Great looking plane..

[Ruah]

Mig 15 is seriously sexy and I would take one against a saber any day.  As for jets, the Mig 21 is my all time favorate in terms of design followed/equal to the A6 in terms of aesthetically pleasing looks.

[kilo2]

Mig 15 is seriously sexy and I would take one against a saber any day.  As for jets, the Mig 21 is my all time favorate in terms of design followed/equal to the A6 in terms of aesthetically pleasing looks.

MiG 25 (fox bat) is my favorite. But I wouldnt mind a korea map

[Widewing]

Mig 15 is seriously sexy and I would take one against a saber any day.  As for jets, the Mig 21 is my all time favorate in terms of design followed/equal to the A6 in terms of aesthetically pleasing looks.

North American's F-86 was more sophisticated than the MiG. Radar lead computing gunsight, far better high Mach handling. All Sabres could out-turn the MiG, but the later hard-wing E models did so with greater margin. Sabre's could exceed Mach 1 in a shallow dive. The MiG-15 could not, and if the pilot tried, he'd likely kill himself. In terms of speed, the F-86 was faster. On the other hand, the MiG accelerated and climbed better, and had a higher ceiling. Yeager flew one brought over by a defector. He lauded the MiG. George Welch, F-86 lead test pilot and 16 kill ace, offered Yeager a challenge. Welch was in Japan at the time. Welch suggested he in an F-86E vs Yeager in the MiG-15bis. Yeager declined, claiming that the USAF would not allow it. Perhaps not... However, Welch needled him for quite some time.

Performance wasn't always enough... Seven Soviet MiG-15s attacked two F9F-5s sent out to investigate the MiGs approaching their carrier. The MiGs flew out of Soviet air space. A third F9F joined the fight. Net result? As many as 5 MiGs didn't get home. Gun camera films only confirm 3 downed. However, intercepted radio calls from the MiGs leans towards 5 not getting home. Two apparently had to ditch due to damage. One F9F took a couple of 23mm hits, but landed back aboard its carrier without incident. That was the one and only time Soviet MiGs seriously challenged Navy fighters off of North Korea. The Russians ran an extensive SAR for two days before they quit looking for their missing pilots.

All of this is well documented in the carrier's after action report, as well as the pilot's "encounter" report. All three pilots were flown to Japan for debriefing. The DOD sat on the story for years, figuring that public knowledge of the incident would force Truman to act in response to the provocation. The Russians denied any such encounter, naturally of course. A recent review of Russian records does show that 5 aircraft were stricken from the MiG units records that same week.

[Slash27]

Good read WW

[icepac]

Yeager beat the mig with the Sabre, switched places, and beat the Sabre with the mig.

[Raptor05121]

Yeager beat the mig with the Sabre, switched places, and beat the Sabre with the mig.

I've heard that too

[GScholz]

All Sabres could out-turn the MiG, but the later hard-wing E models did so with greater margin.

The F86F which arrived in 1952 could out-turn and outrun the MiG15bis. However, for most of the war, it was the MiG that enjoyed the performance advantage. The result of the MiG's poor stall characteristics was that pilots were uneasy about pushing the aircraft to the limit and hence the Sabre pilot had the edge in a turning contest.

[GScholz]

An interesting fact is that while the Sabre definitively held the K/D advantage in the Korean War it was a Soviet pilot who became the top scoring ace. Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton remembers his encounter with this ace they knew as "Casey Jones":

"This MiG driver had been good, VERY GOOD. He had been waiting above the engagements between the MiGs and the F-86s. It was a well-known tactic that was commonly used by a single MiG pilot, that we referred to as CASEY JONES. Ol' Casey was an exceptional pilot, and definitely not an Oriental. His normal procedure was to hit fast from a high perch, diving down on any F-86 that was isolated from the on-going air battle, quite similar to a tactic used by von Richthofen in The Great War."

"Casey Jones" was Nikolai Vasilievich Sutyagin, a member of the 17th IAP of the 303rd IAD of the Voyenno Vozdushnye Sily, the Soviet Air Force. In that fight Glenn T. Eagleston, CO of the 4th Fighter Wing, became the 4th aerial victory of Kapetan Nikolai Sutyagin, who had shot down a Sabre on June 19 1951 and two more on June 22. The score of that outstanding Russian pilot kept rising, to 21 kills, which made him the Top Ace of the Korean War.

It seems alt-monkeys are in every war.


More from Bruce Hinton here: http://sabre-pilots.org/classics/v32casey.htm

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Yeager beat the mig with the Sabre, switched places, and beat the Sabre with the mig.

Source?

Opposing pilot?

Talk, especially the unsubstantiated variety, is quite cheap.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

An interesting fact is that while the Sabre definitively held the K/D advantage in the Korean War it was a Soviet pilot who became the top scoring ace. Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton remembers his encounter with this ace they knew as "Casey Jones":

"This MiG driver had been good, VERY GOOD. He had been waiting above the engagements between the MiGs and the F-86s. It was a well-known tactic that was commonly used by a single MiG pilot, that we referred to as CASEY JONES. Ol' Casey was an exceptional pilot, and definitely not an Oriental. His normal procedure was to hit fast from a high perch, diving down on any F-86 that was isolated from the on-going air battle, quite similar to a tactic used by von Richthofen in The Great War."

"Casey Jones" was Nikolai Vasilievich Sutyagin, a member of the 17th IAP of the 303rd IAD of the Voyenno Vozdushnye Sily, the Soviet Air Force. In that fight Glenn T. Eagleston, CO of the 4th Fighter Wing, became the 4th aerial victory of Kapetan Nikolai Sutyagin, who had shot down a Sabre on June 19 1951 and two more on June 22. The score of that outstanding Russian pilot kept rising, to 21 kills, which made him the Top Ace of the Korean War.

It seems alt-monkeys are in every war.


More from Bruce Hinton here: http://sabre-pilots.org/classics/v32casey.htm

Uh, Eagleston returned to base and landed, albeit wheels up, so there was no victory in that case. Read the last two paragraphs of that article.

Seems "Casey Jones" was good when he had every advantage, but not so good when he didn't.

[GScholz]

An aerial victory is the destruction of an enemy plane, regardless of whether the enemy pilot lives, dies, jumps, ditches or crash lands at his home base. AH rules don't apply in the real world.

[GScholz]

The USAF even consider "manoeuver kills" and "fuel kills" where no shots are fired, but the enemy aircraft is destroyed as a result of your actions (augers while fighting you, running out of gas trying to evade you, etc.).

[GScholz]

Seems "Casey Jones" was good when he had every advantage, but not so good when he didn't.

"Good" is very subjective. In AH terms a "good pilot" is probably one who can take on multiple cons and furball like a Greek god. In real life a good fighter pilot is one that secures all possible advantages to make the fight as unfair as possible. Preferably the enemy should never know what hit him. Sutyagin would have been a fool not to take advantage of his MiG's higher service ceiling and choosing his fights.

After all it is the first rule of Dicta Boelcke.

[icepac]

Source?

Opposing pilot?

Talk, especially the unsubstantiated variety, is quite cheap.

Source:  General Albert Boyd

Opposing pilot:   No idea......he never stepped forward to identify himself.

[Ack-Ack]

The USAF even consider "manoeuver kills" and "fuel kills" where no shots are fired, but the enemy aircraft is destroyed as a result of your actions (augers while fighting you, running out of gas trying to evade you, etc.).

When did the USAF standardize the criteria?  During WW2 it was very common for each USAAF group to have their own criteria for what was a "kill".
 
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