The air war over Korea is often thought
of as shiny F-86 Sabres dogfighting MiG-15s flown by inept pilots high above
the Yalu River. However, the air war saw many types of actions, and included
many types of aircraft, from the old propeller-driven Polikarpov U-2 biplane to
the F-51 Mustang and the most modern jets of the early 1950s.
The Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star is
somewhat of an unsung design of the Korean War. The first American jet fighter had
been deployed to the Far East Air Force (FEAF) before the Korean War, and in
May 1950 365 of the 553 operational aircraft in the FEAF were F-80Cs. After
some initial successes, the MiG-15 proved to be superior to the F-80, and the
latter was mainly assigned ground attack missions. It served very well in that
role, carrying bombs and rockets in thousands of sorties against North Korean
and Chinese troops until May 1, 1953, when the F-80s stood down in a
fighter-bomber role. A few F-80s remained in the interceptor role up to the
ceasefire on July 27 that same year.
As opposed to today’s Koreas, North
Korea was the industrialized part of the peninsula, while South Korea remained
agrarian. The short and rough airfields in South Korea initially limited the use
of jet aircraft, and the F-80s had to fly from bases in Japan. This highlighted
one of the big problems with early jets: short range. The F-80s could make it
from Japan to Korea, but there was little or no time to loiter or search for
targets.
However, this was to be addressed before
the Korean War broke out by the two lieutenants of the 9th Fighter-Bomber
Squadron, Robert Eckman and Edward R. “Rabbit” Johnston. They had just finished
the Far East Gunnery Meet of 1949 with top honors, and they wanted to fly their
own F-80s to the Nellis Air Force Base to compete against other USAF pilots.
They simply added two middle sections
from Fletcher tanks to the standard Lockheed tanks by extending the bolts that
held the sections together, thus creating the so-called Misawa tanks, named
after the air base in Japan where the unit was stationed. The added middle
section increased the tanks capacity from 165 gallons (624,6 liters) to 265
gallons (1003,1 liters), and this meant that the combat radius was increased
from 225 miles with Lockheed tanks to some 350 miles, depending on the mission.
Time over target was likewise increased from about fifteen minutes to
approximately forty-five minutes.
F-80 with Misawa tanks on a rainy airfield. <yellowlegs-and-others.com/1950/1950-06/Notes-1950-0600/19500600_0000_usafik0-05902usafik0.htm>
The Fletcher tank was mainly used on the
T-33 trainer, which was based o the Shooting Star. <www.bvmjets.com/jetkits/F-80/f-80_t-33.htm>
The tanks were tested by Johnston and
Eckman, but the USAF Air Materiel Command was initially unwilling to approve of
the installation of Misawa tanks, since the Materiel Command deemed that the
heavier tanks placed dangerously high loads at the wingtips, and the project
was ordered to be shut down.
This was to change as North Korea
invaded the south on June 25, 1950, the situation became increasingly
desperate. General Earle Partridge, the commander of the 5th Air Force,
overrode previous decisions and ordered full-scale manufacturing of the Misawa
tanks so that all F-80s of the FEAF could be equipped with the tanks. However, new
problems materialized: the tanks were in short supply for several months. Also,
the first tanks made were lacking internal baffles to prevent the fuel from sloshing
back and forth in the tank. This was not a problem in normal flight, but the
stresses of combat maneuvers, especially when pulling up from a steep dive,
could make the sloshing cause a Misawa tank to tear off a from the wingtip,
which did cause damage to some F-80s as well as losses.
Further, pulling up and otherwise
placing stress on the tank could make the tank feed malfunction, and then the
Misawa tank couldn’t be jettisoned. Landing with one empty tank and one full
was extremely difficult at best, so some unique solutions had to be devised. Lieutenant
Ed Jones of the 80th Fighter-Bomber Squadron recalls dealing with this
particular issue: “On one mission, we were heading north towards the bomb line
and I could not get either of my tip tanks to feed. After relaying the problem
to my flight leader via the radio, he told me to jettison my bombs and external
tanks and head back to base. Upon punching the jettison button, all of the
right side let go, but nothing happened on the left side! I was heading south
at the time, and getting close to our base at Suwon. We had been told that you
could not land the F-80 with full tanks on one side and empty on the other because
the jet could not be trimmed out enough to make it safe. I decided to use my
.45 pistol and try to shoot a hole in the left tank. I cranked the canopy back
and got my pistol out. I shot two holes in the front of the tank and fuel began
to stream out. After a short while, enough had leaked out to trim the aircraft out.
I lined up with the runway and made a smooth landing, and after rolling down
the strip for about 2,000 feet, the control tower came on the radio and told me
that my left tip tank had just come off, and that it was bouncing down the
runway behind my aircraft!”
Sources:
Warren Thompson. F-80 Shooting Star units over Korea.
Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2001
