Thread: F-84s vs MiGs
View Single Post
  #6  
Old 24th September 2010, 01:25
JoeB JoeB is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 121
JoeB
Re: F-84s vs MiGs

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Nole View Post
Continuing in the investigation with different sources and comparing dates I have finded today two events envolving activites of MiGs and F-84s.

1. 04-11-51
2. Other event , the Mar 3 ,1952.

3. Another event but no F-84 this time, but F-94. The plane called "Volleyball 95" after VVS records, shot down in colission with a MiG-15 nighfighter of the 351 IAP the Nov 7, 1952.
1. An encounter between MiG's and F-84's is recorded in the Fifth Air Force daily summary Nov 4, in time period 1200-1250, no F-84 losses. The 5th AF Loss Damaged and Aborted A/c File (which the Korwald compilers didn't use, it seems) also doesn't include any F-84 loss that day, so that entry may be an error in Korwald.

2. Interestingly enough, the USAF 1953 Statistics Digest (the source of so called ‘official’ loss stats in most published works) gives 2 F-84 air combat losses in March 1952. The thing is, the Stats Digest numbers aren’t ‘highly optimistic’ but they aren’t very reliable either on month to month basis. There is no document (AFAIK in reviewing a *lot* of USAF KW era documents) which describes how the Stats Digest numbers were arrived at or that lists the individual cases. The USAF summaries of combat activity for every day of the war are easy to find, as well as lots of reports on individual incidents and a/c. But no ‘master key’ ties these in to the Stats Digest table. In case of March 1952 I’d Stats Digest table is just wrong (as similarly for various monthly numbers for other a/c types). There was no engagement between F-84’s and MiG’s that month resulting in a loss (in daily summaries), and no individual F-84 lost under circumstances which appeared to be air combat. As far as March 3, the US recorded the typical (for this period of the war) two large combats between F-86’s and MiG’s, one in the morning one in the afternoon; one RF-51 probably lost to a MiG, no encounters between MiG’s and F-84’s, and no known MiG claims of such.

3. The VMF(N)-513 F3D crew of Davis and Fessler claimed a MiG-15 downed that night, and only one, Kovalev’s, was lost. Volleyball was the callsign of VMF(N)-513 at that time (Davis/Fessler were Volleyball 3338 that night), but there were no losses of F3D's (per VMF(N)-513’s historical report/chronology for November 1952) nor any F-94's present (not cleared for operations over North Korea until later). It would seem Davis/Fessler shot down Kovalev, rather than there being a collision.

Joe
Reply With Quote