War in the Air
The Korean War was not the first appearance of the jet fighter. That had occurred in the waning days of the Second World War. The Korean War was however the first time jet fighters encountered each other in combat. Most of the North Korean Air Force was propeller driven when the war began, and the US and British jets made quick work of the slower, Russian built airplanes. When the Chinese entered the war they brought with them the Russian MIG 15, which at the time was one of the most advanced aircraft in the world. The MIG was capable of defeating the earlier American and British jets and US aircraft losses increased.
The MIG was so effective against the main workhorse bomber of the US Air Force, the B-29 Superfortress, the Americans had to abandon daylight bombing for a time. In late 1950 the US Air Force sent three squadrons of its newest fighter, the F-86 Sabrejet, to counter the MIGs. US pilots found that they could engage the MIG on nearly equal terms and the area over the Yalu River separating Korea from China began to be called MIG Alley by the UN forces. Besides supplying their best fighter to the Chinese and hence to the North Koreans, the Russians supplied pilots.
Russian pilots were trained to communicate via coded signals so as not to reveal their presence in the air war, but during the heat of combat this system soon broke down, UN pilots could overhear communication in the Russian language during operations. Over 1,100 UN airplanes were destroyed by Russian aviators. Even with the Russian involvement the United States Air Force maintained an advantage with the F-86 destroying enemy aircraft at a ratio of nearly ten to one. Still, over fifty Russian pilots achieved the status of being an air ace, which required a minimum of five kills.
The US took on the primary role in regards to bombing of North Korea and dropped over 600,000 tons on North Korean towns, cities, and infrastructure. The bombing was so extensive that almost all structures of the North were destroyed. North Korea became a country forced to live underground. Napalm was used to both clear terrain and to fire bomb cities. As the bombing campaign went on the Air Force began to find it difficult to locate worthy targets. No North Korean city escaped bombing and many were almost completely destroyed. The North Koreans had to rely almost completely on their Chinese and Russian allies for supplies.
Prior to the Korean War the helicopter had seen limited use in warfare. During the Korean War the roles for the helicopter began to emerge, as a means of evacuating wounded to hospital ships or to MASH units. It was especially valuable in areas where poor roads made evacuation by truck or by ambulance difficult. The US and other UN troops began to experiment with the use of helicopters for quick redeployment of troops and for close support of troops on the ground during the Korean War, but attack helicopters weren’t developed until after the ceasefire which ended the stalemate Korea.