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When Ignorance is Bliss I had been briefed to fly a reconnaissance sortie over the Divisional Front, flying an Auster Mark VI at a height of between 6-8000 feet. As per usual, very little was to be seen over the Chinese side and I was almost ready to call it a day, when a Sabre from the U.S. 8th Airforce suddenly appeared on my port side and very close. Assuming that he, like myself, was a little bored and wanted a bit of fun, I went into a steep turn to look for his partner as I knew they mostly operated in pairs, and saw the other Sabre diving down towards me. For the next five or ten minutes I had a great time dodging the two jets. With my low speed and ability to do very tight turns I managed to out-manoeuvre them. After a while they flew off and I returned to my base at Fort George Airstrip. On climbing out of the aircraft I was met by one of the Sergeant pilots and I began to tell him about the great time I had had, ‘Dog-fighting’ with two Sabres. “We know all about it!!” he said, “and they were trying to shoot you down, and not in fun either!” It turned out that one of our Army units in the front line had reported a Chinese light aircraft dropping leaflets over the front and the Sabres had been scrambled to deal with it. When they first flew alongside me, he was checking my aircraft number. This was passed back to our Command Post and the Duty Pilot being out at that time, the Flight Clerk confused the Squadron letter with the aircraft’s number and replied that the aircraft was not one of our Flights, so word was given to shoot me down. Fortunately the Duty Pilot returned within a few minutes, was told what had happened, realised what had gone wrong and started to sort the matter out, and the Sabres were called off. That afternoon a Major and a Colonel from the 8th Airforce arrived on our strip to see me, in the event that I wished to lodge an official complaint against the Sabre pilots. I pointed out that as far as I was concerned it was just a lot of fun and not knowing the jets were quite serious, had enjoyed it! “What about the ‘T6’ ?” the major asked. “What about the ‘T6’ ?” I said. “Well” said the Major, “at the time our aircraft were called, he was on your tail with his rockets armed and finger on the button” I never did see that T6 update 4th September 2010
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