Lockheed F-80
Shoots-Down MIG-15

Less than one week after Red China saw fit to engage the United Nations Forces fighting on the Korean Peninsula, four American fighter pilots found themselves embroiled in the first jet-age dog fight in the history of warfare. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Russell Brown of Southern California told the story of that afternoon’s events, when four American F-80s took on three Soviet-made MIG-15s 20,000 feet above the the Korean/Manchurian border, and won:

[The MIGs] were doing acrobatics, just yo-yoing around. Suddenly they came over at about 400 miles an hour… I don’t think that they wanted a fight, I think they meant to tease us to come over Chinese territory…”

Within a very short time one MIG went down in flames and the remaining two high-tailed it home badly damaged.