MiG Alley

September 2, 2019
In this technical military history, historian Cleaver (The Frozen Chosen) aims to bring readers past the myths to the truth of the Korean War. Following WWII, as sole possessors of the atomic bomb, the U.S. believed traditional warfare was over, so it began severely reducing defense spending. While the Army and Navy dealt with large cuts, a new branch of the armed forces rose to the top: the U.S. Air Force. When North Korean forces invaded South Korea, the U.S., UN, and South Korea fought North Korea and China on the ground; American and Soviet pilots (the latter wearing North Korean uniforms) fought another war in the air in so-called MiG Alley, an area of northwestern North Korea between the Chongchon and Yulu rivers, where U.S. pilots escorted bombers to their targets. Exaggerated stories abounded; the U.S. claimed a kill ratio of 10 to one. Cleaverâs research, which draws on declassified Soviet military records, U.S. Air Force records, and firsthand pilot accounts from both sides, indicates it was closer to three to one. In a work often heavy with technical and aeronautical detail, Cleaver nonetheless effectively conveys the sheer destruction wrought by the U.S. bombing missions on North Korea and its citizens. Still, this account is probably mainly of interest to students of military history.

November 1, 2019
The air war over Korea was not the decisive cakewalk the Western public has been encouraged to imagine, concludes Cleaver (Holding the Line, 2019) after meticulous comparisons of lost data from the USAF and Soviet archives. Likening the Korean War stalemate on the ground to the trenches of WWI, prolific writer Cleaver explains that enthusiastic public relations officers in the newly independent Air Force played up their knights of the sky as the bright spot of an otherwise unpopular war. This compelling and expert narrative history covers the early jet age and provides a play-by-play account of the aerial battles over Korea, and features a wide sampling of interviews and reports from the pilots involved on both sides. Cleaver's extensive scouring of governmental archives results in an invaluably accurate picture of the evenly matched and hard-fought air war. In all, this well-written book does a great job of setting the record straight about the chaotic, confusing, and extremely dangerous nature of 1950s dogfighting, while never denigrating the good-faith efforts of pilots to accurately report on their battles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)