Dad's Last MIG

Dad's Last MIG Lieut. James F. ("Dad") Low, 27, left Korea for the U.S. last week, through with combat but not with flying. The Air Force has belatedly become the focus of his life: with nine MIG kills to his credit, he is one of the three top U.S. jet aces.--At 25, Jim Low thousht of himself as a failure and a misfit. He had tried being a gambler, but could get nowhere with cards, dice or horses. Raised in Sausalito, a California town across the bay entrance from San Francisco, he had served three wartime years in the Navy as a radarman ("a long, dull tour of duty, mostly with convoys"), had then gone to college on the G.I. Bill. But he could not get interested in engineering, geology or salesmanship. Finally he got himself accepted for pilot training in the Air Force.The other cadets, mostly younger than he, called him "Dad." But when he started flying F-86 Sabre jets, "Dad" Low knew that he had found himself.

One day last week, a grizzled veteran with eight kills and four rows of ribbons, Low took off from his interceptor base near Seoul. Over northwestern Korea, he and his wingman saw contrails (vapor trails); then Low spotted two MIGs, camouflage painted in green and brown. The enemy planes tried to get away, one zooming, the other diving. Low chased the

JET ACE Low Nine is too uneven. high MIG, but it disappeared in a haze. The wingman tangled with the diving MIG, which had a resourceful pilot in the cockpit. When the wingman had tired himself out trying to get a shot, Low took over, and the Red pilot almost tired Low out, trying to scrape him off against a high ridge, then trying to blind him in the sun. At last Low got the enemy in his sights, poured .50-caliber slugs into the engine and tail section, saw the MIG's canopy fly off. But the American needed a few more hits in the MIG's cockpit and wing roots before the Red jet finally crashed and exploded. The fight had lasted 15 minutes, an unusually long time for jets. A few days later, "Dad" Low had his bags packed and was waiting for a transport to Tokyo when some 40 MIGs came howling down toward the front lines, as if feinting at Seoul. Low sweated that one out on the ground. But he said: "I sure would like to have hacked down just one more. Nine is such an uneven number."

-- The most kills in Korea (14) are credited to Major George A. Davis Jr. (TIME, Dec. 24, 1951). missing in action since February. Major Frederick D. Blesse has shot down ten.

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