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- " Most of the aces were older airmen, many with experience in World War II. The top ace was Capt. Joseph C. McConnell Jr., with 16 victories. He had been a B-24 navigator during World War II."
- "Fifth Air Force caught on quickly that the MiG pilots were not Chinese or Koreans. They were Russians. The Americans caught sight of some of them. US intelligence overheard their radio transmissions. The Russians attempted to communicate, as ordered, in Chinese or Korean but reverted to Russian in the heat of battle. Air forces of the three communist nations were controlled by a joint operations center at Antung, but the Russians were clearly dominant.
It would be another 40 years before either the United States or the Soviet Union admitted publicly the participation of Russian pilots in the Korean War. If the news got out, the US government reasoned, public outrage might lead to a broader—and possibly nuclear—conflict with the Soviet Union.
... Korea is often thought of as a ground war in which airpower—especially the fighter engagements in MiG Alley, far from the ground battle lines—is regarded as peripheral if not insignificant. In actuality, airpower, both in air-to-ground and air-to-air roles, was of critical strategic importance. Air superiority missions accounted for nine percent of total Air Force sorties. Another 48 percent were interdiction, and 20 percent were close air support. After UN forces held at the Pusan Perimeter and then broke out, Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker, commander of the US Eighth Army, said,
- “If it had not been for the air support that we received from the Fifth Air Force, we would not have been able to stay in Korea.” "