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By Root 1442 0

back on my controls, trying to slow down before he saw me, but I was too late. The MiG pilot spotted me and had banked hard in my direction; he was coming after me. I quickly realized as I saw him turn that as fast as I was moving, I was going to fly right past him, and then the faster, lighter MiG would be sweeping around behind me, precisely where I didn’t want him to be. My only hope of avoiding being hit was a high-G right turn that would send me cutting across him as he banked to the left. It was a dangerous move that pilots called a “scissors,” in which two opposing aircraft keep crossing back and forth, each trying to turn more sharply than the other, hoping to get the advantage.

The MiG and I ripped through one set of scissors turns and banked so steeply on our sides that our wing tips nearly pointed straight down toward the ground. In my peripheral vision, I saw the enemy runway flash by, then trees and green fields below. But I had no time for sightseeing. The MiG pilot had rolled off to avoid a high ridge below us. This was my chance; it might be my only chance, since I was flying so close to the enemy base. Enemy anti-aircraft fire filled the air around us.

I tried to fire, but the aiming dot on my gunsight jammed, probably due to the violent twists and turns I’d been putting the plane through. With my left wing tip still pointing toward the Earth, I used my plane’s nose as a sight and pressed hard on my trigger, firing a short burst from my .50 caliber machine guns. I saw something spark on the MiG. I rolled off my wing back to a position parallel to the ground, and slammed the throttle of the F-86 wide open so I could shoot across the ridge behind him. I saw the MiG in front of me, in a steep right turn. One of us was going down. I fired while he was still climbing and saw the tracers sparking across his wing. Don’t let him go! Smoke billowed from his wing. The MiG rolled out of the turn and dove. As he did, I fired two more rapid bursts of ammunition. The enemy plane’s nose came up as my shots struck and his plane looked as though it was momentarily suspended in the air as he stalled out.

I saw the canopy over his head pop open and the flash of his ejection flare. The pilot sailed out of the plane and was gone. Whether his chute had time to open, I’ll never know. I did see the now pilotless MiG slow in the air, heel, and then plunge toward the Earth.

I would have loved to have stuck around a while to determine the damages I had inflicted, but I was about twenty miles north of the Yalu, close to the enemy base, and there were more Russian and Chinese planes in the skies, with still more rising off the runway. I was low on fuel too. I turned south and climbed, picking up “the Manchurian Express,” a jet stream that helped whisk me down the Korean peninsula toward home.

As I landed my aircraft, I knew I now had a conundrum. I was so thrilled that I had downed a MiG, but if my commanders discovered that I’d been above the Yalu when I brought it down, it would not be an officially recognized kill. My buddies knew, though, slapping me on the back and cheering me on. It was time for a drink. No, actually it was time for several drinks, and I enjoyed every one.

When my gun camera film was examined, it was clear that I had destroyed the MiG but it was unclear which side of the Yalu River I had been on when I brought it down. The Air Force presented me with an Oak Leaf Cluster as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross I had received for dropping the first MiG.

After Korea, I was assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada as a gunnery instructor. During that time, I married Joan in 1954, and she accompanied me on my three-year assignment in Bitburg, Germany, in 1955, where our first son, Mike, was born. I flew F-100 Super Sabres while there, and we trained regularly on how we could deliver nuclear weapons inside the Iron Curtain, the Soviet-controlled bloc of communist nations. I had a number of tension-packed, harrowing experiences there, too, but nothing thrilled the guys at the test pilot school as much as