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  #11  
Old 5th February 2015, 06:08
mars mars is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

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Originally Posted by GuerraCivil View Post


I have also read a series of articles of Anatoli Demin (Soviet fighters in the Sky of China) - if focuses on the Soviet support to ROCAF but there is mention that first communist Chinese airmen were trained in Soviet Union already by 1930´s. Of course it does not mean anything in practice if they did not get planes to fly. During the Sino-Japanese war I have not read from any source that communists would have been active in aerial warfare. Perhaps Mao or other bosses had some private or liason plane for their personal use.
The story of these "airmen" was like this, in 1936, a force about twenty thousand communist army were sent to march west to establish the land communication with Soviet, but after 5 months of desperate fight, they were wipped out by Nationalist, but serveral hunderd of survivor managed to reach XingJiang which was under controlled a then pro-Soviet warlord, among these survivors maybe 20-30 were sent to USSR to receive flying training, most of them returned to China after Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937, but since there was no airplane for them to fly, they served as infantry, I believe very few of them transfered to PLAAF after 1949
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  #12  
Old 5th February 2015, 06:44
mars mars is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

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Originally Posted by GuerraCivil View Post
Well, the kill ratio looks fantastic but exaggerated to me. I wonder if they mean with those aerial engagements and 31:1 kill ratio all the airwar that has happened during the "Cold War" between PRC and Taiwan from late 1949 onward? Or did the mentioned eleven occasions of air combat take place before the establishment of PRC and current PRC/Taiwan boundaries on October 1949?

Here what PLAAF wiki tells:
The PLA had operated few aircraft before that (10.11.1949). The PLA's first organized air unit, the Nanyuan Flying Group, was formed only in the summer of 1949 from about 40 ex-Nationalist aircraft; its task was to defend Beijing, the nation's new capital.

This is to state categorically that Chinese communists did not have a single organized operational air unit until summer 1949. Did it really take that long for them to set up a first operational unit of their air force?

But wiki is wiki - sometimes very good info, sometimes somewhat correct info and sometimes just rotten tomatoes.
This is true enough, before 1949, communist had neither aircrafts and spare parts,nor pilots (large scale of defection did not happen until later part of 1948), nor functional airports, nor trained ground crews to create an operational airforce.

P.S Nationalist did not achieve a 31:1 killing ratio against PLAFF, it was old code war propoganda, even Taiwanese no long calims that in noawdays.
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  #13  
Old 21st May 2015, 00:51
RCheung RCheung is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

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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  #14  
Old 21st May 2015, 04:56
mars mars is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

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Originally Posted by RCheung View Post
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.
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
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  #15  
Old 21st May 2015, 17:53
GuerraCivil GuerraCivil is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

Enemy losses are always higher than the own ones almost by any one sided source - in this case ROCAF seems to have "confirmed" kill/loss -ratio between 5:1 and 10:1 in the air skirmishes of 1958 and PLAAF also having been optimistic with 3:1 claims in the very same air combats if I have understood correctly.

Both sides ending up with a clear victory with more claims than own losses in air combat - these are normal figures in the official published history records of almost all air forces of the world. How much of this kind of overclaiming is made in erroneus but honest good faith and how much propaganda plays a part is difficult to tell.
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  #16  
Old 21st May 2015, 19:29
RCheung RCheung is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

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Originally Posted by mars View Post
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
The two PLA senior officers would be the Theater Commander Ye, Fei (葉飛/叶飞 born Sixto Mercado Tiongco) and Wu, Fa Xian (吳法憲 / 吴法宪) a senior PLAAF commander. Both published memoirs. Both mention ChiCom losses of 20+ during the Quemoy Crisis of 1958.

叶飞回忆录 (Memoirs of Ye, Fei)
publ. 1988 PLA Publishing (解放军出版社),Beijing
ISBN 7-5065-0292-5

p653 「... 这场争夺制空权的空战持续了半个多月,甚为激烈。空战后期,国民党空军使用了响尾蛇空对空导弹。空战中,我 们有两架飞机不明不白地被打落了,开始我们不知 道怎么被击落的,后来才弄清是新式武器干的。国民党空军损失五十多架,大约占它总数的三分之一 。我们损失二十多架。...」

歲月艱辛, 吳法憲回憶錄 (Arduous Times: Memoirs of Wu, Fa Xian)
publ. 2006 North Star Publishing, Hong Kong
ISBN 962-86438-2-7

p505

「... 作為金門炮戰的序幕,爭奪福建前線制空權的激烈空戰,持續了半個多月。這次空戰,國民黨空軍損失了五十多架 飛機,我們則損失了二十多架。...」

The "7 MiG's" figure is consistently what the publications for external consumption quotes nowadays (big improvement from "2 MiG's" years ago).

The "20+ aircraft" figure is remarkably consistent for the two senior commanders to quote in their respective memoirs. This is almost certainly the figure both had access to - in PLA "internal documents".
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  #17  
Old 21st May 2015, 21:46
mars mars is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

Wu, Fa Xian (吳法憲 / 吴法宪) could hardly access PLA "internal documents" when he was writing his memoirs, I would guess his source is memoirs of Ye, Fei (葉飛/叶飞) who is an army guys, anyway I will later check memoirs of General Hu Lin (林虎), who actually participated in these air combat. But anyway, I am not saying the "7" is necessary right or the figure "20+" is necessary wrong, all I am saying is until Mainland Chinese military record open to public, we will no way be sure
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  #18  
Old 22nd May 2015, 02:25
RCheung RCheung is offline
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Re: Air combats of Chinese Civil War 1945-1949?

Wu was still on active service in 1958 when the action took place, so he would have had access to the "internal documents" back then.

Ye was in overall command of the (joint) operations - by definition, he would have had access to the PLAAF and PLANAF after action reports.

It is curious that even though Lin, Hu mentioned the actions "around" the Quemoy Crisis, the actually actions "during" the Crisis were largely absent. Probably still a sore point after all these years?

The bamboo curtain had not been completely opaque in recent years - things have leaked out (on blogs by PLAAF veterans) that showed more losses during the Korean War actions and the odd snippets about the Quemoy actions. A PLANAF mechanic had emigrated and felt free enough to reveal some very interesting details from the ground at Lu Qiao PLANAF base. That is, of course, the base from which the PLANAF sent the two "Da Dui" (Esk.) aloft to engage the Sidewinder-armed F-86F of the ROCAF 2nd TFW. The guy provided details of the MiG-15bis that was downed - Mike Chien's missile impacted between the wing fences, tearing off the right wing in that position. During the subsequent dogfight, 50 cal bullets rained on Lu Qiao, wounding a number of base personnel. (Probably happened when Lt. H.Y. Sung chased one of the PLANAF MiG-17 right over Lu Qiao).

The PLANAF Regimental C.O. was so incensed by the drubbing that he ordered bombs loaded on the MiG-15bis for the dawn strike on airbases in Taiwan. Luckily, he was ordered to stand-down. Quite apart from the heavy losses that the MiG's would have suffered - the strike could have provoked a nuclear response from the Matador cruise missiles the U.S. had deployed to Taiwan in anticipation of an invasion attempt ... That move was telegraphed to the ChiCom High Command and the message clearly got through!
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