September 21, 1953: Operation Moolah

September 21, 1953: No Kum-Sok, a pilot in North Korea's air force, defects, flying his Soviet-made MiG-15 jet into South Korea.

The American government offered him $100,000. He turned the money down. All he wanted was political asylum, to no longer have to live under Communism. He got his wish.

The United States Department of Defense launched "Operation Moolah" on April 27, 1953. The Pentagon offered $50,000 -- double that for the first one to do so -- to any pilot bringing them a Soviet-made MiG-15, fighter jet, because U.S. Air Force pilots, forced to engage in "dogfights" with them, said it was a better plane than their main jet, the F-86 Sabre. (That $50,000 sum works out to about $544,000 in 2022 money.)

The "MiG" was named for its designers:

Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich.

Operation Moolah turned out to be something of a damp squib: The Korean War ended in an armistice just 3 months after the operation began, with no takers. What did happen was that MiGs were grounded for several days right after the public bribe campaign began. And when the MiGs started flying again, Americans began blowing them out of the sky at an unprecedented rate.

Two months after the war ended, on September 21, No Kum-Sok showed up in his MiG at Kimpo Air Base, outside the South Korean capital of Seoul, having no knowledge of the financial reward for doing so. He said he'd heard rumors that his loyalty was being investigated, and in a Communist country like North Korea, that is a bad thing. So he flew his MiG-15 and flew the coop, defecting.

Chuck Yeager, the 1st man to break the sound barrier in a plane, flew the captured MiG, and said it was "the most demanding situation I ever faced." The North's aerial victories were not due to the plane being amazing, he said, but that their pilots were well trained in dogfight tactics.

No immigrated to the United States, changed his name to Kenneth Rowe, went to school, and worked as an aeronautical engineer for companies such as Boeing, Grumman, Pan Am, and Lockheed. As of September 21, 2022, he is still alive.

(UPDATE: He died on December 26, 2022, in Daytona Beach, Florida, at the age of 90.)

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September 21, 1953 was a Monday. Arie Luijendijk, the Dutch auto racer known as "The Flying Dutchman," winner of 2 Indianapolis 500s, was born on that day. 

There was 1 baseball game played: The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 4-0 at the first ballpark to be named Busch Stadium, which, until that season, had been the last ballpark to be named Sportsman's Park. Harvey Haddix pitched a 4-hit shutout. Stan Musial went 1-for-4. Rookie Ernie Banks went 1-for-3.