The Greatest Air Combat Stories Ever Told by Tom McCarthy

Author:Tom McCarthy [McCarthy, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2017-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Thunderjets over Korea

Robert F. Dorr

The F-84 Thunderjet began its combat assignment in Korea with a vengeance.

On January 23, 1951, while B-29 Superfortresses were bombing the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, Col. Ashley B. Packard, commander of the 27th Fighter Escort Wing, persuaded higher-ups to “frag” (assign) his F-84s to hit the airfield at Sinuiju, just south of the Yalu River. Thirty-three Thunderjets took off from the pierced-steel runway at K-2 Taegu Air Base in South Korea, flew north, and hit the airfield by surprise. The first eight F-84s, assigned a strafing role, began working the place. Only then, after Packard’s force descended over Sinuiju like a tidal wave, did MiGs begin scrambling from Antung, their airfield on the Chinese side of the Yalu.

A furious battle ensued between F-84s and MiG-15s. First Lieutenant Jacob Kratt shot down two MiG-15s and captains. Allen McGuire and William W. Slaughter each bagged one MiG. All F-84s returned home safely. For pilot Kratt, who shot down a Yak three days later to rack up his third aerial victory, it was time to wallow in sweet triumph: In gunnery training back in the States, Kratt had “messed up,” as he put it, and flown into a tow target. Only intervention by Packard with a skeptical Gen. Curtis E. LeMay had prevented the young airman from being grounded.

LeMay, of course, didn’t want his 27th Wing in Korea. The wing was part of LeMay’s strategic air command, and he wanted it back. He’d never liked fighters. He’d begrudgingly accepted the F-84 as an escort-fighter in SAC, almost certainly while biting into his famous cigar and twisting his face into a scowl. But as long as the planes were his, LeMay wanted them back and out of Korea. He was one of the architects of a policy that atomic war with the Soviet Union took priority over Korea: time and again, SAC and the air defense command received factory-fresh equipment denied to those doing the real shooting.

As for the F-84, it was the U.S. Air Force’s final jet fighter to have straight wings, developed in the closing months of World War II. The Thunderjet had been built in part as “insurance” against failure of the more advanced Sabre, and pilots knew it.

Packard’s 27th Wing flew 2,076 combat sorties in January 1951. At the end of the month, the wing moved from Taegu back to Itazuke. The F-84 offered somewhat more respectable range than the F-80, so the wing was able to continue flying combat missions against Communist ground targets. By July 30, 1951, the F-84E Thunderjet-equipped 136th Fighter Bomber Wing was in action with all three of its squadrons (111th, 154th, 182nd), made up largely of activated Air National Guardsmen. Soon, other F-84 squadrons, groups, and wings came to Korea—not from SAC but from tactical air command, which LeMay didn’t own. The F-84 became a fixture in Korean fighting. One F-84 pilot was dubbed the “Junior Commando” by his squadron mates—not charitably—because he had a Thompson submachine

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