Something I posted on another board re overclaiming:

There are three different figures when it comes to shoot-downs and, as these differ a lot, it is always important to specify which you’re talking about.

Hey! you copied that from one of your posts on another forum….well it all makes sense so glad you did.

Re: XN923 and related to what Tony said, I think you have wrong info or are making the wrong comparison at least about US claims in WWII. US bomber claims were order of 4 times enemy losses, US fighter claims tended to be pretty parallel to British ones in accuracy for comparable periods, situations and theaters. Within that they varied quite a bit, both. Neither Brit nor US fighter claims were typically that close 100% correct. In the early Pacific they were both around 30-40%, inexperienced or second string units against a dominating enemy. Early US claims in ETO probably OTOH lower ratio than already experienced Brits, but towards the end of the war in ETO they seem to have been similar. US 44-45 fighter claims against Me-262’s for example were around 80% correct if you compare them to actual German losses in a book like “Me 262 Combat Diary”.

German fighter claims early-mid WWII tended to be more accurate than Brit but not typically underclaims (some cases but not overall). Late in WWII they became quite inaccurate, as again hard pressed overmatched fighter forces’ claims tended to be. For example again Me-262 engagements the jets claimed several times as many US prop fighters as they downed.

In Korea the F-86’s claimed around 800 MiG’s. That was the great bulk of all UN claims. Bombers (B-29’s) claimed 27 but shot down only 2-3, worse than the B-29’s claims over Japan in WWII. The Soviets lost 300+ MiG’s in combat (319 per one common source), the Chinese 224 (official combat loss total) and the NK’s probably around 50. So the F-86 claim accuracy was broadly similar to that of USAAF *fighters* late ETO WWII, not really suprising and nothing strange to explain. It’s also fairly consistent for sub periods of the war where the Soviet losses are known day by day, so doesn’t hinge just on those totals. The MiG’s again claimed 900 F-86’s and actually downed around 90, at or beyond the lower limit of sustained fighter claim accuracy rate by any WWII AF including the Soviets. Soviet fighters overclaimed at about a 7:1 rate in the 1939 war v. Japan, (the Japanese about the same). So, Soviet claims in Korea may have close to the same as their 1939 accuracy, Chinese and NK worse. I’ve read different things on Soviet WWII claim accuracy. I’m not sure there’s an agenda free analysis of that so far.

Joe

Then I guess the US pilots saying they couldn’t stay with the MiG if it dived away were avoiding having to admit they were either facing better pilots or didn’t try hard enough

I’ve seldom heard that, is my point. Do you have a specific source? Here’s a few going in the other direction:
http://www.acepilots.com/planes/f86_sabre.html
US, ace Walker Mahurin: “We didn’t try to climb with them, because they could climb higher than we could. We tried to keep the combat on those elements where we had an advantage. Whenever they were gaining an advantage, we could always leave, we could always turn around and dive away”

NK: No Gum-sok in “MiG-15 to Freedom” p. 114 :”we saw 4 Sabres ahead and below…our commander dived and we all followed…but the Sabres saw us coming..they gently rolled into supersonic dives and flew away…it was impossible to catch up with the Sabres in this situation”.

Soviet: ace Evgeny Pepelyaev quoted in “MiG-15” by Gordon p. 135: “The Sabre could break off combat by diving easily, and it turned better”

Joe

The MiG 15 had one other advantage, its acceleration when put into a dive. I’ve read quite a few accounts of Sabre pilots losing MiGs in a dive as they just dropped away so fast the Sabre couldn’t stay with them

I disagree with that one. The MiG could not exceed Mach 1 in a dive, the F-86, eps later marks, could, and the MiG had potentially dangerous handling characteristics near the Mach, one thing Yeager found. Russian and US sources seem to agree on the F-86’s superiority in dive. A MiG could usually climb away, especially as the altitude increased. As mentioned the MiG’s performance was in general relatively better with altitude, so it often had superior energy to conduct diving attacks, but from the same starting point inferior diving characteristics. Lower down the F-86 was usually a little faster also. Practically, given the MiG’s control limitations, the F-86 could generally outturn the MiG even though its wing loading was higher and thrust/weight lower. Most Soviet MiG’s in Korea were 15-bis VK-1 powered with hydraulically boosted controls; the “pure MiG-15”, RD-45 powered, only served with them right at the beginning of jet combat; there were few encounters between Soviet piloted pure -15’s and F-86’s. The “pure” hung around into 1952 with Chinese and NK units, though: about half the MiG’s lost by the Chinese were pures. And as mentioned the F-86F was considerably superior to the A that starting things.

On “more recent results”, the main thing that’s been learned in the last 10+ yrs about Korean War air combat, big picture (although a very interesting topic in the details IMO) is that the MiG’s made extravagent claims. No student of WWII combat reports from both sides would have assumed the F-86’s really downed 800 MiG’s if that was the claim, rather one would have assumed perhaps 500-600 if the F-86 claim accuracy was the same as USAAF (*fighter, not bomber*) claim accuracy late in WWII: that turned out to be true once Soviet and Chinese losses were known (give or take, adding in what more limited NK ones probably were). The MiG claims (around 900 F-86’s) have lead to doubts about the F-86 reported losses, somewhat understandably because they exceed them by such a large multiple, but there’s just no evidence in the extensive US records of a large number of additional losses or systematic misstatement of loss reasons as is sometimes alleged. There was sloppy book keeping and perhaps marginal bias against reporting air combat losses as such if it wasn’t certain. Looking at each case, I estimate the real air combat losses were more like 85-90 than the official 78. Werrell in his recent book “Sabres over MiG Alley” makes a similar statement (without any exact estimate of the real losses), and Thompson and McLaren in “MiG Alley: Sabres v. MiG’s over Korea” give histories of all F-86’s that served in Korea from the Individual Aircraft Record Cards (though some need to be added and subtracted, a few added net, I found, among those they classify as MiG losses).

The exchange ratio was higher v. the Chinese than Soviets, but also decidedly in favor of the F-86’s against the Soviet MiG’s. Against the best Soviet units in the April 1951-Feb ’52 period, late in which period the F-86’s were also the most heavily outnumbered as Chinese units came on line in serious numbers but a second F-86 group was just converting, the ratio was still around 2.5-3 v the Soviets; more like 4-5 v. the Soviets for the whole war (9-10 v the Chinese and NK’s, 6 overall, all approx). So the F-86 and/or its pilots did have a decided advantage, though it can probably be endlessly debated how much of that advantage was one factor or another.

Joe