Two months after the end of the Korean War, Lieutenant No Kum-Sok of the North Korean Air Force broke away from his 16-aircraft patrol near the nation’s capital, Pyongyang. He flew his Soviet-built MIG fighter jet to South Korea without being seen, landing at a military airfield manned by the United States Air Force and Allied airmen.
The 21-year-old pilot had been in more than 100 combat flights. He stepped out of his swept-wing silver plane, which had a red star on it and was loaded with machine guns, as shocked pilots surrounded him.
He was finally out of Communism and as a gift to the US Air Force he brought the first MIG still in one piece. A year later he had a new name, Kenneth Rowe, and lived in a new country. He had moved to the United States to attend university.
When Mr. Rowe died on December 26 at his home in Daytona Beach, Fla., at the age of 90. He was remembered for his newsworthy flight in a MIG-15bis, a late version of the fighters that fought with American F-86 Saber jets during the Korean War. This flight gave the US a wealth of intelligence.
Bonnie Rowe, who was his daughter, told people he had passed away. Mr. Rowe joined the Communist Party of North Korea and, as he put it, “played the communist zealot” during the Korean War. But his anti-Communist father and his Roman Catholic mother’s upbringing made him want to live in a democracy.
He had been thinking about how to come to America since Korea was split up after World War II and Kim Il-sung, who was backed by the Soviet Union, turned North Korea into a communist country.
Fascinating life. Kenneth Rowe was born No Kum-Sok in North Korea.
He “played the communist zealot”, but had been influenced by his anti-communist father.
He defected in 1953 by flying his MIG fighter to a base in South Korea.https://t.co/4sZYjGF6IS— Tu Thanh Ha (@TuThanhHa) January 6, 2023
Then he landed at Kimpo airport September 21, 1953, he seemed to have gotten away without a hitch. But disaster almost struck. As soon as his wheels touched the runway, a freshly landed F-86 roared toward him from the other side. The two pilots flew close together and nearly collided.
“I took off my oxygen mask and breathed free air for the first time in my life,” he recalled in his memoirs, “A MiG-15 to freedom” (1996), written with J. Roger Osterholm.
He landed near a group of American fighter jets, ripped a photo of Kim Il-sung from the frame, jumped out of his cockpit and threw it to the ground.
And then, as he remembered, “All hell broke loose around the air base.” Dozens of pilots rushed to reach him, and Lieutenant General Samuel E. Anderson, in charge of the Fifth Air Force, raced to the base.
“No one seemed to know what to do,” Mr. Rowe remembered. “I shouted ‘Motorcar, car, car’, which was about the only English I remembered from high school, hoping someone would bring a car to take me to headquarters.”
Two pilots put him in a jeep, told him to give up his semi-automatic pistol, which he gladly did, and took him to a building to question him. The event was a major news item. The New York Times said that on page 1 “Red Lands MIG Near Seoul and Surrender to Allies.”
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In preparation for possible future wars with the Soviet Union and its allies, the Air Force sent some of its best test pilots, including Major Chuck Yeager, who became famous in 1947 as the first pilot to break the sound barrier, to field the MIG. -15 through many difficult maneuvers. Their conclusion was that the F-86 was the best fighter.
Kenneth Hill Rowe, as he came to be known, was born on January 10, 1932, in a town of 10,000 in the north of the Korean Peninsula that was ruled by Japan. His father, No Zae, was a manager in Korea for a Japanese industrial group. His mother, Veronica Ko, took care of the household.
He joined the Navy in 1949 as a cadet so he could get a free college education and perhaps sneak out of the country through a foreign port. He was later transferred to the Air Force and Soviet pilots in Manchuria taught him how to fly fighter jets. At the age of 19 he got his wings.
Eight weeks after the Korean Armistice, he left his patrol, flew to 7,000 feet, turned south and flew over the Demilitarized Zone to Kimpo in 13 minutes.
RIP Kenneth Rowe, who, as North Korean Air Force Lieutenant No Num-Suk, flew his MiG-15 fighter to South Korea in 1953 and provided the US with an intelligence windfall. Rowe received $100,000 for defecting with his MiG; he eventually earned an engineering degree from university.
— nathale (@natehale) January 7, 2023
He was very lucky. Just north of Kimpo, a U.S. air defense radar had been shut down for routine maintenance, and neither airborne U.S. aircraft nor anti-aircraft crews had seen it.
Towards the end of the Korean War, the Air Force distributed leaflets over North Korea offering a $100,000 reward to the first North Korean pilot to defect with a MIG. Mr. Rowe said he knew nothing about that reward and that he just wanted to be free. But he didn’t fight it.
In May 1954 he moved to the US, where he became something of a star. He met with Vice President Richard M. Nixon and was interviewed by Dave Garroway on NBC’s “Today”.
He also spoke on Voice of America broadcasts. He received an engineering degree from the University of Delaware, became a US citizen in 1962, and worked as an engineer for major defense and aerospace companies. He later taught engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.
Mr Rowe is survived by his daughter, his wife Clara (Kim) Rowe, his son Raymond and a grandson. When Mr. Rowe moved to the United States, his MIG-15bis went with him so that the Air Force could test it again in the air. Even though it’s been 70 years, that plane still exists. It is in the National Museum of the United States Air Force, near Dayton, Ohio.
It can be seen with a American F-86 Saber jet and the red star has been repainted. This is a reminder of the air battles that took place over MIG Alley during the Korean War… Just follow us on Lee Daily for more news like this.
