F-80 Shooting Star: America s First Fighter Jet
Originally meant to take on the Nazis but these fighters ended up fighting communist North Korea. Here s how they performed.
Here s What You Need to Remember: Hastily designed to counter Nazis superfighters in the early 1940s, America’s first operational fighter jet would have an unexpected and long-lasting legacy.
On November 8, 1950, a flight of four straight-winged jets swooped down on an airfield at Sinuiju, North Korea on the Korean side of the border with China. The F-80 Shooting Stars raked the airfield with their six nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns as black bursts of antiaircraft fire tore the sky around them.
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