I don’t have time to run around the interweb all day. Anyhoo, we seem to have plenty of problematic figures already…
That’s true Nick but don’t forget not all of the pilots who were shoted down were saved.
Many of then had perished or were captured. I think the total loses of UN/US pilots was over 2000.
Air crews you mean, not necessarily “pilots.”
this is very controversial point.
The ww2 experience just proved the AAA-artillery was not an such effective as you wrote about N/Korea.
BTW Have you a separate statistic of the kills of the N/Koreans AA-gunners?
I don’t agree! Damnit, it’s a beautiful Sunday here, and you’re going to make me pull out my books! :mad:
Perhaps there were 180 Sabres at the any one time but the total quanty of F-86 was
According to a recent U.S. publication, the number of USAF F-86s ever present in the Korean peninsula during the war totalled only 674 and the total F-86 losses due to all causes were about 230
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war
But as we know another sources called the 224/275 lost Sabres.
Firstly, it’s not a particularly strong Wiki article, even by their standards. And the author admits that Chinese and Soviet claims are “exaggerated.” And I’m not sure that elite Sabre pilots “struggled” anymore against the “elite Soviet pilots” than vice versa…
But only 78-Sabres were lost to air-to-air engagements as far as I’ve found…
And the “few soviet” pilots (1100 indeed pilots that went through the Korean warfor the 3 years according the http://www.airwar.ru/history/aces/acepostwar/pilot/koreaussr.html)
operated about 190 (!!!) of Mig-15 at any one time according to the statistic of the soviet 64 UAK.
That’s true the both aircraft were the best in its time.
The Mig-15 was the perfect “bomber-killer” due to its guns firepower.
The Sabre was the perfect hunter due its better electrical equipment.
On one point we agree. They were both quite remarkable and well matched aircraft. I’ve a soft spot for both actually.
Nevertheless the “few soviet professionals” who shoted down at least 3 times more UN aircrafts then they losed of the own;)
Not bad for the “few” ( more exactly 52 soviet pilot had bacome the aces - they shot down more then 5 enemy aircraft)
There may have been 1100 pilots (or air crews), but they weren’t necessarily flying Migs.
And all you are saying is that you believe the Russian sources over the official USAF sources. Fine. But to say the Soviet pilots shot down three times as many aircraft as they lost may or may not be an exaggeration or a stat taken out of context, and not that laudable if they were shooting down obsolete piston engined fighter aircraft relegated to ground attack roles. Even so, the Soviets lost presumably few aircraft, because the UN lost relatively few aircraft and considered the threat from enemy aircraft to be low and of almost no hindrance to tactical air support.
The 1:11 kill ratio is Sabres Vs Mig is the just the propogandic “fairy tells” that was developed to prove the USA has “absolute won” the air combats . nothing more.
Or that there were few Russian flyers at anyone time, and the N. Korean and Chinese pilots were no match for experienced and well trained USAF and UN pilots.
I’ve heard the ex-Red Air Force pilot claim (this was a very long time ago, so I could be wrong) that Soviet pilots achieved a slightly better than half kill ratio against US and allied jet fighters, maybe 52%-48%, but that was a while ago so I could be wrong…
But US pilots flying Sabres were the elites with much WWII combat experience, and there were never enough Sabres since they were deployed in a North American interceptor role as well…
I don’t know, you decide.
From “The Korean War” by Max Hastings (pages 262-263, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1988, ISDN: 0671-66834-X)
The Australian Meteor squadron, also based there, had a fine reputation, but the Australian pilots were chronically jealous of the Sabre. The Meteor was considered to be an aircraft that could take punishment, but it also possessed a highly vulnerable hydraulic system that could be crippled by a single small-arms round through a leading edge. Heavy on the ailerons, it was hard work to fly from its cramped cockpit. The pressure on the pilots was intense: one British officer flew 114 Meteor sorties in six months, on one occasion five in a day.
Four Sabres sat permanently at readiness on the runway, the Alert Patrol, in case of some sudden report of an enemy takeoff by the radar controllers. The pilots recognized the key role of the controllers in making their scores possible—Low took them a few cases of beer whenever he made a kill. Each flier had pet preferences about his aircraft and his weapons. Some loaded extra tracer in the guns. Many carried solid tracer at the end of their belts to give warning that their 300 rounds were close to exhaustion. Most pilots wore silk scarves, and many affected the old soft leather World War II helmets until they were ordered to change to modern molded designs.
The enthusiasm of the enemy varied greatly from month to month. Sometimes weeks would go by without a UN squadron seeing combat. Then, without warning, the MIGs would embark on a flurry of activity. In a characteristic month—December 1952— the statistics tell the story: 3,997 MIGs were reported seen in the air by UN pilots; attempts were made to engage 1,849; twenty-seven were confirmed destroyed. Enormous effort was expended to achieve modest results in direct damage to the enemy. But much more important, air supremacy over Korea was constantly maintained. Men like Jim Low, with his flamboyant taste for enormous Havana cigars, his growing reputation as a “honcho”—a top pilot—revelled in the struggle. “I enjoyed all of it,” he said later, "the flying, shooting down aircraft. I was too young to think about the politics. It was just a job we were over there to do."9 Each pilot flew around 100 missions, perhaps six months’ combat duty, before being rotated back to the United States. There was, perhaps, less tension among the squadrons in Korea than in World War II because the dominance of the American pilots was so great, their casualties less alarming. Some celebrated pilots were lost: Bud Mahurin, a World War II group commander, was shot down by ground fire; George Davis, one of the most celebrated aces, was brought down by a MIG when his score stood at fourteen victories. But the odds on survival were good. Even those who were lost were scarcely missed when men were coming and going constantly on routine rotations. And as Flight Lieutenant John Nicholls of the RAF, who flew the Sabre with the Americans, put it, “In England after a flying accident, there was a funeral. But in Korea, somebody just wasn’t there anymore.” Jim Low went home after ninety-five missions with five MIGs to his credit, and not a scratch on him. He went on to fly fighters over Vietnam and survive five years in a Communist prison camp. The Sabre remained unchallenged as the outstanding aircraft of the Korean War: of 900 enemy aircraft claimed destroyed during the war by U.S.A.F. pilots, 792 were MIG-15s destroyed by Sabres, for the loss of just seventy-eight of their own aircraft. It was, inevitably, a Sabre pilot who became the war’s top-scoring ace, Captain Joseph McConnell, with sixteen confirmed “victories.”
If at least a proportion of fighter pilots found their occupation glamorous, it is unlikely that any of the heavy bomber crews would have said the same about theirs, flying a dreary daily shuttle to industrial and military targets in North Korea. Joe Hilliard was a twenty-seven-year-old Texas farmboy who just missed World War II and spent his first flying years as a navigator in what was then the U.S.A.F.'s only designated nuclear bomber group. He was newly returned from a tour of duty in England when Korea came, and he was rushed to Okinawa with the 307th Bomb Wing. They met none of the traditional comforts of combat aircrew: the only permanent accommodation on the base was occupied by another wing. They found themselves living in tents, which were razed to the ground at regular intervals by hurricanes. Their B-50 aircraft were taken from them and they were given instead old B-29s, just out of mothballs, which posed chronic problems with mechanical defects: "We were really mad about that. We got the feeling that the U.S.A.F. just didn’t want to waste its first-line equipment on Korea."10 To their disgust, they found that even the flight rations with which they were provided were of World War II manufacture.
cont’d
