AN ENEMY MIG-15 BEING SHOT DOWN BY AN AMERICAN F-86 FIGHTER, AS SEEN THROUGH ITS GUN CAMERA. THOUGH NOT PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGED DURING THE WAR, MANY MIGS FLOWN OVER KOREA WERE PILOTED BY SOVIET AIR FORCE PILOTS.
went to ground school for ten days, learned about the aircraft systems and tactics of the F-86, as well as the tactics of the MiG-15, the primary aircraft of our enemy, who we found out later were mostly Russians. I flew nine rides in the F-86 and was declared combat ready. I was a junior birdman at the time, so we were assigned to fly wing instead of lead. Our squadron was made up of a combination of older pilots, WWII veterans, and a lot of us younger guys. It was a great mix and a good opportunity for me to follow their lead and learn.
I flew about 80 missions as a wingman, taking in as much as I could from the more experienced pilots. One of the leaders of our squadron that I came to respect the most was Major General Frederick Corbin“ Boots” Blesse. He was a captain when he first arrived, but eventually took over operations. When he became our squadron operations officer, he laid it out to us straight when he said,“ This is the sorriest outfit that I’ ve ever been a part of. I’ m taking you all out of combat for a week.” He fired three of the flight commanders and made me one, the only lieutenant at the time to serve as a flight commander. Major Blesse became known for orchestrating a real strategic shift in air combat, outlined in a booklet called“ No Guts, No Glory.” Rather than keeping the wingmen out wide where
they were out on a limb, he trained pilots to keep close to the leader’ s wing position. This led to a complete change in tactics from a more defensive attitude to an offensive mindset. From that point on, the 334th squadron went from the bottom to the top of the heap in terms of kills. So he retrained us and restructured us in his own aggressive image.
I can vividly remember my first real air-to-air combat as a flight leader. It was a Sunday in July. The weather was a problem and all flights were canceled that day, but I convinced the assistant operations officer that my wingman and I needed to go up on a weather reconnaissance mission, so we could report back where the clouds were. We were the only two F-86s, or any other aircraft, in the sky all day. We got up to the Yalu River and, by Golly, it was clear. The clouds broke about 20 miles south of the river, with a thunderstorm around Antung, which was the major enemy airfield across the border in China. As we reached the Yalu River and turned southwest, our radar man called out a bandit headed our
“ CHICK” CLEVELAND IN THE COCKPIT, 1950.
way at about our altitude. I looked out and sure enough there was a little speck headed towards us, getting bigger and bigger. Quickly, we passed each other, not more than 50 feet apart. To this day, I have a clear picture in my mind of that huge tail with a big red star on it flashing by my cockpit. I broke hard left. If he didn’ t want to fight, he could have continued on and I never would have caught him. But he broke hard with me and when that happened, I said,“ Geez, this isn’ t practice anymore. This is for real. One of us is not going to go home tonight.” But I was very confident. I was a good pilot and I’ d been trained well. By the time we came back around on our first turn, I had gained about 15 degrees on him. I could see the top of the airplane and his canopy. He started shooting at me, but I wasn’ t worried. I knew his shots would miss me and they did. We went five or six turns, getting lower and slower each time. Finally, I slid into his six o’ clock position and he practically filled my windscreen. I thought,“ Gosh, Cleveland, you’ ve finally got your first MiG.” I’ d heard enough stories of fighter pilots in WWII who had forgotten to turn their gun switch on and they fired and nothing happened. So I looked down, found the gun switch, and saw it was on, but by the time I looked up, the MiG was gone. I looked all around and decided,“ He’ s got to be underneath me.” So I rolled over and sure enough, he’ s right there.
What he’ d done was perform a flawless bunt, a maneuver to push forward on the stick and pull the throttle back to get behind me, a maneuver I had never seen in practice. We started to roll around each other and I pulled the throttle to idle, put the speed brakes out and the flaps down and was able to get behind him again. We were going so slowly, only about 150 knots. We both pushed the throttle up, and he tried to climb away. That was one of the real advantages the MiG-15 had. It could outclimb and out-accelerate the F-86. So he started to climb away but I had him in my sights and fired. I got strikes all over him and thought,“ I’ ve got him.” He rolled over very slowly to his left
12 AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY