Fat Offer

One night last week a U.S. jet plane zipped along the Yalu River, spewing leaflets into a southeast breeze that would blow them into Manchuria. The leaflets bore a fat offer from the U.N. command: to any pilot who delivered a MIG jet fighter to South Korea, the U.S. promised political asylum and a reward of $50.000. To start the ball rolling, the first man out would get an extra $50,000 besides.

All week, 14 radio stations in Japan and Korea beamed the offer northward in Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese and Russian.

Said the broadcast: ". . . To all brave pilots who wish to free themselves from the Communist yoke and start a new, better life with proper honor . . . you are guaranteed refuge, protection, human care and attention. If pilots so desire, their names will be kept secret forever . . ." Escaping pilots were told to fly at 20,000 feet to Paengnyong Island off Korea's west coast, lower their wheels, waggle their wings. U.N. pilots, they were promised, would escort them to Kimpo Airfield, near Seoul.

Actually, much of the instructions were just so much trimming. The Air Force would like very much to get a MIG-15 it could keep and test. But neither the Air Force nor the psychological warfare officers who dreamed up the scheme expected to see MIG-15s flocking to Paengnyong. Said General Mark Clark's chief of psychological warfare: "I have absolutely no expectation of getting a single MIG."

At best, the offer was designed to sow tension and distrust among Red flyers, keep flight leaders so busy worrying about out-of-sight pilots that they would not be able to tend to their business. There was even the possibility that, to prevent defection, the Reds might ration fuel, thus limiting the time the MIGs can stay in the air to patrol and fight.

Around the Pentagon, as well as among flyers in Korea, there was considerable wisecracking about the offer. In Britain's House of Lords, an excitable Labor peer announced that he regarded it as dastardly to bribe the enemy to commit treason.

Prime Minister Churchill thought the offer "not contrary to the accepted laws and customs of war," but agreed that with truce talks going on, it did involve "an issue of timeliness."

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