The Korean War is often called the forgotten war. That’s not true for people interested in the history of air-to-air combat. There is a generous list of books about the first ever jet vs. jet war. The early jet fighter planes are in books. But this material has been limited - nearly all written from the point of view of pilots on the United Nations’ side of the conflict. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the situation changed. After 1992, Russian pilots were free to discuss their role in the Korean War. We only had hints of their involvement, but now we have their side of the story. They report their victories and their aces. A researcher has dug through Chinese language material and described the experience of Chinese pilots. A North Korean pilot has published his story. These pilots saw the Korean War in a different way.
For the MiG pilots, it was not simply a matter of dogfighting Sabres. The MIG-15 could fly high above UN aircraft so MiG pilots were free to select their opponents. Their primary mission was protection from bombing. Therefore the preferred target was a UN attack plane, not a fighter. Since the MIG-15 was faster than every plane used by the UN, except the F-86, the MIG-15s scored or claimed a lot of victories. Records of Russian units show almost half of the UN aircraft shot down were F-51s, F-80s, F-84, Meteors etc. The rest were Sabres.
Can we trust the Russian claims? Not entirely, but we can’t trust the UN claims either. The UN reports exaggerate enemy numbers, minimize losses and make questionable claims. The Russians exaggerate claims and bias action reports. Some North Korean pilots clearly falsified combat reports. MIG-15 pilots varied in ability. There were some first class Russian pilots. While the North Koreans and Chinese were less experienced, there were some talented pilots among them as well.
In attempting to represent the experience of MIG-15 pilots in the Korean War, I developed the following board game. It is designed to stand alone, but I really think it is best as a campaign frame to supplement a dogfight game.
The MiG pilot rolls a single D-6 to determine his progress along the track. If his marker (coin, button, small model plane etc.) stops on a square with an aircraft number on it, the MiG pilot may choose to engage. Given the MIG’s superior altitude, MiG pilots could always decide to simply stay above the enemy. If the MiG pilot decides to engage, he can use my table of aircraft. He rolls a D-6 and reads a result.
For example, he starts the game with a roll of 4. This lands his marker on the fourth square. It is marked “F-51.” Our pilot is engaging an F-51. Next he looks up the F-51 on my table of aircraft and rolls the D-6 again. He rolls a 3. The dogfight was a draw. In this case he continues his movement along the track. If he had rolled a 5 in the dogfight, he would have scored a kill. He gets to continue along the track, and he gets to add ½ a victory point to his next D-6 roll in a dogfight. This doesn’t help much until he gets a second F-51 kill. The two combined ½ victory points give him a +1 on D-6 rolls in dogfights.
Notice that engaging more advanced aircraft becomes more dangerous, but it also can yield higher victory points. As the pilot wins more he becomes more effective.
Let us consider the possible variety of MiG pilots who could be flying this month of patrols. North Korean and Chinese Communist pilots started flying MIGS over Korea as very green pilots. They had relatively little time on the airplane. In some cases they had as few as 50 hours flying MIG-15s. As a result they were not eager to engage. Russian pilots varied in experience. Some of them were relatively new pilots. Most of them had flown some combat missions during the Great Patriotic War (WW II). Some of them were already aces who had mixed it up with the Luftwaffe’s best. These pilots were a match for the best of Sabre pilots.
I think the best use of the track is to use it to set up dogfight scenarios; then play the dogfights using a computer simulation or dogfight game using model planes. My 1998 game, “MIG Alley” provides a set of rules for MiG vs. Sabre. I’m sure there are some other dogfight games you can use.
MiG Pilot: Bibliography
Angelucci, Enzo and Paolo Matricardi. World Aircraft: Military 1945-1960. (1976).
________. World War II Airplanes: Volume II. (1977).
Davis, Larry. Air War Over Korea. (1982).
Futrell, Robert F. United States Air Force in Korea. (1983).
Gordon, Yefin and Vladimir Rigmant. MIG-15: Design, Development and Korean War History. (1993).
Jackson, Robert. Air War over Korea. (1973).
Lyman, B. The Significance of Australian Air Operations in Korea. (1992).
No, Kom-Sok with Roger Osterholm. A MIG-15 to Freedom: Memoirs of the Wartime North Korean Defector Who First Delivered the Secret Fighter Jet to the Americans in 1953. (1996)
Seidel, Hans. Stalin’s Eagles: An Illustrated Study of the Soviet Aces of World War II andKorea. (1996).
Yeager, Chuck and Leo Jonas. Yeager: An Autobiography. (1983).
MiG Pilot Korean War Solo Game
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