on November 9, an incident over the Yalu River captured the full attention of the Truman White House, and the Pentagon as well. A U.S. Navy fighter pilot, flying a Grumman Panther, was on a mission to bomb several bridges near the river’s mouth, at a place called Sinuiju. The pilot of the jet, Lieutenant Commander Bill Amen, had taken off from the aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea and was flying over the river when he encountered an enemy aircraft boring in on him: a Soviet MiG-15 that was piloted, it would later be learned, by a Russian captain, Mikhail Grachev.
