korean war air combat

[greenmachine]

recently i was talking with my uncle who flew F-86s in korea. he said he never got into a real serious dogfight but did shoot down a couple "paycheck charlies". i am not in the military and am not sure what this means. is it phonetic alphabet for PC? patrol craft?

he has some really great stories. some good ones about flying north of the DMZ and barely getting back, but a lot more funny stories about pulling pranks on people. him and his wingman used to fly into navy bases, land just long enough to steal some beer or gear and fly away again.

 

[StephenBierce]

This is speculation on my part. ("Paycheck Charlie" was a song, so that was where the idiom probably came from.) While the main public images of the Air War involved dogfights between Sabers and MiGs, much of the actual combat involved trying to stop enemy ground attack planes. For the Communist forces, these were usually obsolete types from WW2, such as the Yak-9. Easily caught and outgunned by a Saber, to a Saber pilot it would seem as easy as cashing in a paycheck.