Re: revising air war kill tallies

[Joe Brennan <jbren1@optonline.net>]

Jose,

Interesting list. I wonder where Diego discusses things on internet now or
if he does. He doesn't here I know, he did at ACIG for a while but not
lately. I miss debating with him.

The main comment I'd make is Diego's method, and I believe Diego tends to
get his info from the writings of Russian author Igor Seidov. Two things I
question about Seidov's accounting
1) Seidov's counting of Russian losses day by day seems incomplete. For
example in the period covered by V.P. Naboka's "NATO's Hawks in the Sights
of Stalin's Falcons", Nov 1950-July 1951, Naboka mentions MiG losses that
Seidov doesn't. And  the total individual losses Seidov mentions in his "Red
Devils on the 38th Parallel" I counted as 295, rather than 330-340 in other
sources and even Seidov's stated total of 319. Though to be fair he says the
book is not necessarily 100% complete. This is a bit against the USAF aces.

2) more important, the method seems to assume that claims made by the US
pilots which Seidov doesn't think were against Soviet MiG's must have been
100%  correct. This is much too generous to the USAF aces.

3) even for cases we know it was a US-Soviet engagement and are sure the
losses it's hard to say who shot down who. If 2 US pilots claimed and 1 MiG
was lost who was correct? I guess this is always true.

Recent works on the war including Chinese information tell us they were a
very substantial % of MiG losses from September 1951, but their writings
detail only a small % of their admitted losses (224 MiG's) day by day. NK
losses are still unknown but started in Nov 51 contrary to Seidov who says
Nov 52. So IMO it's still not really possible to accurately count the "real"
MiG victories of the USAF pilot by pilot day by day after Sep 51,
unfortunately, though it's an interesting topic.

We can estimate the average accuracy of US claims. US fighters claimed about
800 MiG-15's (bombers claimed others but we know their claims were almost
completely inaccurate). The Russians lost something like 320-330, Chinese
224, NK probably 30-50, so close to 600. So we can say on average US ace
claims were probably ~75% correct, (for early in the war v. Soviet only we
can show they were >75% correct) but among individuals it probably varied
from much less accurate than that to pilots who underclaimed.

Joe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jose castillo" <felizguajiro@yahoo.com>
To: <KOREAN-WAR-L@listproc.cc.ku.edu>
Cc: <dzampini@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: revising air war kill tallies


> hello to the group, this is my first message here.
> korean war jet ace harold fisher once said, "it is
> interesting to compare our claims of victory with the
> numbers from the other side. we found many aerial
> victories that needed recounting." in this spirit, i
> am trying to come up with more accurate kill tallies
> for US korean war aces, based on the best data
> currently available. my friend diego from argentina, a
> contributor here, has provided the information. what
> we have is a provisional list of the top five american
> aces, giving them the benefit of the doubt for all
> their chinese kills, but modifying their soviet kills
> to come up with a new total for each. (the chinese
> records, diego tells me, provide only monthly kill
> totals, not day-to-day, making systematic correlation
> with US records difficult.)
>
> *joe mcconnell, 16 kills: 9 of his 16 claims were
> actually against soviet MiGs. 6 are fully admitted by
> the russians and 3 were overclaims. his score would be
> 13.
>
> *james jabara, 15 kills: he claimed 6 MiGs in his
> first tour, but only 4 actually happened. all his
> kills in his 2nd tour were against chinese, so his
> tally would be 13.
>
> *pete fernandez, 14.5 kills: 4 of his air battles were
> against soviets, and he scored in 3 of them. the march
> 9, 1953 kill was an overclaim, so pete's score is 13
> 1/2.
>
> *george davis, 14 kills: he was credited with 11 MiGs
> and 3 tupolevs; he actually got 10 MiGs and 2
> tupolevs. his score is 12
>
> *royal baker, 13 kills: 5 of his claims were against
> soviet planes, and 3 actually happened. his score is
> 11.
>
> NEW TALLIES:
> fernandez 13.5
> mcconnell 13
> jabara 13
> davis 12
> baker 11
>
> what do folks think of this? as for the chinese data,
> any ideas for incorporating it into my revisionist
> history? thanks! jose c.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
> http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
>