Black Tuesday Over Namsi: B-29s vs MiGs-The Forgotten Air Battle of the Korean War, 23 October 1951, by Earl J. McGill

[Richard T. Eger]

The subject of this book, MiG-15's vs. B-29A's over Korea and the disastrous rout of the B-29A's, intrigued me enough to buy the book. The MiG-15 is a descendant of the Ta 183, whereas the B-29A had its place in both WW II and Korea. WW II Germany was sufficiently concerned that the B-29 would appear over the Third Reich that efforts were made to develop interceptors to counter it. It never happened - until Korea.

The situation in Germany was very different from that in Korea. The Allies with multi-hundred bomber raids protected by Allied fighter cover pretty well protected the Allied bombers from the defending German fighters. Those few Me 262's that were able to attack, especially with R4M rockets, showed what was possible, but lack of numbers, limited availability of fuel, and being sitting ducks when returning to base after a mission pretty much doomed their efforts.

Manchuria and Korea were separated by the Yalu River and officially Allied air efforts had to stay south of the Yalu. So, directly to the north, MiG-15 bases were generally considered off limits by both the Russian and Allied pilots. Still, air bases were built south of the Yalu, one of these being at Namsi, the attempted bombing of this being the subject of this book.

On the Allied side, available fighter type aircraft for the mission and mission support were RF-80 reconnaissance, F-84 Thunderjets, F-86A Sabres, and RAAF Meteors, all in fairly good quantity. Opposing them were some 84 MiG-15's. In contrast to the situation in WW II, the B-29's were in the distinct minority, only 9 of them flying the mission to Namsi.

The Allied jets - even the vaunted F-86A - were at an operational disadvantage to the MiG-15. The MiG-15 was designed at the outset to knock down bombers and that is what it did well, especially with its altitude and speed advantage.

The Russians had also executed very effective tactics. The MiG's were broken up into 3 groupings. The largest was utilized to attack the bombers directly, the same approach used successfully in a few instances by Me 262's in WW II. Another group was assigned to engage the defending fighters. Finally, a third group was assigned to defend the home bases for the returning fighters, especially if the rules had been broken at the last minute and the Allies were to attack their bases north of the Yalu.

Night bombing had been attempted, but the SHORAN bombing system proved to be completely ineffective. It was felt that precision daylight bombing, as had been used in Europe, was needed to have any chance to successfully attack the enemy air bases, such as at Namsi, south of the Yalu. And thus the mission of 23 October 1951 came to pass.

The book recounts this and other futile missions, this one being the most disastrous. Of the 9 B-29A's, 3 were shot down, another 3 either didn't return or made it back to base but were then written off, and only 3 would live another day to fly further missions.

Shortly after the raid of 23 October 1951, further daylight raids were called off. The slow, lumbering B-29's were indefensible. The days of prop driven bombers and massed fighter escort were over. The B-47 followed by the B-52 took over from the B-29's, B-50's, and B-36's, depending more on speed and electronic countermeasures for their survival.

Regards,
Richard