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The captured F-80's were reported on a number of
occaisions by other fighter bombers, F-80's and F-84's, starting in the fall of
'51 and going into at least spring '52.
An example is Nov 10 1951 when a flight of F-84's
reported a number of non-firing passes by a red nosed F-80 in the vicinity of
Kyomipo NK. This report made its way into the weekly intel summary; the
summary's statement that no friendly F-80's had that nose color and none
were in the area at the time was presumably cross checked.
It's possible the power of suggestion played a
hand. For example Axis use of captured P-38's and -47's in the ETO is documented
and the KW pilots must have known that. Also later incidents (where as many as 3
enemy F-80's together were reported) could have been influenced by the first
few. The same reports, '52 period, routinely list both MiG-15's and Type 15's as
swept wing opponents (Type 15=La-168 a Lavochkin comtemporary of
the MiG-15 which never entered production).
While we can probably say there were no captured
F-80's operated by the 64th fighter corps, about which a fair amount is written,
there seem to have been other Soviet units and special efforts less well written
about, still classified in some cases. Let's imagine an F-80 (or T-33) had been
obtained intact through intelligence sometime before or during the war somewhere
in the world (not necesssarily recovered from a crashlanding in Korea).
Then it wouldn't be shocking if that had never been declassified.
Joe
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