Word: mig
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...night last week a U.S. jet plane zipped along the Yalu River, spewing leaflets into a southeast breeze that would blow them into Manchuria. The leaflets bore a fat offer from the U.N. command: to any pilot who delivered a MIG jet fighter to South Korea, the U.S. promised political asylum and a reward of $50.000. To start the ball rolling, the first man out would get an extra $50,000 besides...
Captain Harold E. Fischer Jr., 27, the U.S.'s third-ranking jet ace,* is a shy, boyish-looking Iowa farm boy who drew a bead on a MIG-15 as if he were leading a wild duck. Interviewed last month on becoming a "double ace," he embarrassed the Air Force by saying that he knocked out eight of his ten MIGs, not by using the Air Force's fine radar gunsight, but just by using "Kentucky windage" to get on his target...
...into combat. He tried to fly on a morning mission, but had to wait until afternoon. As he trotted out to his F-86 Sabre jet, he said to his buddies: "Let's go get them-or get got." Up near the Yalu, he tangled with a MIG, and lost. His wingman heard Fischer say, "Get out, get the hell out of the area." Then his radio was silent...
Seventeen hundred miles south of its Alaskan base, and only 25 miles from Kamchatka, the long tongue of Soviet territory that hangs down from eastern Siberia, a U.S. four-engine B50 bomber sighted two MIG-15s. One of them closed to a cautious 800 yards and opened fire; the B-50's gunners returned a few bursts. The bomber returned to base undamaged...
That afternoon, the Sabre jet pilots shot down six Red MIGs. But the one they were proudest of was Baker's: it was the twelfth MIG he had destroyed and made him the leading jet-to-jet ace of the Korean war. Previous record holder: another Texan, Major George A. Davis of Lubbock, who destroyed eleven MIGs in ten weeks, then was shot down himself (TIME, Feb. 18, 1952). Said Baker: "I just lucked out on him." The Air Force, just to make sure that luck doesn't finally run out on its new ace of aces, ordered...