Sunday afternoon, May 20, 1951. Fourteen North American F-86A Sabre fighter jets from the 335th Fighter Interceptor Squadron lifted off from Suwon Air Base, South Korea, in response to a call for help from U.S. Air Force fighters under attack by Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 jet fighters near the Yalu River, separating Korea and China. Flying in the second flight of the relief force was 27-year-old Captain James Jabara. He had already claimed four of the MiGs–he needed one more to become the first Korean War ace.
‘Jabara stood out among his group of fighter pilots almost as much as if he really had been a knight of yore on a quest for the Grail,’ wrote Wichita State University professor Craig Miner of the Oklahoma native who grew up in Wichita, Kan. ‘War provides many opportunities for the exercise of heroic courage; air war creates added speed and intensity; and air war was James Jabara’s chosen situation.’
The son of Lebanese immigrant John Jabara, James was born on October 10, 1923, in Muskogee, Okla. Soon after his birth, Jabara’s family moved to Wichita, where John Jabara opened a grocery store. Young Jabara helped in his father’s store while dreaming of loftier things. ‘I used to read articles about [Eddie] Rickenbacker and all these novels you read about air combat,’ he recalled, ‘and I guess from the sixth grade it was my ambition to be a fighter pilot.’
