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Old 30th April 2011, 06:25
JoeB JoeB is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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JoeB
Re: Korea-MiG-15 and the other side of the history

Hi Daniel,

I think at this point, after many very detailed replies by me item by item, you should realize that the sources you quote have frequent errors about specific US losses, particularly about damaged planes as 'written off' and non air combat losses as 'suspicious', when the authors of those sources really have no information or evidence to support this 'suspicion' or what was supposedly 'admitted', implying something else was not 'admitted'.

Also the theme of many of your entries is that the US side overclaimed in particular cases. True, but true of almost every air war in history, so I don't see what is really remarkable about it. Prior to the 1990's, the information on actual losses on the MiG side was not available, so what else could authors in the West have done?

In my humble opinion, this is more understandable than the case of some recent books written in Russia, often quoted on the internet, where the opposing loss accounts are known but simply dismissed as 'laughable', 'suspicious' etc because they are so embarrassinly at variance with the Soviet victory claims. OTOH it's harder to write air war history from a nationalistic point of view when the opposing accounts are known and systematically contradict what 'the author's' pilots claimed. It's easier for such an author if the opposing accounts just aren't known, so nationalistically inclined US authors pre 90's had an 'advantage' in this respect (what you don't know can't embarass and anger the pilot/veterans you are interviewing, and in fact one famous author of many US-side KW books I've dealt with is positively not interested in specific MiG loss accounts where known, this does not just occur on one side).

But not nearly all MiG accounts in Korea are known now, so IMHO it's not meaningful to assess US overclaims in individual combats after September 1951, as of now. For example, the most recent Chinese accounts to surface in the public realm make it fairly clear George Davis was in combat with the PLAAF when shot down Feb 10 1952, but the PLAAF unit lost 3 a/c. Previous Chineses accounts suggested that Davis might have been in combat with PLAAF but didn't mention those losses (since Davis' 2 victories were the only US claims of the day, it seems to rule out Davis' loss in combat with Soviet units which saw contact with F-86's but suffered no losses, other F-86 formations *did* encounter MiG's, but made no claims).

And overall, you give a total MiG combat loss of 593, which I think I also quoted, as approximate, and approximately 815 MiG's were credited (USAF, USN/USMC, FAA), so it's not a high overclaim ratio, except for B-29's whose victory credits were almost totally erroneous. In F-86 case high overclaims occurred in some cases, but low overclaims or underclaims in other cases to arrive at moderate overclaim (by WWII standards) overall. But after fall '51 we just can't assess them case by case with the info now available.

As far as kill ratio, even one-sided accounts of this from US side did not claim that F-86's were not lost to other causes or fighter bombers and B-29's weren't lost to MiG's, the 10:1 was *air to air* combat kill ratio for the F-86 alone. The actual number of F-86's lost in air combat, if counting a/c which returned safely but were never repaired, was perhaps 90, I've concluded counting one by one (no USAF source ever revised that 78 number to 103 or to any other number, that's an often repeated fallacy). There's some uncertainty in my number but not a great deal, I believe. So the actual F-86:MiG-15kill ratio was 6+:1, quite high by WWII standards for a real ratio by one top of line fighter against another for a long period.

A/c lost to MiG debris were generally counted as air combat losses; in any case I'm counting them. As we've covered for a few individual cases, engine failures in the combat zone were not *all*, *obviously* MiG losses, and actually only a relative few coincide with days of MiG claims to be possible MiG losses, and happened in or near contact with MiG's. And as we've also covered, the numerous 1953 F-86 AAA losses were almost all clearly documented as occurring near the front lines far from MiG areas, and prior to 1953 when F-86's seldom engaged in ground attack, few were recorded lost to ground fire.

Just to note a few specific a/c fates:
All three B-29's mentioned for March 1951 were repaired:
44-69667: damaged March 1 1951 by AA or premature explosion of own bombs; was again present in the formation attacked by MiG's April 12
44-61830: damaged March 1 1951 by MiG's, also present April 12
44-69746: damaged March 30 by MiG's (along with 44-69763), both a/c appear on 98 BG mission reports in 1952-53
All four of those planes were scrapped in 1954, like most other surviving B-29's

In the April 12 attack, 3 B-29's were shot down outright 1 written off, 2 others damaged enough for the damage to be listed by serial number:
44-69682: shot down by MiG's
44-86370: shot down by MiG's
44-62252: shot down by MiG's

44-87618: MiG damage, to be repaired as training a/c (as heavily damaged B-29's often were in WWII) but stricked May 14 '51 instead

44-61385: MiG damage, repaired, lost in takeoff accident Oct 31 1951
42-94062: MiG damage, listed in 307 BG's roster in 1952, scrapped 1954
Korwald has (or had) an error listing 42-65369 on this date as well as on April 6; April 6 is correct, operational loss, no opposing claims.

The F-86's damaged on Nov 30 1951 were 48-292 and 50-680. The latter was hit in the canopy and left wing by La-11 fire. Both a/c were repaired and served till after the Korean War. 50-680 was being flown by Maj Winton Marshall. I got the serial number of that a/c from USAF records, but I've seen that damage mentioned in at least two books told from the US side, based on accounts by Marshall or his unit mates.

Joe
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