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Cookie:
Not having much in the way of original primary
source info, (I love to read what's posted here in that regard), but having
read some of the secondary material over the years, I want to outline
an alternative devil's advocate point of view, on the re-examination (revision?)
of the air war. Take F-86/MiG kill ratio.
The seeds of doubt on F-86 losses were planted by
changing totals of air combat losses totals of Sabers, 58,
78, 103? 78 is by far the most often quoted. 103 is supposedly from
the AF's study Saber Measures (Charlie) which I admit I've never actually read.
Anyway now there's KORWALD. Hand counting I get
numbers not too different from yours. I counted "loss" by the USAAF WWII
criterion "failure to make a wheels down landing at a friendly base" and got 70
F-86's. By way of trivia it makes 49-1272 lost twice: bellied,
later shot down. Adding in all ambiguous cases ("enemy fire", "failed to
return") is another 10. So that's 80 corroborating the common historical
total if that's all we count.
Damaged "loss" in KORWALD? One method is to add
those on top, I count 34. But there's two issues. First some were clearly not
write-offs as they appear more than once (damaged once, lost later), or in
photo's with moderate damage. And 49-1272 is a survivor even today (damaged
12/4/51, on display in Fresno CA). On the other side of the ledger I note in Joe
Baugher's database of serial numbers 16 F-86's "lost to enemy action" without
date and not in Korwald. Some are known cases (49-1281 Eagleston's a/c in
"Casey Jones" incident, 49-1334 taken out in Po-2 raid frequently published
photo, 50-0666 is a MiG damage write off pictured in Davis "4th Fighter
Wing") but mostly mysterious (to me). Anyway it's not clear how many would
fairly be counted "lost". An interesting research topic unless someone
knows a source already that deals with this in detail.
Second issue on "damaged" is apples and apples
vs. "UAF" losses which are stated only as totals (and not incl. NKAF at
all) as far as I've seen. Given the high rate of fire and low per round
lethality of F-86 armament many hundreds more MiG's must have been hit for
500-600 to have been shot down. If we added all 34 (or 50) F-86's wouldn't we
have to add a bunch of MiG's?
Mis-reporting of cause of loss. This one is harder
than damage. But here's my devil's advocate position for debate. I think each
case has to be looked at separately with the burden of proof on those who change
the attribution from what's in the loss records. An example of a loss I've
seen re-attributed, Mir Aviatsii article etc.:
F-84 51-636
Sietzinger 11/27/51 Korwald "strafing hit boxcars", matches date/type of a
Pepeleyev claim. But locations don't match (Chinanpo US, "Sensen" Russian,
meaning Sunchun; 70+miles apart) and this incident was further
investigated, though not conclusively, as friendly fire (F-84's came
head on at each other strafing, no enemy a/c reported). Unlikely to have
been Pepeleyev's target.
A large topic for research (maybe not
even possible at this point) to track down the dozens or hundreds of
incidents, but each one is interesting I find. Anyway my point
is matching losses to Russian claims same date is only an
indication of possibility.
The escalation of F-86 AAA losses toward the end of
the war, sometimes noted with suspicion in Russian writings, has a
straightforward explanation. Many from 8th and 18 Fighter Bomber Gp's. More
F-86's were lost to AAA once they began to be risked on air-grd, from
4th Ftr's strikes at target of opportunity after sweeps starting spring 52,
and much more when FB units converted to F-86F's by '53.
Kill claim support ratio: Almost all AF's
overclaim success in air combat (RN claims in Falklands a-a,
not grd-a, were almost right on the money) but not all by the same
ratio. It seems to depend on nature of the combat (hi or lo, furball
or 2 on 2, aam's exploding or not) and social/political etc
factors. The Soviets were on the high end of overclaim in two previous
wars (Nomonhan 1939, the world overclaim championship v. the Japanese,
and the GPW). Given that history and the difficult conditions of
Korea: hi alt furballs, bad gun cameras, poor visibility and stability of the
MiG (as Yeager described) 10% of claims actual kills (strictly UN
records v. their claims) is not unbelievable. Anyway my idea is one
side's claims don't by themselves invalidate the other side's case by
case, secret-at-the-time loss records (as opposed to possibly propagandistic
public totals) without more proof, or obvious inconsistency in the loss
records.
So in summary subject to further research (and just
being proved wrong) the F-86/MiG ratio kill-kill not
kill-(kill+damage) could be estimated at around 6, say
conservatively 500 kills vs. 80>90 losses (not so conservative
maybe, but that's the debate). Worse than the famous original figures
but better than the Saber Measures (Charlie) estimate.
Joe
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