When the Soviet MiG-15 appeared over North Korea in November 1950, the American airmen knew little about the aircraft beyond the fact that it clearly outperformed American jets and was similar in appearance to the F-86. There was a desperate need to learn the capabilities and advantages—but most especially the vulnerabilities—of this machine and the men who flew it. Without being overly dramatic, the fate of the battle for air superiority, if not the war, could well be influenced by such information.
Obtaining an intact MiG was extremely unlikely. In contrast to World War II, when the Allies obtained a number of German aircraft that landed or crashed in Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, or on the battlefield, obtaining an enemy plane in Korea was more difficult. The Soviet fighters were based just north of the Yalu River: this meant that, considering the fighter’s short range and Soviet rules of engagement, few MiG-15s came close to the frontlines. In addition, because the UN had an efficient rescue service and control of the seas, Soviet pilots were forbidden to fly over water to prevent capture of the downed pilots.
If the MiGs would not come to the Americans, then the Americans would have to go to the MiGs. In early 1951, the commander of Fifth Air Force, Lt. Gen. Earle Partridge, told a visiting USAF general that his command would make every effort to salvage parts of a MiG-15.1 The man in charge of the operation was WO Donald Nichols, one of those colorful, larger-than-life, bold, and outlandish characters that occasionally appear and add sparkle to tedious histories. (Partridge later wrote that Nichols was “the most amazing and unusual man among those with whom I was associated during my military service.”)2 A former motor pool sergeant, Nichols headed an intelligence unit in South Korea after World War II that engaged in the kind of clandestine operations that Hollywood celebrates. Described as a combination of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Dirty Harry,” he had direct contact with flag officers and the president of South Korea. The job also had its risks: Nichols survived three assassination attempts and there was one attempt to kidnap his son.3
The MiG salvage operation moved very fast. On 1 April Nichols began training his small group in parachute jumping, salvage of aircraft, and concealment in enemy territory. Personnel from Air Technical Intelligence Center, using an F-86 as a model, instructed his team about aircraft parts identification. The unit then practiced on a wrecked T-33 and jet engines, since the MiG’s power plant was the priority intelligence target.4 The unit’s training was cut short when, within two weeks, a target of opportunity presented itself.
On 13 April 1951, Lt. Robert Prasccindo (25FS) spotted the wreckage of a MiG twelve miles south of the Chong Chong River and about twenty-five miles inland. The fighter unit forwarded the information up the chain of command, noting, “Wrecked plane definitely a swept wing fighter.” The unit supplied the coordinates and added, “fuselage burned out but wing was left lying in clearing on wooded hill.”5 The report reached the Fifth Air Force Headquarters the next morning, prompting the immediate launch of a photographic reconnaissance aircraft. However, it failed to locate the wreck, as did two efforts the next day. The mission was about to be scrubbed when a Fifth Air Force intelligence officer returned from Far East Air Forces Headquarters with further incentive and orders. “Additional information confirms possibility of MIG crash. Get the pilot that made the original sightings to lead a photo plane to observed crash.”6 As a result, the airmen located the Soviet fighter.
Nichols and six Koreans left Seoul on an H-19 helicopter just before noon on 17 April for Paengnyong-do, an island behind enemy lines occupied by the UN. The helicopter, piloted by Capt. Joseph Cooper and Capt. Russell Winnegar, then flew on toward the wreck as F-51s strafed the area and fifty jets provided overhead cover. The helicopter landed in a barley field about two hundred meters from the crash site.7
Nichols writes that although the MiG was guarded, the Communists ran off after a brief exchange of fire.8 The landing party found the MiG with its nose smashed but otherwise in good shape. While Nichols photographed the MiG, his Korean crew removed turbine blades, skin samples, ammunition, and the combustion chamber. Then the Koreans used hand grenades to detach more pieces, including the exhaust pipe, another combustion chamber, and the horizontal stabilizer. At this point, the men spotted approximately twenty men coming up the hill. The team loaded the pieces aboard the H-19, with the stabilizer protruding out the open door. The salvage operation took about thirty-five minutes.
Cooper had difficulties getting the overloaded helicopter off the ground, needing a second downwind effort to clear a hill. The helicopter climbed to 5,500 feet and, about ten miles from the coast, encountered enemy fire that hit a rotor blade. Cooper put down near the coast and loaded some of the booty aboard Lt. Danny Miller’s H-5 before landing for fuel at Cho-do, another UN–held island behind the front lines. The two choppers returned to Paengnyong-do where the pieces were put aboard an SA-16.9
The airmen shipped the parts to Wright-Patterson AFB for analysis. On 28 April 1951, Air Materiel Command wired their conclusions back to the theater. The engine was a scaled-up British Nene engine, about 15 percent larger in all areas, putting the engine into the 6,000-pound-thrust class. The analysts noted that the welding was good production quality and that the general workmanship was comparable to U.S. and British practices.10
The airmen were eager to get more information about the MiG. On 1 June 1951 a FEAF C-47 dropped fifteen Koreans behind Communist lines to salvage pieces of a downed MiG. As with most of these operations, all the Koreans were captured.11 On 9 July 1951, a MiG crashed onto mud flats on the west coast of North Korea. A Royal Navy fighter pilot spotted the wreck, but neither a photoreconnaissance aircraft nor a boat could find it, hampered by the fact that the MiG was above the water line at low tide, but in nineteen feet of water at high tide. The wreck was located, and Donald Nichols was again called in to recover the pieces. He went to the U.S. Navy for help, but the Navy was reluctant to get involved.12 The initial plan, conceived by Capt. W. L. M. Brown of the HMS Cardigan Bay, called for two junks to lash the MiG between them and sail away, but the U.S. Navy came up with a better solution: a landing craft (LSU-960) fitted with a crane.
On 20 July 1951, a flotilla of three Royal navy ships, one South Korean vessel, and the LSD-7, which was carrying the LSU-960, began the operation under air cover provided by a British carrier. Earlier in the day, a helicopter from the HMS Glory marked the position of the Soviet aircraft, which was 2.5 miles offshore at high tide, but uncovered at low tide. By the end of the day they had recovered the engine and tail but twice failed to get the wing aboard. During the night, the USS Sicily relieved the HMS Glory. Early the next morning, LSU-960 returned to its task as a shore party recovered aircraft pieces. By 0700 the salvage team was under fire, prompting suppression attacks by carrier aircraft. This drove the Communist troops off, but artillery fire continued. The UN force recovered both the wing and fuselage, and by 0900 was at sea. Despite warnings of MiG-15s heading toward the navy force and a reported submarine contact, there was no further action. The flotilla put into Inchon on 23 July, and the parts were put aboard a C-119 bound for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.13
This success did not stop the UN quest for information about the MiG. In October 1951 there were three unsuccessful attempts to salvage a MiG that had crashed on a beach on the west coast of North Korea.14 In the end, the airmen got what they wanted the easy way: Communists pilots delivered flyable aircraft.
On 5 March 1953, Polish Lt. Franciszek Jarecki crash-landed a MiG-15 on the Danish island of Bornholm. Although the Danes returned the aircraft on 22 May, the western (NATO) allies took advantage of the two and a half months to completely disassemble, examine, and then reassemble the MiG and even conduct firing tests of the fighter’s armament. While interrogation of the pilot was considered of marginal value, because he was so inexperienced, the aircraft provided valuable information. USAF intelligence calculated that the fighter’s top speed was Mach .92 and that there was an improvement in Russian manufacturing tolerances, since shims were no longer needed. Workmanship was reported as utilitarian—first class where necessary, but not when unnecessary. The airmen concluded that the layout was simple but effective, designed for easy construction, and the engine workmanship was comparable to U.S. standards.15
A few months after the end of the war, a surprising and important incident took place. On the morning of 21 September 1953, American airmen at Kimpo were surprised when a swept-wing fighter landed the wrong way (against the traffic), barely avoiding an F-86 landing in the proper direction. The fighter taxied off the runway and, ignoring a ground crewman who gave hand signals, shut down. The pilot emerged from the cockpit with his hands raised high; he was a North Korean, the airplane a MiG-15.
Twenty-one year old No Kum-Sok had flown three hundred combat missions and claimed he defected because he “was sick and tired of the Red deceit.”16 Americans swarmed over the aircraft, and in short order American F-86s and Australian Meteors were airborne to defend this precious prize. The airmen should have been better prepared for this situation, because the previous April the UN offered political asylum and $100,000 to the first Communist pilot who defected with a MiG, and made this known by dropping over a million leaflets and radio broadcasts.17 While the Americans hoped that this would net a fighter, they also believed it might shake up the defensive and suspicious Communist leadership. In fact the defector was unaware of the offer.
The next day, the USAF removed the fighter’s wings and shipped it to Okinawa aboard a C-124 transport. Also dispatched from Korea were F-86s flown by seasoned pilots while the USAF flew in some of its top test pilots for flight tests. Despite poor weather on Okinawa, the tests began on 28 September. Five pilots flew the MiG on eleven flights over Okinawa in a one-week series of tests. Gen. Albert Boyd, commander of Wright Air Development Center, was one of those who piloted the MiG, along with two pilots he picked, H. E. “Tom” Collins from the Ohio base and Charles “Chuck” Yeager from Edwards AFB. Two other pilots, Maj. J. S. Fallon from the Air Proving Ground Command and Lt. Col. Eugene Summerich of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, also flew the Communist fighter.
In a 1960 interview that was reprinted in Yeager’s autobiography, Boyd claims that Collins won a coin toss to make the first flight; Yeager would fly second and Boyd, third. That makes a good story but, according to Collins, Boyd decided to allow Collins to make the first flight, remarking that “Yeager has had his share of firsts.”18 There are other discrepancies in the MiG testing story. Yeager wrote that the pilot couldn’t turn on the fighter’s emergency fuel pump because it would blow off the tail section of the MiG. Defector No claims he doesn’t recall telling Yeager that, but then equivocates. A Soviet MiG-15 pilot calls this warning pure nonsense. Common sense would also urge some skepticism regarding Yeager’s statement.19 However, both Collins and Yeager write that the fighter gave no stall warning, while official USAF reports use the adjectives “insufficient” and “poor” regarding stall warning.20 Stalls led to spins, for which the MiG-15 was notorious. No writes that spins were dangerous because spin recovery was difficult, and if recovery was not successful in three rotations, pilots were instructed to eject from the fighter. Spins were more common in the MiG than in the Sabre and more likely to be disastrous due to the poorer training of Communist pilots as well as the characteristics of the aircraft. For these and other reasons, Yeager referred to the MiG-15 as a “quirky aircraft that killed a lot of its pilots” and a “flying booby trap.”21
Collins relates that he spent eighteen to twenty hours studying the MiG cockpit. He was assisted by No and a translator on the wing and used ink and tape to label the Russian language instruments. The Americans encountered other difficulties. For example, the Soviet radios were incompatible with American radios, and the technicians could not come up with a quick fix. Hence, there was no aircraft-to-aircraft radio communication during these tests. Collins also experienced oxygen problems in the MiG. Boyd, as quoted by Yeager, maintains that the deprivation resulted because Collins’s oxygen requirements were higher than those of Yeager, who took the fighter higher than fifty-five thousand feet. Collins writes that the MiG’s oxygen system was faulty and had to be repaired, after which it worked satisfactorily for all the pilots.22
The tests pushed the Soviet fighter to its maximum air speed. The MiG was redlined at Mach .92, and a red warning light illuminated upon reaching that speed. Collins experienced heavy buffeting above Mach .92 and pitch-up at about Mach .95.23 Yeager talked with Collins and proposed to climb to a maximum altitude (fifty-five thousand feet), roll inverted, and then pull through to about 45 degrees and depend on the fighter’s pitch-up tendency to pull the aircraft vertical. Yeager asked Boyd to authorize a full-throttle, vertical dive from a high altitude to see exactly how fast the fighter could fly. He got Boyd’s okay and flew the mission as he and Collins had discussed. The F-86 pilot flying formation with the MiG had to retard his throttle and extend his speed brakes slightly to stay with Yeager. As the MiG approached its maximum speed, it began to experience severe buffeting and at Mach .98 lost all aileron control. That is as fast as the machine would go. In the thicker air at eighteen thousand feet Yeager began to get some control and at twelve thousand began to pull out of the dive. The MiG was flying straight and level at three thousand feet.24 The testing confirmed what the Americans already knew—the Soviet fighter had a number of superior qualities. It outpaced the F-86 in acceleration, rate of climb, and ceiling. The fighter’s speed brakes were quite effective. American pilots who flew the MiG called it a “beautiful flying machine” and commented that it was light on the controls. But there were also numerous deficiencies. The airmen concluded that the MiG’s field of vision was average, except to the rear where the horizontal stabilizer, mounted halfway between the top of the tail and the fuselage, made rear vision extremely limited. The MiG-15 had poor control at high speeds and no control above Mach .93. It also had a low rate of roll and poor stall characteristics. Compared to the Sabre, the MiG was poorly equipped, having an outmoded optical gunsight, no provision for a “g” suit, and inadequate cockpit heating and defrosting. The necessity to constantly adjust the defroster as the aircraft climbed kept the pilot busy. An October 1953 report concluded that, while the MiG-15 was good for anti-bomber work (its original mission), it was an inferior air-to-air fighter because of its handling problems and speed limitations. Perhaps the most important conclusion was that the flight tests confirmed wartime U.S. intelligence estimates. The North Korean defector summed it all up by comparing the F-86 to a Cadillac and MiG-15 to a Chevrolet.25
The MiG was later tested by the USAF at both Wright-Patterson and Eglin, and by the Navy at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. In April 1956, an RAF pilot made a hard landing that badly damaged the MiG’s nose wheel. In October 1957 the fighter was given to the Air Force Museum where it is currently on display.26
The Communists also wanted to exploit enemy aircraft. American airmen suspected the worst, reporting numerous incidents of U.S. aircraft acting in a hostile manner. In December 1951 intelligence noted the fifth incident of hostile F-80s, and three more F-80 incidents occurred in 1952, along with two involving hostile F-84s. There are no such reports in 1953, but there were four reports of hostile F-86s in 1952. There is no information from the Communist side concerning these incidents, which leads this writer to conclude that these reports were caused by either misidentification of Communist aircraft or incidents of friendly fire (“blue on blue”).27
One reason for disbelief of Communist combat use of American aircraft is that such equipment had so much more value for intelligence purposes. Probably their greatest interest was in F-86 auxiliary equipment: the radar-ranging gunsight and the “g” suit. In one ambitious effort to capture a Sabre and pilot, the Soviets organized a special unit that arrived in China in March or April 1951 with nine (or twelve or fifteen, depending on the source) crack pilots, albeit test pilots, not combat pilots. The Russian airmen in the field were dubious about the idea and irritated by the arrogance of the test pilots. This idea from a far-removed bureaucrat failed and cost the Reds two or three aircraft before the team left empty-handed in October.28
More successful was Communist recovery of downed F-86s. The first was ditched on a mud flat at the mouth of the Chong-chong River on 6 October 1951. Evgeny Pepelyaev, the top Russian scorer of the Korean War with twenty-three credits, hit (from 130 meters with one 37-mm shell) the F-86A directly behind the cockpit and damaged both the engine and ejection seat, forcing 2nd Lt. Bill N. Garrett (336FS) to crash-land. Despite enemy ground fire, he was rescued by an SA-16.29 UN airmen unsuccessfully attempted to destroy the Sabre. That night the Communists dragged the F-86 away, camouflaged it, and the next day cut off the wings for transportation. Low clouds gave the recovery operation some cover. The Reds drove their precious cargo by night, hiding in tunnels while it was daylight, and one night surviving a B-26 rocket attack. Pepelyaev and his pilots had a chance to sit in the F-86 cockpit before it was shipped to Russia and were impressed by the Sabre’s excellent visibility.30 They concluded that it had a well-laid-out cockpit, and that the F-86 was like a luxury car compared with the MiG-15, which was more like an average car (echoing the Cadillac-Chevrolet comparison). The second F-86 recovered by the Communists was the F-86E flown by World War II ace Col. Walker M. Mahurin (4FG), who was shot down by Red antiaircraft guns on 13 May 1952.31
The Soviets obtained valuable information from the Sabres. Russian technicians filed their report on the first downed aircraft in late May 1952. The Soviets showed an interest in the ailerons, speed brakes, slotted flaps and leading edge slats. They noted that the Sabre was larger and heavier than the MiG, with a lower-power engine, and thus would have slightly lower top speed and markedly inferior rate of climb. The Russians considered building the F-86 in quantity in May 1952 and even put some resources into this project before thinking better of it.32 The Soviets learned much from the first Sabre taken to Russia, including details about the control system, air conditioning system, radar gunsight, electrical system, and aluminum alloys, as well as production and assembly techniques. There is no record of the F-86 flying in Russia, and as one writer concludes, “its ultimate fate is unknown.”33 In 1993 a Russian who had worked in the MiG design bureau confirmed that an F-86 had been disassembled and copied. He went on to state that when this task was completed, the aircraft was destroyed or recycled.34
There are some who believe that the Communists also took F-86 pilots to Russia for interrogation and did not repatriate them after the war. During the course of the Korean War, the Defense Department listed over 13,000 Americans as missing in action. In early 1954, DoD adjusted this number to just under 3,000, of whom 349 were USAF personnel.35 However, another more recent list puts the total number of missing in action at 4,200.36 In any event, the belief that the Soviets took a number of captured F-86 pilots to Russia persists to this day.
Understandably, the Soviets focused intelligence efforts on USAF F-86s because it was the most modern fighter in the U.S. and Western inventories. It is also possible that Stalin saw USAF POWs as potential hostages. However, the Communists returned 220 USAF crewmembers after the war’s end, including 28 F-86 pilots, seemingly nullifying this speculation. In any event, the Soviets had seventy people in the field searching for downed American aircrews.37
Knowledgeable individuals have stated publicly that American POWs were taken to the Soviet Union and never released. As recently as 1996, two congressmen claimed that the Communists retained American POWs after the war. Representative Owen Pickett stated “the evidence that U.S. Korean War POWs were held in North Korea, China, and the former Soviet Union is irrefutable.”38 One DoD witness at the June 1996 House hearing testified that there was “significant evidence” that the Soviets took U.S. POWs to Russia.39 An Army intelligence officer “emphatically” testified to a senate hearing that based on hundreds of intelligence reports from agents, defectors, Communist prisoners of war, civilians, and repatriated U.S. POWs, American prisoners had been taken to the Soviet Union.40 A DoD paper written in 1993 concluded that “the Soviets transferred several hundred U.S. Korean War POWs to the USSR and did not repatriate them.”41 It went on to state “the range of eyewitness testimony as to the presence of U.S. Korean War POWs in the GULAG is so broad and convincing that we cannot dismiss it.”42 Another author writes, “the documents on American POWs from Soviet military archives, taken together with the testimony of Soviet veterans of Korea and now-declassified papers from U.S. archives, clearly point to Soviet complicity in the disappearance and probable death of dozens, if not hundreds, of those POWs who were not repatriated.”43 On the other hand, a director of POW/MIA affairs strongly held that there was not a shred of evidence to support the case of F-86 pilots being transferred to the Soviet Union.44
What is the evidence? One piece is the assertion that of fifty-six F-86 pilots shot down over enemy territory, only sixteen POWs or bodies were returned, while another nine (another source says eleven) were presumed to have died. The remaining cases represent the highest rate of bodies or individuals not recovered from all types of USAF aircraft lost in Korea.45 There are also a number of witnesses who provided testimony to this position. There are reports that at least one F-86 pilot accompanied the recovered F-86 that was sent to the Mikoyan and Sukhoi design bureaus.46 Information from nineteen human intelligence sources and at least six interviews with North Korean defectors led another DoD analyst to conclude that the North Koreans held a group of defectors as well as ten to fifteen POWs.47 A Soviet Air Force commander claimed that he transported a group of F-86 pilots out of Korea to Siberia during the war.48 A Czech defector stated that American prisoners from both Korea and Vietnam were exploited for technical information and medical experiments.49 Two members of the Soviet intelligence service and a former Soviet railroad worker claimed to have observed several trainloads of American POWs being transferred from Chinese to Soviet custody and shipped to Russia between November 1951 and April 1952. A captured North Korean general revealed that the U.S. POWs had been sent to the Soviet Union.50 But perhaps the most starling (or bizarre) story comes from a 1996 interview of a Soviet who claims to have seen a captured F-86 pilot in late spring 1953. He went on to describe the pilot in some detail and state that he later became an instructor at the Monino Air Force Academy in Moscow in the mid-1950s.51
Where does this leave us? There is no clear evidence, no “smoking gun,” no specific document, photograph, or American POW to indicate that any American prisoner was held back after the conclusion of the war. Surely some of the support offered for this allegation can be dismissed. However, the number of such stories by a variety of witnesses does leave open the possibility that captured F-86 pilots were taken to the Soviet Union where they remained. Until western investigators have open access to Chinese and Soviet archives, this issue cannot be adequately explained.