----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 8:12
PM
Subject: Re: revising air war kill
tallies
It's one thing to be intellectually dishonest when you have no standard
to balance things against, such as during Soviet days (when they didn't even
admit that there had been Soviet pilots in Korea) and now when things are
opened up and bear intensive scrutiny. The same goes with the Futrell history
of the Korean Air War from the US side (originally written in 1957 as the Cold
War was still ramping up) and one which gave too much of a rah-rah view of the
US side, even with a lot of disconnects. (I.e. how few aircraft were lost and
then the huge numbers of pilots and aircrew rescued by the SAR crews...)
Seidov relies for the most part on his parter German who was a pilot with
the 64th IAK. That is where he got the pilots' versions of things, and when
they are right, they are very very good. I translated the "Black Thursday"
Soviet pilots' reports and sent them along to Earl "Mac" McGill, one of the
members of this newsgroup and a pilot on that raid, and he was able to
correlate the "Who Shot Johns" of which pilots probably shot up which B-29.
But that was an isolated case, and in most of the others there are no simple
solutions.
To get as close to the truth as possible (not going to happen until the
Chinese 'fess up) you need the following items:
(1) US claims and losses, as close as possible to the actual events
(2) Soviet (Russian) claims and losses, as close as possible to the
actual events
(3) Chinese claims and losses, as close as possible to the actual events.
Each one will need: date and time of event; pilots' reports and claims;
losses and an actual reason for loss, not a suspicion or an easy dodge as the
plane crashed and nobody could validate the reason for loss; gun camera
footage (if available); and evidence if available.
The US has most of these items available (more to some researchers than
others) but the core of the US losses are listed on KORWALD, which while not
totally accurate is constantly updated and changed. US claims OFFICIALLY
awarded are known as well.
The Soviet archives are available and the Naboka book focused on them
rather than the memories of pilots. But the Naboka book uses the raw pilots
reports, whereas the Seidov/German one used the "adjusted" 64th IAK reports
that at least two of the commanders were called to Moscow to explain as the
powers that be did not trust their totals.
The Chinese are still mum on most of the results, as poor Xiaoming found
out when he wrote his book. Some are published, and some "adjusted" after the
fact, such as the "famous" Wang Hai admitting he fought with James Hagerstrom
twice in the same flight and did get shot down (once -- but he claims
Hagerstrom counted him twice!)
And so it goes.
Cookie Sewell
AMPS