Award winning novelist James Salter. From fighter jets in World War Two and the Korean War. In this selection, from his memoir Burning the Days. Salter describes a dogfight with a MiG in Korea.
The first good weather in a week. The fighter bombers are going north again in strength. To someplace up near the border. The briefing room is crowded and electric. It’s max effort. Everything they can fly. 600 enemy aircraft have encountered on their fields. We’re sending up 40 far beneath us. The silver formations were moving slowly, it seemed. Across barren hills.
Enemy flights were being announced. One after another. And then someone saw them along the river at 30,000ft. Blood jumping after the idle days, we dropped tanks and began to climb. We broke through a thin layer of clouds and into emptiness. Moments later, coming from nowhere. Were on us, four of them at 8:00. We turn into them. They pass behind and disappear.
The flight is split up. We’re in twos. By this time, names are being called out everywhere. The radio is brimming with voices. Among them, someone calling out Meg. South of the river. At 24,000ft. How many? Someone asks. Many? Many. We head that way and see too far out. So I’ll pass this on the left. We turn to follow.
And they climb and begin to turn. And also the sky is a burning blue. A sky thing, thing blacken. I’m on my back and warming up to get between them and the river. Rolling out slightly beneath the leader who’s turning hard to the right and cannot see me. I ducked my head and tried to find the gunsight, which is an image projected onto a thick, slanted piece of glass that serves as the windshield.
There’s nothing there. Turning is pulled it all the way off the glass. The MiG begins to level out and the side drifts into view about 1000ft back. I press the trigger. The traces fall behind him. He begins to climb again, and I’m cutting him off. Closing. Glancing quickly back to see if my wingman is still there, firing again.
A few hits in the right wing, then tremendous joy. At closer range, a solid burst in the fuselage. The flashes are intense. Brilliant. As if something vital shattering. He abruptly rolls over and I follow, as if were leaping from a wall. He begins to pull it through. I’m still shooting, and something flies off the plane. The canopy. A moment later, I kind of bundle the pilot comes out.
Cope. Did you see that? Roger, my wingman says. He may have been talking to me all along, telling me I was clear, but this single word is the only one that remains as the MiG. Now a funeral craft that bore nothing, was falling from 30,000ft, spinning leisurely in its descent until its shadow unexpectedly appeared on the hills and slowly moved to join it in a burst of flame.
Six enemy planes were claimed on this mission, and two of our own were lost an ace and his wingman. The leader was rescued, but the wingman drowned here, then faintly discolored. And my to come apart if you touch it. It’s a corsage that I kept from the dance.
Tags: Memoir