subjected to an “exhaustive technical study” at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

The Air Force told No, just before he boarded a military plane at Kimpo, that he was headed for Tokyo for more interrogation.

Neither statement was true. On September 23, the MiG and its pilot were transported separately and secretly to Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa, the American-controlled Japanese island about a thousand miles south of Tokyo.

Also in secret, the Air Force urgently located and immediately dispatched two of America’s best pilots to Okinawa to learn everything possible about the MiG before having to return it. Major Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier and the legendary test pilot who would become the hero of The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe’s book andthe Oscar-winning movie), was called away from Edwards Air Force Base in California. Captain Tom Collins, a test pilot who had just set a new world speed record in a Sabre, was plucked from Wright-Patterson, along with his boss, Major General Albert Boyd, also a test pilot.

All of this had been set in motion by the reactions and overreactions of advisers scrambling to please Eisenhower. It would have been easier, safer and far cheaper to transport the MiG back to the Air Technical Intel Center in Ohio. But Ike wanted to return the MiG to its rightful owner in a timely fashion, so the Pentagon opted for field-testing during the rainy season on a semitropical island whose only advantage was a location 6,000 miles closer to North Korea