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Re: Korea As A Testing Ground
Another point to consider is that the UK had other priorities: the Cold War stand off in Europe. As the previous post stated, the UK probably knew most of their front line aircraft in Europe were marginal against the latest Soviet aircraft, their only hope in Europe lay in numbers. I think the US faced similar issues, but had a bit more in reserve. Why only B-29s in Korea, not B-50s or B-47s? Same sort of reason, I suspect.
Still, I suspect the Brits learned a fair bit from their US allies, and from UK exchange officers with the USAF in Korea. It is correct that US (and British) fighter design went a different direction than the F-86 after Korea, but this was due to a large extent to the Korean experience. The F-104 was first designed as a high altitude dog fighter, to succeed against what was expected to be the MiG-15 replacement.
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