November 5, 1956: The Swans That Nearly Started World War III

A Soviet MiG-15

Note: I added this entry in 2024, having heard the story for the first time on an episode of NCIS.

November 5, 1956: With the Suez Crisis and the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution underway, and America electing a President the next day, there is a close call that nearly starts World War III.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) received a number of simultaneous reports, including unidentified aircraft over Turkey, Soviet MiG-15 fighters over Syria, a downed British Canberra medium bomber, and unexpected maneuvers by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet through the Dardanelles (also in Turkey) that appeared to signal a Soviet offensive.

Considering previous Soviet threats to use conventional missiles against Britain and France if they intervened in the Suez Crisis, U.S. forces believed these events could trigger a NATO nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, and went on high alert.

As it turned out, all reports of Soviet action turned out to be erroneous, misinterpreted, or exaggerated. The perceived threat was due to a coincidental combination of harmless events:

* The "unidentified aircraft over Turkey" was a flock of swans.

* The MiGs were a fighter escort for President Shukri al-Quawatli of Syria, returning from a meeting with Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow. A check with the Turkish government proved the flight to have been previously cleared with them.

* The British reported that their bomber had been brought down by mechanical issues.

* And a check of records showed that the Black Sea Fleet's exercises had been previously scheduled.

Had any one of these things, alone, happened, it probably wouldn't have concerned too many people. The fact that they all seemed to be happening at once was nerve-rattling. Over the next few days, things calmed down. The Egyptians won in the Suez, the Soviets won in Hungary, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was re-elected, no new wars -- conventional or otherwise -- got started, and the status quo was restored.

It was the closest call since the Chinese invasion during the Korean War, 6 years earlier. The next close call would be in another 6 years, over missiles in Cuba.

*

November 5, 1956 was a Monday. Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek: There would be no Monday Night Football for another 14 years. And while both leagues' new seasons had gotten underway, there were no games were scheduled in either the NBA or the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.

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.)

*

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.