Free Boyd by Robert Coram Page A

flight leader and the
     element leader were the gunslingers, the shooters, the ones who initiated the attack. The sole and inviolate duty of the wingman
     was to cover his leader’s sixo’clock position, to protect him from enemy aircraft. A new pilot had to fly about thirty missions
     as a wingman before he could be promoted to element leader and become a shooter.
    Suwon was known to pilots as “K-13” and was about thirty miles south of Seoul and two hundred fifty miles south of the Yalu
     River. K-13 was home of the 25th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Group. The 25th did no bombing
     or ground-attack missions; its job was air supremacy. Pilots of the 25th were headhunters. The 25th was the “red squadron”
     and its F-86s had a red stripe across the top of the tail, while its pilots wore red scarfs. Anyone hearing an F-86 pilot
     identify himself on the radio with a call sign of a bird, as in “Eagle Six,” knew he was listening to a pilot from the 25th.
    Pilots from the 25th slept in tents bordered on the bottom with corrugated siding. The eight-man tents usually had ten occupants.
     Not even Erie winters compared with the cold of Korea.
    Lieutenants newly arrived in Korea were called “smokes.” And before a smoke could be unleashed against Communist pilots, he
     had to go through a few orientation and training flights. Each squadron had its own way of doing this. The 25th sent its smokes
     to “Clobber College.”
    Two curricula existed at Clobber College, one formal and one informal. The formal curriculum said the smokes had to crawl
     into an F-86 and follow one of the combat veterans as he showed them the U.S. side of the combat zone, pointed out emergency
     fields, and familiarized them with local weather patterns. They performed a few instrument approaches. But most of all they
     learned the ROE—the rules of engagement—that dictated when, how, and where (mostly where) they could engage MiGs in battle.
     Under no circumstances could an American pilot cross the Yalu River and go into Manchuria, where North Korean aircraft were
     based. American pilots most often encountered enemy aircraft in “MiG Alley,” the thirty-mile-wide stretch south of the Yalu
     where MiGs patrolled. If an F-86 pilot had a MiG in his pipper and the MiG fled across the Yalu, the F-86 pilot had to disengage.
     Manchuria was a sanctuary that America would not violate.
    Or, at least, that was the official policy; young warriors mounted in an F-86 did not always follow the rules. Countless times
     young pilots chased MiGs back to their sanctuary and shot them down as they were landing. Many MiG kills were disallowed because
     the guncamera film showed runways in Manchuria, and for the pilot to claim the kill meant he would be shipped home. (So many
     MiGs were shotdown in Manchuria that pilots said, “No aces are made south of the Yalu.”) The proscriptive ROE in Korea foreshadowed the
     even more rigid rules America would impose on its pilots in the next war.
    The informal curriculum at Clobber College called for one of the combat veterans to take up a smoke and see what he was made
     of—to have the young lieutenant get on his six and see how long he could stay there as the experienced pilot banked and climbed
     and pulled heavy Gs. Then he would get on the six of the new pilot, tuck in close and tight, and see if the new pilot could
     shake him. Tactics used by experienced F-86 pilots were essentially the same tactics used by P-51 pilots in World War II but
     at higher altitudes and greater speeds.
    In his oral history, Boyd told what happened when he went up for the informal part of his training. He and an experienced
     pilot climbed to altitude over K-13 and the combat vet ordered him to get in trail. The lead pilot rolled and snapped and
     flung his F-86 all over the sky. His intent was to force Boyd to disengage or to throw him out front so he would become the
     target. The usual procedure