[Empire_of_Liberty]

Thank you for the reply.

So, the Soviets were supplying the MIGs, but they were flown by the Chinese in Korea? Or, were they known to be flown by Soviets?

I know that in one of these wars, the Soviets were surreptitiously piloting planes for experience against Americans.

[Windcatcher]

There was an interview long ago with a retired Soviet pilot who admitted they secretly flew missions against us in Korea.

[verum ago]

So, the Soviets were supplying the MIGs, but they were flown by the Chinese in Korea? Or, were they known to be flown by Soviets?

I know that in one of these wars, the Soviets were surreptitiously piloting planes for experience against Americans.

It was Korea that the Soviets surreptitiously flew in.

The Soviets provided the planes and training to the North Koreans and Chinese at first, but they weren't terribly effective. Stalin eventually got frustrated with their inability to defend the materiel headed to North Korea (a lot of which ultimately came from the USSR) and decided to use Soviet pilots to interdict our bombing missions and help prop up North Korea as a buffer against anti-communism and US influence. However, since the Soviets didn't want to be openly at war with the US, they attempted to keep their direct involvement secret, by using Soviet pilots in Chinese or North Korean uniforms and in Chinese planes with Chinese and North Korean markings. They even had them try to use only Chinese or Korean over radios. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet pilots were much more effective than the hastily/secondhand-trained Chinese and North Korean ones. The Soviets also avoided having their pilots stray too near the front lines of the ground fighting, so as to avoid any being captured and identified. They didn't use their own pilots in efforts against the US Navy for the same reason.

The US / UN forces did eventually figure out that Soviet pilots were flying active combat missions, generally from slip ups where they used Russian over the radios, and in the particular instance Capt. Williams received his Medal of Honor for, we had them on radar coming from Vladivostok and on gun cameras in Soviet-marked planes.

However, the allied powers-that-be decided it was also in our best interest to keep Soviet involvement secret, for fear that revealing their escalation would also remove their need for secrecy and therefore also their need for restraint.

So basically the Soviets didn't want open war with the US, while the US was afraid that blowing the Soviet's little secret would result in them saying 'screw it', shifting to open operations, and massively escalating, up to and including sending in the Red Army. So both sides kept it hush-hush.

In then end, both sides additionally also came to view the US vs Soviet air battles as a real-world laboratory to test new airplane technologies, new air tactics, and pilot training.

I don't know the US first publicly acknowledged the Soviets' combat role in Korea, but I believe it was literally decades later. I believe the Soviet Union and its successor Russia have literally never formally admitted their combat role in Korea, but enough official documentation spilled out after the end of the Cold War that there's no doubt whatsoever and no real need for them to formally admit anything.