored. Certainly the four Mustang pilots, fortunate though they had been to emerge unscathed from their first encounter with the MiGs, were not about to dismiss the potential of the new enemy jets.
Over the next few days, Communist piston-engined fighters began to cross the Yalu with greater aggressiveness. The arrival of the MiGs may have inspired their pilots to such a renewed effort, but they could not give them greater skill. On November 2, Captain Flake of the 67th downed a Yak-9--his second kill in as many days--as did 1st Lt. James L. Glessner of the 12th Fighter-Bomber Squadron. On November 6, Mustangs of the 67th had yet another run-in with Yak-9s, during which Captain Howard Price downed one and teamed up with 1st Lt. Harry S. Reynolds to get another.
In the days that followed, reports of massive Chinese infiltration across the Yalu River became cause for concern. MacArthur ordered bombing attacks against the Yalu bridges.
Those operations brought the MiGs out in force. On November 7, five different flights of Mustangs flying close to the Yalu were attacked. As one 4-plane flight from the 12th Fighter-Bomber Squadron was on routine patrol, four MiGs were seen to take off from their base at Antung and bank south. Almost before the Americans knew it the MiGs were upon them, shooting at them in a series of looping passes. Maneuvering for their lives, the Mustang pilots instinctively tried to catch the jets at the bottom of their loops and begin scoring hits. Major Ken Carlson scored several hits on a MiG, and his men reported an explosion on the ground during the wild dogfight, after which only three MiGs were seen retiring over the Yalu. No one had been able to witness an actual crash, so Carlson was given a "probable." Despite the ineffectiveness of their fighting passes, Lieutenant Lee Gomes noted ominously that the flying skills of the MiG pilots were much better than those of the Yaks encountered earlier.
Another encounter was reported by the 1st Lt. Harris Boyce of the 35th Squadron. Two MiGs overflew his 3-plane patrol and seconds later they were streaking down the Mustangs from behind. The F-51s broke right, Boyce yanking his machine around in the tightest 180 degree turn he could manage to come around behind one of the MiGs. He reported numerous hits before the jet streaked north, out of control, over the Yalu. The entire encounter lasted three minutes. Again, no crash or explosion was observed and Boyce had to content himself with a "probable"--and his life.
The next day, November 8, two flights of F-80Cs from the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing watched as six MiG-15s took off from Antung, crossed the Yalu at high altitude and began diving on them in pairs. Since the first reports of MiG attacks a week earlier, the Shooting Star pilots had been itching to match their mettle with the new Soviet fighters and eagerly turned into their attackers, causing them to break wildly. Five of the MiGs streaked for home, but a sixth dived away and 1st Lt. Russell J. Brown of the 16th Squadron discovered that his straight-winged F-80 could not only keep up, but that he was gaining on the MiG. Realizing his error, the MiG pilot pulled his plane out of the dive and into a climb, but Brown did not give him a chance to bring his superior climbing speed (10,100 feet-per-minute) into play. Lining the Mig up, Brown peppered it with a five-second burst and saw his riddled adversary dive out of control, smoking and flaming, into the ground. Brown had been victorious in the first jet-versus-jet combat in history.
The next day, Task Force 77's carrier air groups were ordered to bomb rail and highway bridges at Sinuiju and highway bridges near Hyesanjin, 200 miles upstream. The attack was carried out by a F4U Corsairs and AD Skyraiders. with a top cover of F9F Panther jets. The force detailed to hit Sinuiju was attacked by Chinese MiG-15s from Antung air base, which then were themselves jumped by the F9Fs. During the engagement, one of the Communist jets fell to an F9F flown by the commander of VF-111 from the carrier Philippine Sea, Lt. Cmdr. W.T. Amen--first blood for the Navy.
It was clear that the only effective counter to the MiG jet fighter threat would be another jet but despite their initial successes, the F-80 and F9F both lacked the speed and climb to do the job. The MiG-15 was 100 mph faster than the F-80 and a full 300 mph faster than the prop-driven F-51. Although six MiGs were credited to Shooting Stars in the course of the war, 14 F-80s would be lost to the swept-wing jets.
Corsairs attack Yalu Bridges
Fortunately, the MiG's match would not be long in coming. On the same day Brown scored his historic victory, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff made their decision to commit the best American jet fighter operational to the Korean front--the North American F-86A Sabre. Salt water damage in transit delayed the arrival of the Sabre-equipped 4th Fighter Interceptor Group at Kimpo until December 13, but the unit flew its first training flight--actually an operational patrol--on December 15 and, on December 17, Lt. Col. Bruce H. Hinton led four F-86As on a sweep of the Yalu, using F-80 radio call signs and flying F-80 patterns to ensure that any MiGs would not be shy about coming up to play. Four did intercept the formation near Sinuiju and were as surprised as Hinton had hoped they would be as the Sabres tore into them at a speed approximating the MiGs' own. A brief fight ensued before the MiGs retired in haste, short one of their number, and Hinton returned to Kimpo to do the first of hundreds of victory rolls that Sabre pilots would perform over the next two-and-a-half-years.
F-86
Meanwhile, new events had taken place to further alter the course of the war. After three days of continuous bombing and rocket attacks, all bridges across the Yalu were down except one--the tough railroad bridge at Sinuiji. A week later, the entire effort was nullified when the river itself froze over. By the first week of December, the ice was thick enough to lay railroad tracks on and support supply trains.
Mig-15 Kill
On November 20, fighting broke out between the 1st Marine Division and a large force of Chinese troops in the region of Hagaru-ri and Yudam-ni. On November 28, the Chinese launched an all-out attack against the U.S. Army X Corps, cutting the 5th and 7th Marines from the rest of their division near the Chosin reservoir and sending the rest of the U.N. forces reeling back in a disorderly rout. For the second time in less than half a year, the course of the war in Korea had entered a new phase.
The complexion of the air war had also undergone a radical change. From December 1950 on, the swept-wing jet became the key factor in the fight for air supremacy. Although the prop-driven planes and the older generation of jets would continue to play a vital role throughout the fighting, their efforts would be largely eclipsed in the public eye by the duel for the sky taking place at the threshold of the speed of sound over "MiG Alley." Also forgotten would be those first five crucial months of the war, when the straight-winged birds were all the air power that was available and the hoary old veterans of another war and another era had their last hurrah.
Additional Sources: vvs.hobbyvista.com
www.centennialofflight.gov
1000aircraftphotos.com
airwar.hihome.com
