In its June 8, 1953, issue, Life magazine included a full-page spread with four blurry images of a North Korean Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 getting shot down over Korea. They were taken by the wing-mounted movie camera of a U.S. Air Force F-86E Sabre as it engaged the enemy jet near the Yalu River on May 14. The grainy black-and-white photos depict the crippled MiG after it was hit by a burst from the Sabre’s six .50-caliber machine guns. They show the jet in flight, followed by a bright flash as an explosive charge propels the pilot and his ejection seat away from the doomed aircraft.
The 23-year-old American aviator who scored the victory and took the images was a recent West Point graduate who had arrived in Korea just six months earlier. It was his first victory as a combat pilot and the photospread in Life gave him his first moment in the spotlight. It was not his last.
The pilot was Lieutenant Edwin E. Aldrin—better known to the world today as Buzz. He would rocket to fame more than a decade later as a space-walking astronaut with Gemini 12 and then again a few years later as the second man to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
However, in 1953, Aldrin was relishing his first air-to-air victory—even if it was lacking in thrills. His quarry hadn’t realized there was an American in the sky, never mind on his tail.
“It was a singularly undramatic experience: no dogfight, no maneuvers, no excitement. I simply flew up behind the enemy and shot him down,” Aldrin wrote in his 1973 autobiography Return to Earth.
The real excitement came a few weeks later when the photos appeared in . Aldrin flew with the 51st. Aldrin also earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for the kill.
