I seem to remember something written by a defected NK Mig pilot to the effect that the NK pilots received combat training in China in Mig-9s/Yak-15/17s (he described straight wings & engine(s) under the forward fuselage).

Their early combat sorties were from Chinese airfields, as those in NK were damaged by USAF B-29 strikes.

In the first year or so of the war, most of the Mig-15s encountered by UN forces were piloted by Russians, with the NK pilots only starting to get them in 1951.

The defector, No Kum-sok never mentioned NK MiG-9’s in his book. The NK’s and Chinese were trained on two seat Yak-17UTI’s, in China, per many sources, but there’s no evidence that type was ever used within NK during the war. Chinese fighter units also had MiG-9’s, but as mentioned, they never claim to have used them over Korea.

The early combat sorties of the first NK MiG-15 unit were actually from Uiju, NK. This was noticed at the time by UN side: in November 1951 MiG’s appeared for the first time on a field inside NK. This was No’s unit. F-86’s strafed some of these a/c on the ground, their only official ground claims, as related in both US records and No’s book. Eventually B-29 night bombing of the field forced the NK unit to relocate to Antung across the Yalu along with the Soviet and Chinese MiG-15 units, as also related by No in “A MiG-15 to Freedom”.

The initial fighter outfit of the KPAAF (‘North Korean AF’) was entirely composed of Yak-9P’s (postwar all metal version) and a few remaining Yak-9M’s (1944 production, left behind by occupying Soviet AF units in late 40’s)though it’s not clear the latter were ever used in combat. A large volume of KPAAF documents were captured when NK was invaded later in 1950; daily flight schedules, maintenance records, pilot’s individual flight logs etc. mainly from just before the war. No other fighter types show up in any of those documents, whereas the order of battle of Yak-9’s can be determined pretty much down to the individual a/c.

There were some supposed US sightings of Yak jet types in the early months (pre-MiG-15 period, June-Oct 1950) as well as Lavochkin types, P-39/63, P-51, etc. mentioned in US combat reports and summaries, MiG-9’s I don’t recall ever seeing mentioned in that period. But the non-Yak-9 fighter sightings in the early months were almost surely mistaken (with exception of P-63’s strafed on Oct 2 1950, those were Soviet, the F-80’s had crossed into the USSR, as they later realized). And there are no official aerial victories v fighters in the pre-MiG-15 period except Yak-9 and La-7; the La-7’s were probably Yak-11’s. The NK’s had an operational unit of La-9’s by April 1951 (per Soviet documents) but none early in the war.

As the war went on, there were various sightings of what were believed to be straigtwing jets, sometimes identified as possible MiG-9’s, though often at night when identification was a lot less certain. That’s why I asked if there was a solid source about MiG-9’s in the KPAAF. It’s still an unknown, I don’t think we can just assume it. Standard Russian works on the MiG-9 don’t mention it, nor their known documents about aid to NK, and there’s no conclusive evidence of it in US records.

Joe