Captain James Jabara: Ace of the Korean War

By William B. Allmon | Aviation History  | 4 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Seeing that, Roberts ordered his flight to drop their wing tanks. When Jabara pulled the lever to release his drop tanks, he felt the Sabre roll to one side. He had to grab the control stick in both hands to keep the airplane under control. One of the wing tanks had failed to release and was still attached to his Sabre’s wing.

‘Orders were that if you had a hung tank, you were to beat it for home,’ Jabara later said. But he was not about to give up what might be his last shot at acedom. ‘I called my wingman and told him that we were joining the fight.’ Followed by Kemp, Jabara pulled his Sabre steeply up. He spotted three MiGs and made a firing pass at them. Three other MiGs attacked from above and behind. Jabara turned to face his new attackers, and two of the MiGs broke away.

Jabara latched onto the third MiG. ‘He tried everything in the book–diving and turning–to get rid of me,’ Jabara said, ‘but he couldn’t.’ Jabara closed to within 1,500 yards of the MiG’s tail and fired three bursts from his machine guns, hitting the MiG’s fuselage and left wing. ‘He did two violent snap rolls and started to spin down,’ Jabara remembered. The MiG spun from 27,000 feet to 10,000, with Jabara and Kemp following him. At 10,000 feet the pilot bailed out; seconds later, the MiG-15 disintegrated. ‘All I could see was a whirl of fire,’ Jabara remembered.

Jabara and Kemp climbed back up to rejoin the fight. When he reached 20,000 feet, Jabara noticed that Kemp was not with him, having tangled with some MiGs on the way up. Jabara then spotted six MiG-15s. Without hesitation, he attacked the sixth MiG in the flight. The MiG burst into flames and began to spin. Jabara overshot the MiG, pulled back his throttle and popped out his speed brakes to slow down quickly and stay with the MiG.

‘I circled him outside his spiral and followed him down to about 6,500 feet to be sure he hit the ground,’ Jabara wrote. Unseen by Jabara, however, two MiGs had come up behind him and opened fire. Jabara closed his speed brakes, shoved his throttle forward and broke hard left. The MiGs followed him. ‘For about two minutes we went around and around,’ Jabara recalled. ‘They were shooting at me while I tried my best to get away.’

Then Jabara heard two of his friends, Morris Pitts and Gene Holley, talking over the radio. ‘There’s an F-86 being shot at down there,’ Pitts said.

‘Roger,’ Jabara radioed back. ‘I know it only too damned well.’

Pitts and Holley swooped down to help Jabara. The lead MiG’s wingman, seeing the approaching Sabres, turned tail and ran. Holley got on the other MiG’s tail, radioed Jabara to hold steady, then opened fire while Pitts protected Holley’s tail. After six .50-caliber bursts from Holley, the MiG-15 began smoking and broke off, but the Sabres did not have enough fuel to go after him. Jabara, Pitts and Holley formed up and started south. ‘Thanks for saving my neck,’ Jabara radioed Holley.

The fight near Siniju had lasted only 20 minutes, with 34 Sabres battling 50 MiG-15s. The Sabres scored two kills–both by Jabara–and one probable.

‘On the way back I was so low on fuel that I had to shut my engine off and glide,’ Jabara remembered. ‘Then, before I got back to the air base, I started the engine back up and landed.’

The three pilots landed back at Suwon and taxied up to the parking area. To the cheers of his ground crew, Jabara calmly shoved back his Sabre’s cockpit canopy, removed his oxygen mask, and–like after every other mission–pushed a cigar into his mouth. Only then did he climb down and let Roberts and Kemp hoist him on their shoulders and carry him around the field.

The 335th’s pilots threw a party in his honor. During the festivities, Jabara used his hands to demonstrate how he shot down the MiGs, not forgetting his narrow escape after losing his wingman. ‘I made a bad mistake today. Never do what I did,’ he warned the others. ‘Never go after a MiG if you haven’t got your wingman there to cover you. When you’ve got your eye glued to that sight, you’re a sitting duck.’

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Aces, Aerial Combat, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, Korean War

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