Re: Aircraft Used in Korea

[<AMPSOne@aol.com>]

Joe,

Postwar Yaks are hard to deal with -- even official Russian sites call the 
postwar all metal job either Yak-9U or Yak-9T, your choice. U makes better sense 
and was one used in Korea. According to what Soviet records I have seen, no 
other Yaks from WWII were sent to Korea - 3s, 7s, or 9s. All of the wooden ones 
seem to have gone for scrap as soon as the GPW was over. USAF is one who 
apparently called it the P model as they found a cannon in the engine block on 
their captured examples and the one they tested. 

Yak-9U listed as carrying two UBS and one ShVAK, so that matches up pretty 
well. Top speed listed as 666 kph (363 kts) at 5,000 meters. 

Chinese were only noted by both their sources and Soviet ones with La-9, 
La-11, MiG-9 (nearly the entire production run), and MiG-15 fighters. No Yaks 
other than Yak-17UTI for conversion purposes. I have no record of Il-10 in PLAAF 
service; only the Tu-2 which the Koreans did not get. 

Apparently the storage in the eastern USSR was only P-63s as they were listed 
as based there in a prewar US intelligence report and were found there when 
49 FBG shot them up. Most of the Airacobras were also scrapped by then. (Did 
they at least preserve Podkryshkin's?) 

Cookie Sewell
AMPS