The Hunters

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The Korean War, in which the action of this novel takes place, was fought from 1950 to 1953. The geography of Korea and the sort of fighting that took place there were then familiar matters. Jet fighters were newly operational and the first combat between them occurred when pilots and planes from the Soviet Union were sent to support the communist armies of China and North Korea. They were opposed mainly by United States jets.

The Russian planes were swept-wing MIG-15s, well-designed and armed with rapid-firing cannon. There were many of them, flying out of airfields in China that for political reasons were never bombed. They were opposed by a smaller number of F-86s, a roughly equivalent aircraft, at the time the best in the U.S. Air Force.

The F-86 could not fly quite as high—to about 45,000 as against 48,000 feet—and its performance at high altitude was not as good, but lower down it was slightly superior. It carried machine guns with enough ammunition for—to give an idea of the brevity of the aerial engagements—only eleven seconds of firing, but a burst of two or three seconds in a fight could be quite sufficient. There were no missiles in those days; these came a few years later.

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