The Jet Duel

The Jet Duel: Sabres, MiGs, and the Birth of Modern Air Combat tells the story of the first great jet fighter war: the high-speed battles between the North American F-86 Sabre and the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 over Korea. Clear, fact-based, and written in plain English, this book explains how the Korean War transformed military aviation. It follows the road from late Second World War fighter design to swept wings, jet engines, high-altitude combat, radar direction, gunsights, bomber vulnerability, and the rise of Cold War air power. At the centre of the story is MiG Alley, where American, Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, and United Nations airmen fought in a sky shaped by speed, politics, secrecy, and survival. This is not only a book about two famous aircraft. It is a study of pilots, ground crews, training, airfields, maintenance, tactics, claims, losses, and the hard lessons that shaped the next generation of fighters. The Sabre and the MiG did not simply fight a war; they revealed the future of air combat.