I’ve been doing some more comics writing recently, including work on tie-in strips for the classic Gerry Anderson series Stingray, but 2024 will also feature a pair of all-new stories by me for D.C. Thompson’s long-running war comic series Commando – the first of these is issue #5761 “Fallen Sabre” on sale today, an action-packed tale of aerial jet combat inspired by a series of real events…
During the fierce fighting of the air war in Korea, both allied and communist forces were desperate to gain an edge in battle – Soviet-built MiG-15s duelled with American F-86 Sabres in the skies known as “MiG Alley” – and they would stop at nothing to capture an enemy aircraft intact!
For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, first published in 1961. Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format, each featuring a single, complete 63-page story – two all-new tales and two reprints. Commando carries on the tradition of two-fisted, action-packed adventure comics with wartime dramas in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.
Once again, Neil Roberts has created another amazing cover for “Fallen Sabre“, with sterling work on the interior art by Paolo Ongaro. Last year, during a visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio, I was able to visit the Korean War Gallery and see a real Sabre and MiG-15 up close, and it’s been great to tell a story featuring these classic jets. You can see more about them at the museum’s website here.
As noted, this storyline is based on a real incident that took place in October 1951 during the Korean War, when an F-86 was shot down by a North Korean MiG and crash-landed inside enemy territory; the NK military and their allies in the Soviet Union were desperate to learn the secrets of the Sabre, which at the time was the only aircraft that could match their frontline MiG-15 – and so a high-stakes recovery operation went into action, with both sides fighting over this lost jet.
For dramatic license, I took a few liberties, but as with several of my other Commando comic stories, “Fallen Sabre” features elements of my favourite bits of Cold War Jet Age military history, and writing it allowed me to indulge my love for ‘fast iron’!
I must give a big thank-you to my good friend Michael Clarke, who brought the story to my attention (one of the characters in the comic is named after him), Ralph Wetterhahn for his article in Air & Space Magazine and Mark Felton, who produced this excellent short video (at left) which details the events that inspired my fictionalized version.
For more about “Fallen Sabre”, follow this link or visit the official Commando website. You can also check out details of the other Commando stories I’ve written here – and keep watching the skies for my next story “Pressure Point”, a Cold War-era tale coming later this year.
