Re: MiG pilots got worse

["Diego Zampini" <dzampini@hotmail.com>]

Hi, Dan (Fahey), Don and Ron:
These will be three responses in only one meassge.
First response; Ron:

<<Keep a smile on your face and friendship in your heart! I am not a 
propagandist, don't deal in lies, don't make things up, and certainly not an 
expert on the subject.
The only information I have is official United States Air Force figures and 
official and published United Nations stats and information which has been 
made public. Also some stories I have heard from friends who were there. 
That may not be as reliable as your Cuban friend but it is all I have :-) >>

I know such statistics, and I know that they came from USAF official 
figures, William Y´Blood mentioned them in his booklet ´MiG Alley, the Fight 
for the Air Superiority´. This author even mention that in June 1953, ´Of 
the 1,268 MiG-15 sorties seen, 501 were engaged, 77 destroyed, 11 probably 
destroyed, and 41 damaged.´. I am also sure that a lot of books and US 
pilots repeated them in good faith. But all such books were written without 
the benefit of knowing the version of the other side, or (in the case of 
Y´Blood book) the authors had performed a poor research in Soviet books and 
articles. Y´Blood only mention a couple of Soviet units in his work, plus 
the tally of Pepelyayev and Sutyagin, but that is all, and insist in 
qualifying the Soviet pilots as poor trained and with poor gunnery; the best 
adjective he use to refer to them is (sometimes) ´aggressive´, but still 
supports the inflated figure 792 MiGs vs 78 Sabres. Y´Blood forgot that 
already in the 1980s some authors had stated that only 379 out of those 792 
could be fully confirmed. Now we know that only 538 were lost.
No doubt that the payment for kills in both Soviets and Chinese had caused a 
lot of false claims, the overclaiming was worse in the Soviet side. But 
remember that without payment at all the Sabre pilots also claimed 44 false 
MiG kills (I guess most in good faith) only in June 1953, and 254 false MiG 
kills in the whole war (plus some other wrongly claimed La-11s and Tu-2s).

Donald:

<<You were okay until you brought in WWII.  Patton was held back to let the 
Russians take Berlin. It was political...they had a score to even.>>

That is certainly true. But I wanted to emphasize the fact that the Russians 
were not the only-usefull-as-slaves than the Nazis thought. And remember 
that the US Army could land in Normandy in part because the Krasno 
Armeiskoye (Red Army) had decimated the brunt ot the Whermacht in Stalingrad 
and Kursk in 1942-43. Only in 1944 Germany had 2,500 tanks, 2.5  millions of 
men and 1,700 aircraft in the Eastern front. If those men and stuff would 
have been avoilable to fight in Normandy, the things would been different. 
And the Russian won not only because its overwhelming numerical superiority; 
their stuff can be compared with the same one in the German side. USA had no 
equivalent to fight against the German tanks Panther, Tiger and Königtiger 
(the Sherman was not match against them) until 1945 with the arrival of the 
M-26 Pershing (when the war was almost won) but the Russians had the T-34/85 
and the JS-2 Stalin already in the fall of  1943 and 1944. On August 12 1944 
in Ogledow (Poland) a single T-34/85 crew commanded by Sr.Lt. Aleksandr 
Oskin ambushed and destroyed three Königtigers of the sPzAbt 501. Just 
mention me one occasion when the Americans did something similar to the 
German tanks Panther, Tiger and Königtiger in Normandy or Ardennes. Yes, 
Patton could have taken Berlin. But without the Red Army crushing the krauts 
from the East, the task would been much more difficult.

Dan (Fahey):

<<This was the same tactic used against us in Vietnam.  Seems we were not 
learning any lessons.>>

Exactly. The North Vietnamese MiG-17s used such tactic to catch unaware 
F-105s and F-4s. When appeared the MiG-21s armed with R-3s, the MiG-17s used 
to perform head-on passes, being at the same time decoys which distract the 
US formations of the attack of the MiG-21s with missiles from the rear.

<<It would be interesting to view US tactics.  The US was more sucessful 
over all but had to rely more on maneuverability and their gun sites to 
succeed. Where as the Russians used surprise and distraction to a high 
level.>>

The tactics varied along the war. When in April 1951 the MiGs used to 
´sandwich´ the Sabre fomations (a pair of MiGs attacked from above and other 
pair from below) the American counter-tactic was to send six Sabres instead 
the usual four; two hold the diving MiGs, and the remaining four dive and 
attack the climbing MiGs attacking from below. The Sabre pilots used it on 
April 22 1951 and they could shot down one MiG without own lsses that day 
(the US pilots claimed three MiG kills). The Soviet countered it with ´the 
sword and the shield´ tactic: a pair of MiGs attack the Sabres (´the sword´) 
covered by other pair (´the shield´) plus a third pair which remain in 
altitude and watch the volution of the battle, deciding whether to support 
the sword or the shield team. This third pair of MiG-15s was nicknamed 
´Casey Jones´ by the Sabre pilots.
Regards to all,
Diego.

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