AA35817 North American F-86E Sabre, Eleanor ‘E’ CHRISTINE, William T. ‘Bill’ Whisner Jr, 1952

The years which followed the end of the Second World War saw the victorious Allied nations using captured German jet research to advance their own jet capabilities significantly, with both the US and the Soviet Union introducing swept wing, advanced jet types. Tensions in the Korean peninsula would result in the first international conflict of the Cold War era and three years of hostilities which would see the meeting of the world’s leading jet fighters, the American F-86 Sabre and the Soviet MiG-15. The US Air Force could not only rely on the excellent Sabre, which was a true pilot’s aeroplane, but also a handful of pilots who had been air aces in the Second World War, accomplished airmen who were well versed in the art of aerial combat. One such pilot was William T. Whisner, a 15.5 ace from WWII who quickly increased his score in Korea, flying North American’s latest fighter. He would claim 2 enemy aircraft destroyed in the F-86A and a further 3 flying the later F-86E, with several other enemy aircraft either shared or damaged. Significantly, he would be one of only seven US airmen to become ‘Ace’ pilots in two wars, and the only one to have been awarded THREE Distinguished Flying Crosses. During a 32 month period of the Korean War, Allied airmen managed to shoot down over 800 Soviet made MiG-15 fighters, with the magnificent North American F-86 Sabre accounting for 792 of them.