Quote:
Originally Posted by RCheung
Accurate loss figures are hard to come by from the Communist Chinese side - there was a deliberate attempt to hide losses from the public. Publications intended for the "internal" (PLA and Communist Party) consumption had more accurate accounting of losses. Publications intended for "external" (i.e. we of the unwashed masses) tend to repeat the same "rosy" picture.
However, in recent years, quite a bit of information from "internal publications" have leaked out. There was even a public outcry over the "incomplete accounting" of aircrew losses on a memorial wall at the Aviation Museum. Family members were upset the names of their loved ones were not included on the wall - and made noises on social media ... Kept the ChiCom Internet Monitors pretty busy for a while!
Upshot was that many more names ended up on the wall - discussions on a website filled in a lot of gaps in the Korean War losses. We now have a complete accounting of the identity of all aircrew KIA (but, irritatingly, not the exact dates - only months when they were killed). There are still a lot of gaps in the loss figures - particularly when the aircrew survived ... but it is much better than before.
Of note, two Communist Chinese senior commanders (one PLA. one PLAAF) quoted identical losses of "over twenty" during the 1958 Quemoy / Taiwan Strait Crisis in their respective memoirs. So, it wasn't 31 but close ... ROCAF losses were two F-84G and two F-86F (one probably operational and on due to a collision). So, the kill-to-loss ratio was somewhere between 10:1 and 5:1 ... It was a lot worse in Korea where the Communist Chinese contributed far fewer sorties than the Soviets - but a lot more of the losses. Most of the Communist Chinese claims in Korea could not be substantiated in the US records.
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I have no idea who these "two Communist Chinese senior commander" are, and since, unlike Soviet Military records, PLAF never release its record to public, so we can not know the real losses PLAF suffered during the 1958 Quemoy / Taiwan Strait Crisis. But there are a few books that pulished in the past decades relate to this crisis, in which the authors claims his source are come from official archives, they claims between July 29 to Oct 25, PLAF lost 7 Migs: 6 of them were shot down in the air fight and 1 was shot down by own Flak, at least 5 pilots were KIA. Other 4 Migs suffered repairable damages in the air combat. On the other hands, PLAF claimed 18 kills in the air combat