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Korean War-era MiG-15 visits Test Pilot School April 8, 2004
David Sutton, left, founder and president of Red Star Aviation of Reading, Pa., discusses the Korean War-era, Soviet Bloc-built two-seat MiG-15 with his crew chief and safety pilot, Carl Vernon, in a hangar at the United States Naval Test Pilot School here. Sutton brought the rare (only fix or six flying models in the United States) MiG-15 to TPS last week for ground evaluation work by TPS students.
by Bill Swanson SENIOR WRITER When civilian flight instructor David R. Sutton phoned his home in Reading, Pa., nearly two weeks ago to report that he was going to make a stopover at NAS Patuxent River during his flight home from a job in Florida, he got the advice, "Be inconspicuous." So the next morning, as inconspicuously as possible, Sutton flew a bright-Jersey-tomato-red, Soviet-block-built, half-century-old MiG-15 jet fighter - scourge of the Korean War - complete with Russian insignia into the airspace over Cedar Point where a couple dozen state-of-the-art Navy F/A/-18 Hornets normally roam, landed, and calmly taxied up to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School here. For Sutton as well as the ground crew, staff and students at TPS, the arrival of a bright-Jersey-tomato-red, Soviet-Bloc-built geriatric jet fighter with giant Russian-style stars on the wings and tail is pretty much just another day at the office. The TPS curriculum for both pilots and engineers alike requires that students be exposed to a wide variety of aircraft types and design or test evaluation problems. If an aircraft already in the TPS inventory doesn't match up with a syllabus requirement, TPS brings in on a temporary basis an aircraft that does. Some aircraft are actually flown by students and staff, while others are only evaluated on the ground. The upshot is that the people at TPS are used to seeing some pretty unusual, rare or one-of-a-kind aircraft or aircraft type roll up to their hangars from time to time. By day, Sutton has a full-time job as a flight instructor teaching commercial pilots to fly the Falcon series of executive jet aircraft. By night, on weekends, and during a fair number of weekday hours, too, Sutton is president and instructor pilot of Red Star Aviation, a 10-year-old non-profit educational foundation he started to preserve classic aircraft and offer specialized safety training to the aviation community. In addition to the MiG-15, Sutton's Red Star Aviation owns a number of other historic aircraft, including a twin-engine, V-tailed Fouga Magister that Sutton and his crew chief/safety pilot, Carl Vernon, also brought to TPS last week. While the MiG-15 is here only for ground evaluation by TPS students and staff, by the time the Fouga leaves it will be flown by 14 TPS students and four TPS flight instructors. In fact, the Fouga has been flown by every TPS student for more than five years, and is probably the airplane that more TPS students have qualified in than any other aircraft, Sutton said. The French-built Fouga is the only twin-engine jet trainer not equipped with ejection seats, which makes it the only twin-engine trainer aircraft suitable for most commercial pilots and other fliers who aren't ejection-seat-qualified, Sutton said. And since the plane is highly maneuverable and aerobatic, it is an excellent trainer for pilots who want twin-engine experience with what Sutton calls "unusual attitude recovery training" and "jet upset training," two terms for conditions such as dealing with violent wind sheer or extreme wake turbulence encountered flying too close to a large passenger jet. While there are other twin-engine jet trainers, none but the Fouga are aerobatic enough to practice recovery from those conditions, Sutton said. That's one major reason why all TPS students - test pilots, flight test engineers and flight test officers - as well as TPS flight instructors all get at least one hop in it. Plus, it's fun to fly, Sutton said. Considerably less fun to fly is the MiG-15, which is not on TPS's curriculum flying list for students this year, but is on the ground evaluation syllabus. Sutton's MiG-15 was originally built in Poland in 1953, right after the Korean War, as a single-seat fighter. Sometime in the late 1950s, the Soviet-bloc Polish Air Force converted the MiG into a two-seat trainer, making it what the Soviets called a MiG-15UTI (UTI being the Russian designation for training aircraft). Then in the 1960s the plane was transferred to the Polish Navy, which took the controls out of the rear cockpit and converted the back seat into an observation position, and then used the plane for maritime surveillance activities in the Baltic region. After a great deal of service behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Bloc collapsed and in 1991 the aircraft came onto the open market as Polish military surplus equipment, Sutton said. The plane eventually arrived in the United States, where it was converted back into a two-seat trainer by the very same Polish mechanic who had worked on the plane for many years back in Poland. Not the least of the "show-and-tell" items Sutton and Vernon brought with them along with the MiG were an original 1953-era Soviet-made flight pressure suit worn by MiG pilots, plus the pilot's black leather gloves, fanny-pack parachute rig, and two styles of helmets, the first a leather rig the Soviets adapted from a typical German World War II Luftwaffe helmet, and the second a slightly more modern "hard" pressurized helmet worn by late 1950s MiG-21 pilots. Estimates seem to vary quit a bit on exactly how many MiG-15s were built by Soviet Bloc and Warsaw Pact nations such as the former Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and China, among others, but the number is almost certainly well above 20,000 aircraft. The plane was first test flown in the Soviet Union in 1949 and entered combat during the early part of the Korean War in December 1950, flown by Russian, Chinese and North Korean pilots. The MiG-15 was so effective against B-29 high-altitude bombers that United Nations forces were forced to stop daylight bombing because of losses to MiGs. But it was a different story when the MiG went up against its major nemesis, the U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabre. In some respects the MiG could out-perform the F-86 (it had a maximum ceiling a few thousand feet higher than the North American Aviation-built Sabre), but by the end of the shooting war in 1953, the Sabre had achieved a 10-to-1 kill ratio over the MiG-15. About six weeks ago, Sutton had one of the major thrills of his extensive aviation career. In addition to his job and his Red Star foundation work, he is also vice president of the Classic Jets Aircraft Association, and flew his MiG-15 to the CJAA annual convention, held this year at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Also attending the convention as one of its guest speakers was an aeronautical engineering professor from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University named Ken Rowe. Rowe was originally born in North Korea, and his name was then No Kum-Sok (the surname "No" in Korean is pronounced "Ro"). In 1950, at the age of 19, Lt. No became the youngest MiG-15 pilot in the North Korean Air Force, and though he flew throughout the Korean War he shot down no American aircraft. A few weeks after the Korean War armistice was signed, now-Senior Lt. No decided to defect. During a training flight with two other MiGs, No managed to slip away from the other two planes, and headed southeast toward Seoul, South Korea, on the "enemy" side of the Truce Line. Worried about being shot down by American F-86s, No circled F-86-packed Kimpo Airfield near Seoul, waggled his wings and fired off flares, trying to signal any way he could that he had no evil intent. Finally he made a downwind landing, scaring an F-86 pilot who was landing about the same time. No taxied to an open spot along the flight line and pulled into the parking space. He looked across the taxiway to see an F-86 pilot sitting in his Sabre, deciding whether or not to open fire with his machine guns right there on the ground. Fortunately, the F-86 pilot decided not to fire, and No jumped out of his MiG and began shaking hands with anyone who came near him. The only English word he knew was "motorcar," and so he kept saying, "Motorcar! Motorcar!" over and over again. Thus, Senior Lt. No Kum-Sok became the very first Soviet Bloc pilot ever to defect with his aircraft. Needless to say, U.S. Air Force Air Technical Intelligence Center officers had a field day with the MiG, the first they'd ever gotten their hands on. With No's help, several Air Force pilots soon learned to fly the MiG, and soon began to wring more flight tests out of the MiG than the Russians probably ever did. Within a few weeks, maintainers removed the MiG's wings and loaded the plane aboard a transport plane, which flew it to an air base on Okinawa. There, Air Force test pilots Capt. Tom Collins and then-Maj. (later Brig. Gen.) Chuck Yeager, the man who first broke the sound barrier (Mach 1) in 1947, put the MiG through a very extensive series of flight tests. The MiG eventually made its way back to the United States, and after the Air Force had learned all it needed, it loaned the plane to the Navy, which brought it to Patuxent River in December 1954 for more than two months of testing. When the Pax test pilots and engineers were done, the plane reverted back to the Air Force, and in 1957 was retired to its present-day home at the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Meanwhile, the North Korean who made it all possible moved to the United States, became an American citizen, changed his name to Ken Rowe, became an aviation engineer working for several prominent defense aviation contractors, and then spent 17 years teaching at Embry-Riddle. And in the half-century since he defected, Ken Rowe had never once set foot back in a MiG-15. Until six weeks ago, at the CJAA convention. When Sutton bought his MiG, he did a lot of research on Rowe's career and life story, and invited Rowe to the convention to be a guest speaker - and to get a ride in a MiG-15. Weather permitting, Sutton will fly his MiG-15 back home to Reading tomorrow afternoon, as inconspicuously as possible, considering that it is pretty much the only bright-Jersey-tomato-red, Soviet-Bloc-built, red-star-bespangled, half-century-old, former-maritime-surveillance-re-converted-back-to-two-seat-trainer MiG-15 jet fighter on the station at the present time. excerpted from the publication "Tester - News and Information for Naval Air Station Patuxent River personnel" |
