AIR WAR: An Old Lesson

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In the vapor-trailed sky over Schweinfurt and Bremen and other German targets eight years ago, U.S. airmen learned—the hard way—an inescapable fact about daylight bombardments. Unless designed to outfly their opposition, bombers must be escorted to & from distant targets by long-range fighters, fast enough and numerous enough to stand off enemy interceptors. The alternative: prohibitive losses. Last week over North Korea, where U.S. pilots are still flying World War II 6-29 Superforts that lesson was underscored again.

In a strike at the Red airstrip under construction at Taechon, 45 miles south of the Yalu. U.N. escort fighters were able to beat off Russian-built MIG interceptors, and the only loss—one of nine bombers attacking—was to flak. The pilot nursed the crippled 6-29 out over the Yellow Sea, where Lieut. Donald A. Birch used his precision bombsight to aim parachuting fellow crewmen at a tiny island. Twelve were rescued.

The next day was a different story. Above another Russian jet field being built at Namsi, nine B-29s found some 150 MIGs ready and waiting. Of the 100 or so escorting U.N. fighters, only the F-86 Sabre jets could stand up to the MIGs, and they were outnumbered nearly five to one. In the biggest jet battle yet, eight MIGs were destroyed, with two probables and ten damaged, but some of the interceptors got through to the bombers.

Three of the million-dollar B-29s were shot down over the target, a loss percentage of 33%; nearly all suffered battle damage from slight to very heavy, and more than one of those which got back carried dead and wounded.

Later in the week, when B-29s struck the Sunchon railway bridge, the MIG pilots followed the bombers almost down to the 38th parallel, and brought down one of the eight B-29s.

In the face of the week's tally, and the fact that the Reds now have available in Manchuria some 600 jets—most of them presumably MIGs—the U.N. would have to make available more than the single wing (normal complement. 75 planes) of Sabre jets now flying against the Reds, or face the sort of losses which still make World War II airmen shudder at the name of Schweinfurt.