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  • Capt. McConnell Shot Down

    “I am Harold Chitwood, First Lieutenant, USAF, and at the time Mac was shot down I was stationed at K-13 Korea. I was assigned to the 39th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, 51st Fighter Wing. We were in the same squadron; as a matter of fact we went to Korea on the plane. I happened to be flying the

  • Personal Account from Capt. McConnell

    31 January 1953 "I encountered 4 MiG 15's at 46,000' I turned left into them, then reversed my turn on the first 2. I then broke right into the second 2 and again reversed my turn and lined up on the #2 MiG of the 1st element. I hit the MiG it rolled over and dived for the ground. I followed firing

  • First Jet vs. Jet Ace: Capt. James Jabara

    The world's first jet-versus-jet ace was USAF Capt. James Jabara, who scored his initial victory on April 3, 1951 and his fifth and sixth victories on May 20. He was then ordered back to the U.S. for special duty.At his own request, he returned to Korea in January 1953. By June, he had shot down

  • Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton: First F-86 MiG Kill

    Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton, commander of the 336th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, was the first F-86 pilot to score a MiG-15 kill. On Dec. 17, 1950, Hinton led a flight of four F-86s over northwestern North Korea. To trick the communists, the Sabre pilots flew at the same

  • MiG-15 Pilot

    Unlike their Sabre counterparts, MiG-15 pilots did not wear hard helmets or g-suits. In fact, their flight clothing and gear was essentially the same as that worn by Soviet pilots years before during World War II.ASP-3N GunsightThis ASP-3N gunsight was removed from the museum's MiG-15bis. Like the

  • Sabre Pilot

    Air Force F-86 pilots wore a mix of World War II and newly-issued flight gear. This pilot has a flying suit and goggles from WWII, but he is also wearing a newer B-15 flight jacket and a post-WWII hard-shell helmet.He is equipped with an oxygen mask for the thin air at high altitude, and a "g-suit"

  • F-86 Sabre vs. MiG-15 Armament

    The F-86 carried six M-3 .50-caliber machine-guns like the one displayed at the museum. The M-3 was a later version of the M-2 used in World War II. The MiG-15 carried two 23mm and one 37mm cannon and was designed to destroy enemy bombers. The two cannons on display came from the museum's MiG-15.The

  • Soviet Pilots over MiG Alley

     The opening of archives in the former Soviet Union confirmed a fact that had long been denied -- the USSR provided many of the MiG-15 pilots and units that fought in MiG Alley. Like their U.S. Air Force opponents, several of these Soviet pilots were World War II combat veterans.Before the Korean

  • MiG Alley: Sabre vs. MiG

     "The MiG-15 was good, but hardly the superfighter that should strike terror in the heart of the West ... There was no question that the F-86 was the better fighter."- No Kum-Sok, North Korean fighter pilot who escaped to South Korea in 1953 after flying nearly 100 combat missions in the

  • Birth of Jet Aircraft

    The Korean War served as the arena for history's first air-to-air combat by jet-propelled aircraft. U.S. Air Force pilots did not start scoring heavily against Russian-made MiG-15 jets until the swept-wing F-86A Sabre arrived in Korea in late 1950. Then the victories began to mount, and by the end