RE: MiG pilots got worse

["Daniel T. Fahey" <DanFahey@DanSources.com>]

One of the reasons the US did not have a strong tank was the task of getting
them to Europe.  Still we should have had a more robust tank, earlier.  Even
our tank tactics were stupid. Why we did not mount a 90mm cannon on the
Shermans until it was too late.

The same thing happened with our planes. The US seemed to lag on building
the better plane, until the end of the war. Yeah we did build the A bomb
first, but barely.

For example the US did not force Allison to build a more powerful engine.
It was potentially a better stronger engine then the Merlin.  The weakness
of the Merlin engine are its rods limiting manifold pressure.

I know this info because the Mustangs were getting waxed by the Bearcats at
the Reno Air Races up until the last 10 years.  The Merlins would blow up
anything close to 100inches.  What one of the bright engineers did was fix
an Allison Rod to a Merlin engine. Instead of being limited to 2500hp they
are hitting 4000hp.  Nearly 2hp to 1 cuin.  Which is typical of a good
liquid cooled engine.  Slowly the 375/400mph laps are up to 490mph laps.
Even the stock Mustangs with the modified engines are hitting 450mph.

Mind this is all at sea level.  Speculation on optimum altitude performance
has not beem tried.  The Beacat and Mustang both have exceeded 535mph in
level flight over a measured course.  In fact either can out climb any jet
in our inventory up to 10000ft. Usually in less the 90 seconds.

Finally toward the end of the war most of the combatants could exceed
90inches of manifold pressure with ADI or similar mixture.  Some of the
stubborn enginering behavior was suffered by all sides.

Dan Fahey


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu
[mailto:owner-KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu]On Behalf Of Diego Zampini
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 4:04 PM
To: KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu
Cc: a0019874@airmail.net
Subject: Re: MiG pilots got worse


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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