The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot

by Blaine Harden

  Desperate for better battlefield leadership, Kim begged Stalin to send Soviet military advisers: Jager, Brothers at War, 79–80, citing cables from Shtykov to Stalin.

  A North Korean pilot shot down on the second day of the invasion: Robert Frank Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950–1953 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Air Force, 1983), 98.

  “The air battle was short and sweet”: Ibid., 102–3.

  The purpose of the air campaign, according to Major General Emmett O’Donnell: Ibid., 186.

  The official history of the air force campaign in Korea uses the word “leisurely”: Ibid., 192, 194.

  “We didn’t have any opposition”: Ibid., 195.

  “Their memories of the war overwhelmingly focus on the performance of their aircraft”: Kathryn Weathersby, “Ending the Korean War: Considerations on the Role of History” (working paper 08-07, U.S.-Korean Institute, SAIS, Washington, D.C., Dec. 2008), 8.

  In the United Nations, the Soviet Union accused the Americans: Conrad C. Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 43.

  The official history noted, too, that the air force always dropped leaflets: Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 198.

  “The Far East Air Force Bomber Command”: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 195.

  After the war, an American bomb damage assessment: Crane, American Airpower Strategy, 168.

  “He was a great thundering paradox of a man”: William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 3.

  During World War I, MacArthur wore riding breeches: For a compelling description of MacArthur’s invasion at Inchon, see David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter (New York: Hyperion, 2007), 293–315.

  He presented himself to the world, author William Styron wrote: William Styron, “MacArthur,” New York Review of Books, Oct. 8, 1964. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1964/oct/08/macarthur/.

  obsequious men who “catered to his peacockery”: Manchester, American Caesar, 6.

  “MacArthur’s temperament was flawed by an egotism”: Ibid.

  He was “remarkably economical of human life”: Ibid., 4.

  “I can almost hear the ticking of the second hand of destiny”: Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 350. Cited in Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 300.

  Mao specifically warned of an American attack at Inchon: Shen Zhihua, “Sino–North Korean Conflict and Its Resolution During the Korean War,” CWIHP Bulletin, no. 14/15 (Fall 2003–Spring 2004): 10. Also see Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 171–72.

  “We estimate that presently, a U.S. counterattack is not possible”: Shen, “Sino–North Korean Conflict,” 11.

  “I have never considered retreat”: Ibid.

  In late September, Shtykov reported to Stalin that Kim was confused: Ibid.

  “We consider it necessary to report to you about extremely unfavorable conditions”: Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 77.

  “At the moment that the enemy troops cross the thirty-eighth parallel”: Ibid., 78.

  To save Kim’s government, Stalin told Mao that he should “without delay” dispatch: Ibid., 97.

  Chapter 5: Kicked in the Teeth

  As one of his commanders later wrote, the bombing “tormented” the Korean army: Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 153.

  “So what? Let the United States of America be our neighbors in the Far East”: Nikita S. Khrushchev, The Korean War (Moscow: Progress Publishing House, 1970), 28, quoted and trans. in Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War,” CWIHP Bulletin, no. 6/7 (Winter 1995–96): 100.

  “If the American imperialists are victorious”: Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War, 140.

  “Well done!” he said. “Excellent!”: Ibid., 160; Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 185, 279.

  Stalin had told Mao back in July that “we will do our best to provide air cover”: Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War, 167.

  He expected the Soviet air force to work with the Chinese infantry: Ibid.

  “We asked, ‘Can you help with your air force?’” Zhou said later: Ibid., 165. There is some scholarly dispute about Chinese claims that Stalin refused to provide air cover. Mansourov argues that Stalin’s betrayal of Mao was a fiction cooked up by Zhou’s staff to make their boss look good. See Mansourov, “Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War,” 105.

  Mao’s telegram weighed heavily on Stalin: For a documented account of Kim’s day of betrayal, see Mansourov, “Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War”; Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War, 170–71; Kathryn Weathersby, “The Impact of the Wartime Alliance on Postwar North Korean Foreign Relations” (unpublished paper courtesy of author), 8–11.

  “The Chinese have again refused to send troops”: Stalin to Kim Il Sung, cable, Oct. 12, 1950, in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 102.

  Over the next few hours, Kim reportedly told his closest associates: Mansourov, “Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War,” 104.

  Mao simply could not accept American domination of the entire Korean Peninsula: Ibid., 104.

  “was glad that the final and favorable decision”: Ibid.

  Location defined safety in the Korean War: For analysis of the international dimension of the Korean War, see Stueck, Korean War, 348–49.

  “There are no long-term plans, and adventurism is all one can see!”: Shen, “Sino–North Korean Conflict,” 12.

  “He was the type of adventurer who left his fate to contingency and luck”: Lim Un, Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea, 183. A few Korea scholars, particularly Bruce Cumings, discount the work of the pseudonymous Lim Un as South Korean propaganda.

  Peng’s judgment carried enormous weight in Beijing: See Halberstam’s incisive mini-biography of Peng in Coldest Winter, 356–59.

  “You are just hoping for a quick victory”: Shen, “Sino–North Korean Conflict,” 15.

  North Korean tanks mistakenly attacked the Chinese: Ibid., 12.

  China soon took control of roads, railways, ports, airports, food storage, and recruitment of men: Weathersby, “Dependence and Mistrust,” 9.

  the offensive would “get the boys home by Christmas”: Blair, Forgotten War, 433.

  the home-by-Christmas offensive “had turned into a bloody nightmare”: Ibid., 502.

  When Kim heard the news, he was silent for a moment: Jager, Brothers at War, 127–28, citing An Sung-hwan, “Soviet Military Advisory Group Support to the NKPA, 1946–53,” 456.

  Its importuning to Moscow was filtered through Beijing: Ibid.

  In his memoirs, Khrushchev wrote that the Soviet ambassador in Pyongyang sent “very tragic reports”: Khrushchev, Korean War, 28. Quotation from Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 191n127, which says the paragraph containing this quotation about Kim is missing from the English edition.

  He had been weaned, as the historian Adrian Buzo put it, “in a predatory, political subculture”: Adrian Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), 10.

  There, he “attacked almost everybody”: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 122.

  When it came time to praise Stalin, he was less the lickspittle: Weathersby, “Dependence and Mistrust,” 8–9.

  His official biographer explained the new world according to Kim: Baik, Kim Il Sung Biography, 2:332.

  The U.S. Air Force estimated it destroyed 75 percent of the capital: Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 168n23, citing Journal of Military History 62 (April 1968): 366–69; 548th RTS, “Bomb Damage Assessment of Major North Korean Cities.”

  the North Korean government said every modern building in the c
ity was destroyed: Charles Armstrong, “The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950–1960,” Asia-Pacific Journal 8, issue 51, no. 2 (Dec. 20, 2010), http://www.japanfocus.org/-charles_k_-armstrong/3460#sthash.wp9QFc1Z.dpuf.

  Almost as soon as No arrived there by train on March 7, 1951: Date of arrival found in No’s declassified Air Intelligence Information Report, Oct. 28, 1953, 2.

  Unlike No, they failed to flaunt their dedication to the Great Leader: Author interview with No and declassified transcript of No’s post-defection interview with air force intelligence, Oct. 27, 1953, 22.

  In a coded message on November 20, 1950, Stalin promised Kim Il Sung: Stalin to Kim Il Sung, coded message, Nov. 20, 1950, cited in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 84.

  ordered the air force “to destroy every means of communication”: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 221.

  pilots smelled updrafts of “roasting human flesh”: Robert M. Neer, Napalm: An American Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 76–81.

  the stuff was “economical, efficient, and expeditious”: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 187.

  Firestorms burned the city to the ground: Xiaoming Zhang, Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 89.

  In the three devastating months that followed: Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 65.

  “When you’ve hit a village and have seen it go up in flames”: Ibid.

  The Americans dropped more than thirty-two thousand tons of napalm on Korea: Neer, Napalm, 99.

  “I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man”: Ibid., 99–100, citing MacArthur’s testimony to Senate committees, May 3, 1951.

  these neophyte Soviet pilots “began evading and breaking off combat”: Zhang, Red Wings over the Yalu, 125.

  Chapter 6: MiGs

  Two direct hits could bring down an American fighter jet: Douglas C. Dildy and Warren E. Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15 (Oxford: Osprey, 2013), 27.

  MacArthur attributed the change to the murderous rise of the MiG: Quoted in Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 50.

  American claims to the contrary, not a single MiG was lost: Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 56.

  It was “one of the most savage and bloody” air battles of the Korean War: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 410–13.

  UN pilots counted more than twenty-five hundred of them in the Yalu River corridor: Ibid., 411.

  Colonel Kozhedub’s unit painted its MiGs with the colors of North Korea: See Halliday, “Air Operations in Korea,” 152; Zhang, Red Wings over the Yalu, 139; author interview with No.

  The orders from Stalin were part of a “carefully orchestrated ballet”: See Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 48, quoting Mark O’Neill, a researcher on the Soviet archives.

  “a curious case of double deniability”: Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War, 181.

  The Soviet air force contributed about seventy thousand pilots, artillery gunners, and technicians: Weathersby, “Dependence and Mistrust,” 10.

  “Almost overnight, Communist China has become one of the major air powers of the world”: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 412.

  they made racist jokes about it: Joke reported by Polish military attaché Pawel Monat and cited in Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:402–3n37.

  “We had to sit stewing in our cockpits for hours on end”: Halliday, “Air Operations in Korea,” 153.

  American generals struggled in 1951 to keep tabs on the whereabouts of Chinese reinforcements: Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 53.

  Chuck Yeager, the legendary American test pilot, called the MiG-15 “a flying booby trap”: Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam, 1985), 260, 259.

  Tom Collins, described it as “a little, light, peashooter machine”: “These U.S.A.F. Pilots Flew the MiG,” Air Intelligence Digest, Dec. 1953, 8.

  Its instruction manual warned that flying for more than ten minutes: No Kum Sok, A MiG-15 to Freedom, with J. Roger Osterholm (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996), 102.

  The cockpit was an ergonomic horror: Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 28.

  “At forty-five thousand feet”: “These U.S.A.F. Pilots Flew the MiG,” 9.

  At the relatively low speed (for a MiG) of 130 miles an hour: Ibid.

  they never learned about several MiG pilots who bailed out above thirty-three thousand feet: Ben H. Thompson, “The Story of No Kum Sok,” Air Intelligence Digest, Jan. 1955, 32.

  The majority of them, before coming to the Far East, had spent about three hundred hours: Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 39.

  All of them had spent a year and a half with their fighters: Larry Davis, Air War over Korea (Carrollton, Tex.: Squadron/Signal Publications, 1982), 35.

  He sent angry telegrams to his air force generals in Manchuria: Zhang, Red Wings over the Yalu, 119.

  China’s own air force regulations called for at least three hundred hours of flight time: Ibid., 170.

  When the Chinese saw the enemy coming, they fled: Ibid.

  Chapter 7: Return to North Korea

  The total number of MiGs in the war: Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 57.

  “We were driving Cadillacs while they had Fords”: John Darrell Sherwood, Officers in Flight Suits (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 75.

  “The best [pilots] from both sides sparred and dueled, fought and killed”: Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 5.

  It was quite a show, and each performance consisted of three acts: Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 168.

  He had become well known in the Soviet Far East: Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, 139. This section on Ho Kai draws heavily on Lankov’s research.

  He was accomplished enough to become the second-ranking official: Ibid., 141.

  Working with Kim, Ho was involved in early planning for the invasion of South Korea: Ibid., 146–47.

  “Ho Kai was not only the closest cooperator of Kim Il Sung”: Lim, Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea, 215.

  He criticized Ho for denying membership to toiling pleasants: Baik, Kim Il Sung Biography, 2:370.

  His crimes were called “closed-doorism”: Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, 148.

  A politician who wanted Ho’s job took the document directly to Kim: The politician was Pak Chang Ok. See Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 168.

  Kim accused him of “bureaucratism”: Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, 149.

  he was being punished, in part, because he had been skeptical about “excessive praise”: Ibid., 150.

  “His body lay in the small bed of his son”: Ibid., 152.

  Ho’s wife, who was outside Pyongyang: Ibid.

  An air force reconnaissance aircraft reported on November 10, 1951: Kenneth P. Werrell, Sabres over MiG Alley (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 210.

  The raid’s toll, as measured by destroyed aircraft: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 415.

  More robust American efforts to wreck Uiju airfield and blow up its MiGs would soon begin: Ibid., 416.

  Chapter 8: An International Sporting Event

  A final accounting of the air war: These numbers come from Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 62, 73.

  One pilot had a heart attack after landing: Igor Seidov, Red Devils over the Yalu: A Chronicle of Soviet Aerial Operations in the Korean War, 1950–53 (West Midlands, U.K.: Helion, 2014), 304–5.

  Many others refused to fly, claiming chronic battle fatigue: Dildy and Thompson, F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15, 64.

  By the final year of the war, Sabre pilots could plainly see that many MiG pilots were “pit
ifully incompetent”: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 654.

  An air force intelligence report noted: Ibid.

  In the first six months of 1952: Werrell, Sabres over MiG Alley, 130.

  “We shot them down in the landing pattern”: Walker M. Mahurin, Honest John: The Autobiography of Walker M. Mahurin (New York: Putnam, 1962), 84.

  “We just couldn’t let anything incriminating get away”: Ibid.

  “The air war was a fluid encounter”: Walter J. Boyne, “The Forgotten War,” Air Force Magazine, June 2000, http://www.airforcemag.com/Magazine Archive/Pages/2000/Jun%202000/0600korea.aspx.

  On this subject, MacArthur had been categorical: Futrell, United States Air Force in Korea, 221.

  The air force commander in East Asia, General Stratemeyer: Ibid., 377–78.

  “One day the six of us [pilots] were summoned to Fifth Air Force Headquarters”: Mahurin interview in 1997 with Secrets of War, http://acepilots.com/korea_mahurin.html; a similar version of this story is in Mahurin, Honest John, 88–89.

  “I’m determined to get a MiG as are most of the boys around here”: Letters of Major Thomas Sellers to his wife, quoted in Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 166–67.

  His posthumous Silver Star citation said he died inside North Korea: Ibid.

  After interviewing fifty-four Sabre pilots who fought in the war: Werrell, Sabres over MiG Alley, 129.

  the war “began to disappear from consciousness”: Bruce Cumings, The Korean War (New York: Modern Library, 2011), 63.

  When a Sabre downed a MiG, it was often front-page news: Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 162.

  “If you shoot down five planes you join a group”: James Salter, The Hunters (1956; New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 134.

  “There were no other values. It was like money”: Ibid., 62–63.

  The “overriding philosophy was that if you weren’t having accidents you weren’t training realistically”: John Lowery, Life in the Wild Blue Yonder (North Charleston, S.C.: CreateSpace, 2013), 3.