MiG Madness: The Air War over Korea
By Lt. Col. Lawrence Spinetta

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“Jabara, you’re shooting at me!” screamed Lieutenant Dick Frailey in a desperate attempt to get Major James Jabara, the third ranking American ace of the Korean War, to break off his attack. But his frantic radio transmission came too late. Jabara had opened up with his .50-caliber machine guns from a range of 3,000 feet and then followed up his initial trigger squeeze with eight more bursts. His bullets smashed into the left wing, engine and canopy of Frailey’s North American F-86 Sabre. Several rounds passed between Frailey’s arm and chest, ripping through his instrument panel.

Frailey’s engine started to smoke, and his jet rolled over into a dive. He managed to temporarily recover control of the fatally damaged plane and point it toward the Yellow Sea, where he thought he might have a better chance of being rescued.

With 64 missions over Korea under his belt, Frailey was an ex­perienced combat veteran. Ironically, he was flying Jabara’s usual aircraft on this mission and often flew as his wingman.

Frailey had purchased an expensive camera on a recent trip to Japan, intent on becoming the first American pilot to take a still photograph (other than gun camera footage) of a MiG-15 in flight. “I don’t want to eject,” Frailey announced to his flight mates. “I’ve got my new camera with me.” Jabara replied, “Screw the camera, I’ll buy you a new one.”

Frailey had difficulty getting out of his seat in the course of bailing out, but he managed to deploy his parachute just before his feet hit the water. His chute promptly landed on top of him, and he escaped from the web of tangled shroud lines only to discover that one of Jabara’s bullets had punctured his one-man life raft. To make matters worse, he had ejected within range of Communist shore artillery. Fortu­nately for Frailey, a U.S. Air Force Grumman SA-16 amphibian pilot braved the ensuing barrage and plucked him from the water.

The Air Force tried to keep the incident secret because it reflected poorly on Jabara, a celebrated war hero. Moreover, Air Force officials didn’t want the public to know about one of the factors that had contributed to this case of mistaken identity: American pilots frequently violated the rules of engagement prohibiting flight into Chinese airspace. Frailey’s flight leader had taken his four Sabres north of the Yalu River on a MiG sweep. Jabara saw the flight’s contrails tracking from the north across the border to the south and assumed they were a formation of MiGs. His pursuit curve put him on Frailey’s tail.

Jabara was known for his aggressiveness. During one World War II mission on May 28, 1944, his flight of four North American P-51D Mustangs was escorting Allied bombers to targets deep in the heart of Germany when 50 Messerschmitt Me-109s swarmed the bomber formation. Undaunted by the overwhelming odds, Jabara plunged into the furball with reckless abandon. A Luftwaffe pilot shot off Jabara’s canopy during the ensuing melee, yet the Mustang pilot re­mained unfazed. He continued his attack and managed to claim a probable victory despite the fact that he was flying a “convertible” at that point.

“Jabara was the ultimate warrior when it came to going to the sound of the guns without orders,” recalled Lt. Gen. Earl Brown, a Sabre pilot who flew 125 combat missions with the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing in Korea. “He would go wherever the guns were sounding, looking for some; if you’re with him in a bar fight, he’s just looking for a guy to punch—but if you’re not careful, he might, in his excitement, punch you.”

Many of the top aces in Korea, including Jabara, seemingly suffered from an affliction known as “MiG Madness.” They obsessed over their MiG tallies and worked themselves into a frenzy whenever they saw another aircraft airborne. In the heat of the moment, they sometimes saw what they wanted to see. Hal Fischer, the 25th ranking Korean War ace, wrote about another friendly fire incident in which he observed his wing commander, a man with a “visual problem and a great desire for shooting down MiGs,” fire on two Sabres heading south across the Yalu despite repeated calls over the radio explaining that they were friendly aircraft.

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

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