Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (36 page)

October 23, 1951, Korea

Harry’s seemingly endless flight from Wright-Pat to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, was Kafkaesque with its interminable delays, cancellations, sudden departures, and catalog of maintenance problems. There was only one way to react without going crazy, and that was passive acceptance, using the downtime to read his B-29 manuals, and when the incessant WARNING, CAUTION, and EMERGENCY notices began to bore him, he would switch to the pack of paperback Kenneth Roberts novels he carried with him. When he was not reading, Colonel Harry Shannon thoughtfully considered the Korean War and his contributions to it, which, to date, could only be called not much. While Tom had covered himself with glory flying F-80s, Harry had been stuck with non-combat jobs that he hated even though he knew intellectually that they were important.

Harry had irritated his boss, Al Boyd, with constant requests for combat duty, and he volunteered for F-84s,
F-86s, and B-29s. Each time his request had been turned down. Now he was on his way to combat at last—assigned as an observer, in a B-29 that had been pulled out of storage, refurbished, and manned by a crew of reservists who vastly resented being called back to war. Fortunately, the 307th Bomb Wing commander was an old friend and, instead of making Harry fly in a jump seat, checked him out as a copilot. The 307th was shorthanded, and with Harry’s long experience in bombers, it made sense, even though it contravened at least twenty Strategic Air Command directives.

His job was straightforward enough; he was to fly with B-29s out of Kadena and assess the threat of MiG-15 attacks when the bombers were escorted by fighters. Unescorted bombers no longer could operate in the regions where the MiG-15 appeared, and whether the F-80s, F-84s, and relatively few F-86s could defend against them was uncertain.

The MiG-15 had come as a tremendous surprise to the USAF, though it should not have, for the Soviet Union had proudly debuted the airplane at Moscow’s Tushino Airdrome air show in 1948. What was even more surprising was the massive numbers of the airplane in the theater, an estimated 450 all told, compared to fewer than seventy operational F-86s. The nature of the war and the geography gave the MiGs an almost unassailable advantage, for they could operate out of Soviet and Chinese territory with impunity, while the U.S. aircraft had to be careful not to intrude across the North Korean borders.

There was a mystery about who was actually doing the fighting. All of the MiG-15s were manufactured in the Soviet Union, and they were allegedly furnished to the North Koreans by the Red Chinese. But many of the aircraft encountered in combat still bore the markings of operational Soviet units. Rumor had it that most of the airplanes were flown by Soviet pilots, for the intercepted radio transmissions were generally in Russian. There was
also a report, possibly apocryphal, of a MiG-15 pilot ejecting close enough to be observed by the F-86 pilot who had shot him down. In the story, the MiG pilot had long flowing blond hair.

The initial attack on June 25, 1950, had carried North Korean forces to the Pusan Perimeter, where they were halted by a tough defense, a lack of supplies, and the interdiction of their supply lines by the American Far Eastern Air Force. In September, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur had launched his brilliant but risky invasion at Inchon. The overextended North Korean Forces had fallen back past the Thirty-eighth Parallel, streaming toward the border with China. The People’s Republic of China announced that if the pursuit was continued, it would intervene. General MacArthur discounted this, and the UN forces were totally surprised when hundreds of thousands of Red Chinese soldiers swept across the Yalu and once again drove the UN forces back down the peninsula, threatening to throw them into the sea. Airpower, ruthlessly applied, saved the day. The front was stabilized, and the UN forces advanced again under the cover of airpower, to a point almost coincident with the Thirty-eighth Parallel.

The air war was just like the ground war—an up and down battle—but while the ground war eventually bogged down after several massive military defeats had been inflicted on the Red Chinese forces, the air war continued at a hectic pace. Now the ground war was heating up again, as the Red forces massed for another attack intended to drive the UN forces into the sea. The Red Chinese army, far from being an undisciplined horde, fought according to Soviet tactics, employing artillery and manpower en masse and ignoring casualties. The only means to stop them was airpower, choking off their supplies and rendering them incapable of a sustained offensive.

The B-29s bore the brunt of the long-range bombing, with Douglas B-26 Invaders handling the night interdiction. But the November 1950 introduction of the MiG-15
fighter spelled the end of American air dominance. The guns of the B-29 were not capable of tracking the swift 600 mph MiGs, and casualties were growing. Neither the F-80 nor the F-84 was useful as an escort fighter, and only one tactic would serve, bottling up the MiGs with enough F-86s to keep them in place. The problem was that the B-29s had to keep bombing even though there were still not enough F-86s on hand to do the job.

Shannon did not like being a copilot, not after years in the left seat of a B-17, but his pilot, Carl Chance, was capable and friendly. The rest of the crew accepted Harry, because of his experience with B-17s. For the first time in months, his conscience was letting up on him. He was in combat where he was needed, and he was being depended upon not only to do the copilot’s duties but also to make a perceptive analysis of an unacceptable situation: American air inferiority.

Today’s mission was eleven hours round-trip to strike the Namsi Airfield, where a buildup of both jet fighters and piston engine attack aircraft had been seen. Eight B-29s were tasked with the mission, flying in two flights—Able and Baker—of four. Shannon was in the lead ship of Able Flight. On paper their escort looked formidable, with thirty-four F-86s ranging out in front and fifty-five F-84 fighter-bombers joining in the mission.

Based on his World War II experience, Shannon approved of the tactics, developed by the ace Hub Zemke in World War II. Using what was called the Zemke Fan, the F-86s would stay out in front of the B-29s so that they could disrupt any MiG attack on the B-29s before it began.

Even though the B-29 was pressurized and possessed what was laughingly called a heating system, the cold was piercing at 25,000 feet, and Shannon pounded his hands together to try to keep feeling in them. Chance waved to get his attention and pointed up to the two o’clock position. A positive wall of MiG-15s, at least one hundred, maybe more, was falling out of the sky, between
the F-86s and the B-29s, cutting the Sabres off and isolating the bombers and the F-84s.

Chance’s distinctive southern voice came through the intercom: “OK, we’re at the Initial Point. We’ll be straight and level until bombs away, so you-all keep a sharp lookout; this looks like a setup.”

There had been the brief flurry of intercom clicks to tell him he’d been heard when Shannon saw the trap sprung. Forty eight MiG-15s, in twelve flights of four, were cascading out of the sun straight for their formation—six MiGs for every B-29.

Shannon expected a head-on attack. Instead the MiGs formed a ring around the slow-moving formation of B-29s, F-80s, and F-84s, reminding him of the old Western films where the Indians circled the wagons. They made only one circuit before boring in, their 37mm cannon stuttering in the odd, almost comical way they had, the shells visible as a phosphorous blob arcing in, the 23mm cannon rattling faster.

The MiG attack came just at bombs away; to his right, Harry saw a B-29 drop its bombs, start a slow turn, and blow up. Now the MiGs began a seesaw attack climbing to altitude, diving through the formation, and climbing back for another attack. The F-84s responded vigorously but lacked the speed to engage the MiGs, which brushed them aside almost contemptuously as they fired into the turning formation of bombers.

The B-29 gunners threw out an enormous amount of lead. He heard one claim a victory, but if it was true, it was an accident; the MiG had simply flown into the barrage of .50-caliber shells. As they neared the coast, a Baker Flight B-29 nosed out of the formation, heading for the sea, two engines burning, two engines turning. Shannon said a hurried prayer for them, his Catholic instructions suddenly welling up.

Then suddenly it was over; the MiGs departed and the skies were clear of enemy aircraft.

Harry had plenty of time to think on the long flight back to Okinawa and through the endless debriefing. The B-29 gunners claimed three MiGs and an F-84 pilot claimed another one, but Shannon doubted all of the claims. The B-29 gunners had put more slugs in the B-29s accompanying them than in enemy fighters, and the F-84s were simply outclassed.

He realized that it would have taken at least 150, perhaps 200 F-86s to fight off that many MiGs and there still would have been losses. The B-29s were clearly obsolete and would have to be relegated tonight bombing to survive.

The irony was severe. The poorest major power in the world, China, had put as many as a thousand MiG-15 jet fighters, one of the best in the world, into the theater, with half that many ready for combat on any given day. The richest country in the world, the United States, had fewer than seventy-five F86s in the theater, and of these, only about half were ever operational at one time. Shannon guessed that Headquarters, USAF, thought that the threat of Russian bombers was greater than the threat from the MiGs. They might have been right, but that was no answer. The richest country in the world should be able to afford enough jet fighters for both jobs.

May 20, 1951, Suwon Air Base, Korea

Tom Shannon believed that patience pays. He had flown fifty missions in F-80s, and while he never grew to love the aircraft the way he felt about the F-86, he respected it for the job it did. Now he was collecting his reward, back flying Sabres with the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing out of Suwon.

It’s not that the missions were easy. The F-86s always had to fly up the length of the Korean peninsula to where the MiG-15s wanted to play. MiG Alley was a
parallelogram of some sixty-five hundred square miles that stretched from the Korea Bay in the west to Huichon and from the Yalu River in the north to Sinanju. Up to five hundred MiGs operated out of several bases, with the principal complex of airfields centered around Antung, in Red China. The geography and the rules of engagement gave the MiGs a tremendous advantage, for they could take off and climb to altitude in Red China, where they were immune to attack. Then, at a time and place of their choosing, they could make a diving attack on a formation of F-86s and slice back across the Yalu to their sanctuary again.

Today the 4th was flying a standard fighter sweep over Sinuiju. Tom was at 27,000 feet, leading the second of four six-ship flights, a maximum effort for the F-86s. He hoped that the MiGs would attack; often they did not, making just a feint attack to force the F-86s to drop their auxiliary tanks.

Shannon felt an incredible sense of well-being. Unlike flying the F-80, where his mission was to take munitions to where they were most needed by the ground forces, here the mission was to kill MiGs, nothing more, nothing less. There was an adrenaline rush from knowing that he was flying the best fighter in the world, that he had six .50-caliber machine guns at his command, and that there was no enemy pilot who would survive an engagement with him. In short, he was feeling like a fighter pilot should feel.

As they started their second pattern of turns, Lieutenant Colonel Ben Emmett, leading the first flight, commanded, “Drop Tanks.”

Elated at the coming combat, Tom hit the jettison switch, but only the left tank came off, spiraling away, while the right one stayed tight on his wing. He hit the switch again, but nothing happened.

The standing procedure was to depart combat, with your wingman, immediately, if a tank failed to jettison.
The aircraft was suddenly far less maneuverable and the asymmetric weight and drag condition could cause real problems as you pulled high g-forces. Tom muttered, “Screw it,” and continued turning, straight into the oncoming MiGs, firing as soon as they were in range. Miraculously, the two formations passed through each other without a mid-air collision, and Tom’s wingman called, “Break, MiG at your six o’clock.” Tom pulled the F-86 into as tight a turn as he could, given the tank he still retained, slid behind a MiG-15, and hosed it with all six of his guns. Parts flew off the MiG, the canopy departed, and the aircraft half-rolled into a dive straight toward the ground. He repressed a momentary urge to follow the plane down and make sure of it, but when he looked up he saw the remaining twenty-two Sabres mixing it up with at least fifty MiGs.

Leading his wingman to the extreme edge of the battle, Tom found six MiGs forming up for a dive on the encircled Sabres below. He burst right through their flight, turned, caught the lead MiG in his sights, and once again fired a five-second burst, sending about thirty-nine pounds of lead smashing into the enemy. The MiG blew up, and Tom moved to the next aircraft. They were lower and slower now, and as he began to fire, the MiG pilot ejected in panic.

Suddenly Tom was alone in the sky. His wingman had disappeared, so had the MiGs, and what Tom hoped was the rest of his unit was streaking away south. One look at his fuel gauges and he knew why. He started a climb to his optimum altitude, probably about thirty-two thousand feet, knowing he had just enough to get back to the base at Suwon if he flew conservatively, if the winds were favorable, and if no one had crashed on the runway. God, it felt good! Three MiGs down. That gave him twelve victories, counting the nine from World War II. He was no Rickenbacker or Jabara, but he was getting there. He had passed through 9,000 feet when he saw the MiG-15 letting
down, heading for the Yalu River. Tom watched the “Ivan” gliding away, wings straight and level, probably thinking about his
“stogramoy,”
the one hundred grams of vodka he would knock back when he landed at Antung.