Presentation Date: June 27, 2002
COL John Lowery USAF (Ret.)
Combat Jet Fighter Pilot, KOREA: 334th FIS, 4th FIW; 43 Missions, F-86 Sabre, 5000 Hours in Fighters; 13, 500 Hours Total Time
- Combat Jet Fighter Pilot
- KOREA: 334th FIS, 4th FIW; 43 Missions, F-86 Sabre
- 5000 Hours in Fighters; 13, 500 Hours Total Time--and Still Counting!
- 25 Years Active Duty; 24 Years Instructor in Sabreliner & King Air
- Flew F-86s,TF-86s, F-80s/T-33s,F-100s, F-104s, F-105s, F-5s & F-4s
- FAA Designated Check Pilot for 10 Years
- Professional Pilot of the Year in 1978
- Author of 4 Books & Numerous Aviation Articles
- Contributor on the History Channel: F-86 Sabre--Jet Strike!
- BS-Economics; MS-Aviation Science; Professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University
"Fighter versus fighter, as I knew it in Korea, was the greatest sport that I've ever participated in."- - Col. John Lowery, F-86 Sabre Jet Pilot.
John Lowery flew 45 missions in Korea, as a wingman to a number of fighter aces. During the Vietnam War,for which air combat culminated in, he was responsible for mission readiness(crew combat readiness) for an F-4 Phantom squadron providing Wild Weasel(Suppression ofAir Defense)operations, nuclear strike capability and the air defense of Taiwan.Retiring as a Lt. Colonel in 1975, Lowery is now the president of Executive Jet Training Associates, which trains professional pilots to fly the Corporate Sabreliner.He spoke to the CAF Golden Gate Wing at the June dinner meeting. An Alabama native, Lowery was a Second Lieutenant when he completed his fighter pilot training at Maxwell AFB.He arrived in Korea21, 1953, at an airbase called Kimpo or K-14, which is now known as Seoul International Airport. Onboard a DC-6, Lowery landed at Kimpo about 5:30 in the morning that day, just as the sky was beginning to lighten.
"I stepped out into cold like I have never felt before.The other thing that really hit me in the face was the smell.I hadn't realized it, but all over the Far East they fertilized their rice paddies with human waste. They were getting it in the Nari area from the Air Force base, and the whole place smelled like an outdoor toilet and I thought... I came here to die?" After his bus ride to the fighter base, it was about 8 am, and a squadron of jet fighters was taking off, two at a time. "I was awed, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was like walking into a movie... just like a movie set. I was really impressed."
Kimpo was a tent city with wooden slatted sidewalks edging dirt roads and a smattering of rehabilitated buildings," that had been bombed and strafed and so forth over five times since the area had changed hands from the North Koreans."Lowery says there were one-story Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQs) for the 4th FIW on one side of the airfield.There was one building each for the Squadrons- - the 334th, 335th, and 336th. There was no running water, and everything was heated by oil burning pot-bellied stoves.
One of Lowery's memories from Kimpo was the nightly encounter with 'Bed Check Charlie'. The Soviets had started the practice in World War Two of flying two-place Po-2 biplanes over Luftwaffe airbases at night, dropping mortar shells to harass enemy aircrews.The tradition, with the same old type of biplanes continued in Korea.
"One night, 'Bed Check Charlie' was coming over and they had Navy Corsair night fighters in orbit around Kimpo.They (the Air Force) had finally talked a Navy F-4U pilot to come across Kimpo to pick up the Po-2 on his radar.He was very reluctant, but finally they'd talked him into it.
"Of course, we (the Air Force fighter pilots) didn't know this.And we're all standing aroundgun emplacement, and you've gotan 18 year old draftee manning the gun, doing what his boss is telling him on the radio.All of a sudden the searchlights locked onto an airplane and all these fighter pilots standing around that poor gunner'kill him, kill him, kill him'.He opened up and the entire base started shooting.
"The Corsair pilot got away, but they never could get another Navy pilot to fly across Kimpo."
After the end of hostilities in Korea(27 July), on September21, 1953,Lowery says, "My squadron was on alert and they scrambled two airplanes for a practice intercept.They didn't see the MiG, and itdownwind into traffic and taxied into a slot." The pilot, Senior Lt.No, Kum Sukfrom the North Korean Air Force. Hedefected with the aircraft.The captured MiG-15 gave test pilots the opportunity to find out the fighter's strengths and weaknesses.
"The F-86 had absolutely no flaws.We even had a song - - Just give me an F-86, the airplane that knows all the tricks. She'll loop, roll and spin, but she'll never auger in." That contrasted dramatically with the MiG-15.
"The MiG was a very dangerous airplane.In fact, before I came here, about three days ago, Icalled Ken Rowe, the Mig pilot (Lt. No{pronounced Ro in Korean} was given a new name when he relocated) to check out some of the facts... The MiGs he flew had no pressurization and a very poor, World War II-type oxygen system."
The MiGs were frequently seen flying above 50,000 feet and Lowery says F-86 pilots would chase them up to 49,000 feet before reaching the Sabre'sceiling.
John also described what is known as 'the coffin corner', wherein the high speed stall buffet and low speed stall buffet converge. He says Rowe told him MiG-15 pilots typically cruised at .8 Mach.At 45,000 feet, that's an airspeed of about 205 mph indicated.
"As you climb above 20,000 feet your stall speed goes with you.So at 45,000 feet, .8 Mach, you're at205 indicated and your stall speed might be 175.Now you're getting to 51,000 feet, and .8 Mach is 185 indicated, and your stall speed is 175.It's like flying on the edge of a ball bearing and you're just ready to fall off at any moment."
Lowery says he'd been in mission debriefings and heard other F-86 pilots say they'd been following a flight of four MiG-15s when one of them would suddenly stall and start spinning . "Once they get into a spin, a MiG-15 won't recover.It has a flat spin mode, too.An F-86 pilot could go into a spin at 45,000 feet and spin to 10,000 and recover like a T-34. It's just a wonderful airplane."
Chuck Yeager was among the test pilots who flew the MiG-15. Lowery says Yeager called the fighter "a piece of junk".
Designed as an interceptor to attack high altitude B-29, B-50 and B-36 bombers, MiG-15s in North Korea had a big white mark on the instrument panel.If theairplane snapped out of control, the pilot was supposed to put the stick right on that mark and hold it, for the airplane to recover. By contrast, the F-86 was such a natural flying jet that in an accidental spin Lowery says the pilot could let go of the controls and the airplane would recover itself.
Other features of the F-86 included dual-mode pressurization - - 5.0 psi for high altitude and 2.75 psi for combat, so that if shrapnel pierced the canopy, the pilot wouldn't be knocked out by decompression.
"And by the way, I was at 41,000 one time on a maintenance test flight and the canopy just blew open.That's a real thrill. It's also very cold, because it's minus 56.4degrees centigrade. Lowery says the majority of the pilots he saw shot down during his tour were young North Koreans or Chinese, explaining why in most cases when F-86s bouncedMiGs, the victims flew straight and levelthey were knocked from the sky.
"What the Russians would do is bring them over on training flights at 51,000 feet, above the altitudes we'd be able to reach,and they'd fly a box pattern - - south of Antung, China, right at the mouth of the Yalu River where empties into the Yellow Sea; then they'd come down almost to Pyongyang; then they would go eastbound to a certain point, then they'd go back to China.We'd try to catch them when they descended for landing into China.
"Ken Rowe says sometime in 1952 the rules seemed to have changed, so that the Yalu River was no longer a barrier.And the MiGs that the Sabre jets were shooting down were in the traffic pattern. "I know the answer to that riddle.General Barcus took over and General Barcus said, 'To hell with the Yalu River.Go where they are and get 'em.'
"But when he departed, General Anderson took over - - in June of '53 - - and General Anderson said,'I will make an example of the first I catch going across the river.'The first guy he caught was one of the aceswas,just finishing his tour.But he went home very swiftly."
Lowery says he was shot at for the first time while flying his fifteenth mission.He was at 45,000 feet when a Russian flown MiG bounced him.Only later did he know the pilot was Russian, when Ken Rowe told him the Russians flew aircraft that were brown on top and a dirty gray on the bottom. The MiG that shot at him, says John, was one of a pair.That day there were four pairs of MiGs in a trailing line, stacked in altitude toward the last pair - - the lower pair providing bait for the MiGs at higher altitude.
Lowery, flying to the left of his leader, says at that time the sole job of a wingman was to clear the tail of his leader, and if the wingman fired his guns without the permission of the leader, he would be grounded.
"I looked to the left, then to the right.I looked back to the left and I saw these big red balls going down behind my tail.And I looked up and here's a big air scoop with twelve feet of flames coming out from the 37 millimeter cannon.And he was diving on me. And I knew that his dive angle at that altitude was going to make it almost impossible for him to square corner... But he knew the airplane better than I thought he did because I called a hard turn to my leader so that we could get back to the shooting business.We started the hard turn and the MiG stayed with me.And I said, 'Uh oh, we better break.'So we rolled over... and went to Mach One."
That meant escape, because Lowery says the saving grace of the F-86 was its ability to dive supersonic.The MiG-15 could only go to .92 Mach before its speed brakes popped out, and approaching Mach One would get control surface buzz - - causing the whole plane to shudder.The F-86E and -F models had hydraulic controls, to keep the fighter from buffeting in that manner.According to Lowery, F-86 ace Pete Fernandez had found that "as long as he was cruising at .9 Mach, nobody ever came in at him from 6 o'clock.And so the whole squadron adopted a .9 Mach cruise and we never had any more MiGs at 6 o'clock."
As Lowery puts it, he "became a veteran" on his 26th mission, flying wing for First Lt. Ivan Ely.
The two pilots were half of a loosely spread flight of F-86s that took off from K-14 on a gloomy, darkly clouded day. John recalls feeling like he was "flying into a Boris Karloff movie. Scary."The flight had climbed to 45,000 feet and descended to 17,000 when a MiG popped out of the overcast in front of the Sabres, at an eleven o'clock position. Ely closed on the MiG, firing two bursts from his .50 caliber guns.The second burst found its mark, tearing pieces off the MiG as it continued to fly straight and level. Suddenly a second MiG-15 popped out of the clouds, on a collision course with Ely.
"I was sure he was flying instruments and I said, 'Rifle Lead pull up, pull up.'I got real frantic, and he couldn't hear me because he was locked on to his kill.Finally I screamed at him and he pulled up and the MiG pushed over and they missed by about ten feet.It was the closest midair I've ever seen in my life.In fact I thought the MiG pilot was just going to squeeze the trigger and blow Ivan right out of the sky, because they were that close." Lowery says Ely fired a third burst that sent the MiG into a right spiral dive, without its pilot ejecting.After watching the fighter hit the ground, he turned towards Kimpo, estimating his Sabre had just enough fuel to bring him home.But as John checked his two compasses he discovered a dilemma - - while hisslave gyroread 180 degrees (the presumed way south to Kimpo) the magnetic compass read 360 degrees. A wrong choice on direction would lead him deep into China. "The most difficult thing I've ever done was turn to 360 on the slave gyro. So when I rolled out the mag compass180.Iflew home at 41,000."
After about 55 minutes, Lowery picked up the radio beacon for Kimpo, and then noted the ADF needle swing, which should have indicated he was over his airbase.But when he dropped through the clouds, he noticed the river below didn't look right... and the city seemed devastated - - both signs that he was over Pyongyang, North Korea's capital!
With about 300 pounds of fuel remaining, John reversed course and climbed back into the clouds, now just hopeful he would have enough fuel to allow him to at least glide over the 'bomb line' into friendly territory.He was able to climb to 27,000 feet before the F-86 engine flamed out and the jet became a glider.
Over the radio, Lowery's wing commander, Col. James K. Johnson offered calm reassurance.But shortly thereafter the jet engine flamed out, and everything went quiet. After about five minutes the battery.John's F-86 was descending through the clouds, down to 9000 feet and 120 knots indicated.As rain drummed on the jet's windscreen, Lowery planned to eject at 2000 feet.Then he says, suddenly as the altimeter read about 3,000 feet, the clouds brightened.
"I looked straight up through the top of the canopy and saw Kimpo... I had fallen out of the clouds flamed out and inverted directly over the airfield."
Lowery rolled out the F-86 and turned it downwind for an emergency landing. Without flaps or speed brakes he was unable to bleed off enough speed, or go around. Consequentlytouched down at 160 knots and used a newly finished runway barrier to land like a Navy pilot making a carrier landing.The F-86 caughta wire stretched across the runway, and the fighter's momentum was slowed by anchorchains attached to either side of the barrier.
For many years, John Lowery has been the 'custodian' of the aerial combat film footage of Ralph Parr - - the Air Force's highest decorated fighter ace.He shared images taken though Parr's gunsight as Parr downed MiGs with the F-86's six .50 caliber guns.And he spoke of the way Ralph wrung everything out of his fighter.
"Ralph took the airplane (F-86) right to the edge of its absolute structural and performance envelope.He tells of pulling nine Gs, when it was legally stressed for seven. You could pull up to ten Gs before you had to pull the engine and check on it."The danger of high Gs involved separating components of the jet engine.
Lowery also told of Parr's shooting down of a Russian Ilyushin 12 transport on the final day of the Korean conflict - - Parr's tenth aerial victory and one which put him squarely in the middle of a Cold War controversy for years.
"The Russians decided the war was over, so they planned a big conference with all their intelligence officers... in Moscow.They sent three Il-12s to Port Arthur, China to pick up all the 17 VIP dignitaries and fly them to Vladivostok and hence to Moscow.Two of the Il-12s brokedown and so there was only one left.As a result they used one Il-12... to carry 17 Russian generals back to Vladivostok and Moscow.And the pilot made that horrible mistake of cutting across the panhandle of Korea on the last day of the war.
"Ralph Parr just happened to be sitting there.He had been escorting an RF-80 which was going to photograph the northern airfields in the panhandle, because we were counting airplanes to see how many MiGs they had in country - - for UN purposes. And he saw this transport.So he goes down and makes a pass at it and sees the big red star.And he says, 'Red star, that's Russian, so adios.' The Russians were so irate that two days later they shot down an RB-29 in the Seas of Japan, and they captured some of the crew members and reportedly shot them by firing squad."
Parr was sued personally by the Soviet Union in World Court, under allegations he'd shot down an airlinerin China, even though it was a military transport that was shot down and crashed in North Korea. The Soviet Union failed in its attempted lawsuit.
Lowery says,"Fighter versus fighter, as I knew it in Korea, was the greatest sport that I've ever participated in."He also knows the consequences, the down side of that sport. Lt. Robert F. Nieman, who hailed from New Ulm, Minnesota and whose cot was right next to Lowery's, was a West Point graduate.He had a daughter the same age as Lowery's and a son who was less than a month old.Lowery says Neiman's character epitomized the military slogan "Duty, Honor, Country", and he told John if he was captured, the only information he'd give the enemy was name, rank and serial number. Neiman was shot down and captured.
From the after-mission report of the Russian fighter wing based in Antung, Lowery found out that a MiG pilot tracking two Sabres took a quick shot and then flew into clouds, never knowing whether he'd hit his target. He had, and it was Neiman's F-86 the Russian had downed.
Forty years later, in 1994, a Russian Colonel told Nieman's daughter " he remembered a Lt. Nieman who had been wounded in the left leg while flying a Sabre jet, and who was interviewed in the Antung military hospital and refused to give anything but his name, rank and serial number."
"Another Russian Colonel remembered interrogating Niemana Russian base in Siberia, and he said Nieman refused to talk. The Russian Colonel said hecontact after that, but he speculated Nieman was sent to Moscow for 'debriefing', and that he was later shot and buried.There were thirty-two Sabre pilots who were captured like that. And wethey were alive on the ground but that never showed up in any record."
Lowery continues today to be instrumental in efforts to find out what happened to missing F-86 pilots and other servicemen lost in duty to their country.