MiG Alley: The US Air Force in Korea, 1950-53

by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Col (Ret.) Walter J. Boyne (Foreword by)

Overview

Titled after the wartime nickname for the part of North Korea that was the epicentre of a bitter struggle for air superiority over the Korean Peninsula, MiG Alley offers an in-depth analysis of the US Air Force's war in Korea, packed with interesting and exciting personal stories based on first-person testimony from both American and Soviet sources.

Following the end of the Korean War, the prevailing myth in the West was that of the absolute supremacy of US Air Force pilots and aircraft over their Soviet-supplied opponents. The claims of the 10:1 victory-loss ratio achieved by the US Air Force fighter pilots flying the North American F-86 Sabre against their communist adversaries, among other such fabrications, went unchallenged until the end of the Cold War, when Soviet records of the conflict were finally opened.

Packed with first-hand accounts and covering the full range of US Air Force activities over Korea, MiG Alley brings the war vividly to life and the record is finally set straight on a number of popular fabrications. Thomas McKelvey Cleaver expertly threads together US and Russian sources to reveal the complete story of this bitter struggle in the Eastern skies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472836090
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	02/23/2021
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	618,056
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver has been a published writer for the past 40 years, with a lifelong interest in the Korean War, and this work is the product of 25 years of research. He is the author of Aces of the 78th Fighter Group and F4F and F6F Aces of VF-2, as well as Fabled Fifteen: The Pacific War Saga of Carrier Air Group 15 and The Bridgebusters: The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Group. He is also a regular contributor to Flight Journal magazine. During his 30 years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he wrote the cult classic The Terror Within and worked as a supervising producer on a number of TV and cable series. He served in the US Navy in Vietnam and currently lives in Encino, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: A Sunday Surprise
Chapter Two: A Fighting Retreat
Chapter Three: A New Enemy
Chapter Four: The Other Side
Chapter Five: Messerschmitt Vs. Focke-Wulf Over The Yalu
Chapter Six: Year Of The Honcho
Chapter Seven: Black Thursday
Chapter Eight: The Hydro-Electric Campaign
Chapter Nine: Invaders
Chapter Ten: Fighter-Bombers
Chapter Eleven: The Nuclear Threat
Chapter Twelve: Final Battles
Conclusions

Editorial Reviews

More than sixty-five years after the Korean War, Tom Cleaver provides an objective assessment of the classic jet clashes along the Yalu River. For decades both the U.S. Air Force F-86s and the Communist MiG-15s claimed a 10-1 victory-loss ratio, an impossibility well known to aviation historians. But with rare resources, MiG Alley demonstrates that the Sabres and MiGs were much closer to parity than previously recognized, while paying tribute to the often outnumbered U.S. pilots who kept enemy airpower off the backs of allied ground forces in the south.” —Barrett Tillman, author of 'On Wave and Wing'

“Seen as a whole, MiG Alley is a most interesting read, complementing well the author's history of the US Navy's role in Korea, and genuinely offers perspectives that many might not have considered.” —Aeroplane Monthly

From the Publisher

09/02/2019

In this technical military history, historian Cleaver (The Frozen Chosen) aims to bring readers past the myths to the truth of the Korean War. Following WWII, as sole possessors of the atomic bomb, the U.S. believed traditional warfare was over, so it began severely reducing defense spending. While the Army and Navy dealt with large cuts, a new branch of the armed forces rose to the top: the U.S. Air Force. When North Korean forces invaded South Korea, the U.S., UN, and South Korea fought North Korea and China on the ground; American and Soviet pilots (the latter wearing North Korean uniforms) fought another war in the air in so-called MiG Alley, an area of northwestern North Korea between the Chongchon and Yulu rivers, where U.S. pilots escorted bombers to their targets. Exaggerated stories abounded; the U.S. claimed a kill ratio of 10 to one. Cleaver’s research, which draws on declassified Soviet military records, U.S. Air Force records, and firsthand pilot accounts from both sides, indicates it was closer to three to one. In a work often heavy with technical and aeronautical detail, Cleaver nonetheless effectively conveys the sheer destruction wrought by the U.S. bombing missions on North Korea and its citizens. Still, this account is probably mainly of interest to students of military history. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly