The VVS claimed over 3 times as many F-86 as total F-86 losses to all causes in the Korean war. That includes F-86s that crashed taking off, that collided with other US aircraft, that reported technical failures before getting into combat, that were shot down by ground fire within sight of UN troops & with no MiGs within a few hundred km
I’m sure there are many cases where a single downing might be attributed to 2 pilots (counted as 2) or where another type of aircraft was reported as a Sabre kill or where VVS and PLAAF / NKAF figures overlap, but there is no way the claimed number is 3 x times bigger than the actual one.
What you fail to recognise are the HUGELY exagerated USAF figures who had the political/propaganda need to inflate enemy losses and explain a LARGE number of it’s own losses as “non-combat” losses.
It was the US who initially claimed a 20 : 1 ratio then went down to 13 : 1 then revised to 10 : 1, now you’re saying 4 : 1 while I’ve seen some recent US sources going down to less than 2 : 1 (350 (migs) vs 270 (sabres) )
As you know, the Soviet participation in the war was a secret and they had no reason to inflate their numbers for propaganda purposes since their participation wasn’t acknowledged until the 1990’s….40 years after the event.
Look at KORWALD. It’s an almost complete list of US aircraft losses in Korea, & it’s online, free. It includes damaged, & some aircraft appear several times, having been damaged, repaired, flown again, damaged – etc.
……
The way to eliminate that overcounting is to go through the cross-checking process I’ve described, but you insist that the claims before checking are the accurate ones, not the checked figures.
KORWALD is NOT the bible and has been proven wrong on many occassions.
Here’s just a few examples (who knows how many more like this there are)
October 6 1951: the famous F-86A 49-1319, the one captured and taken to the USSR, is wrongly credited in KORWALD database to ´AAA fire´, despite all the evidence showing that it was actually shot down by the MiG-15 Ace Yevgeni Pepelyayev (there are guncamera pics + the personal account of his co-pilot, Capt. Gill Garrett, asserting he was riddled by a red-nosed MiG). – blatant lie!
October 8 1951: according to USAF records, the F-84E of Earl Harbour was hit by AAA when strafing a target, and during the return flight, suddenly exploded in mid-air.
The Soviet records show that 2 MiG-15s of 196 IAP, Col. Yevgeni Pepelyayev and his wingmen Aleksandr Ryzhkov intercepted a group of F-84s that day, and Pepelyayev attacked the trailing Thunderjet, which blew up in mid-air after a few hits of 37 mm. Pepelyayev said that the remaining F-84s kept on flying as if nothing had happened, but due to the proximity of the Yellow Sea and the Soviet prohibition of flying over the sea, Pepelyayev and Ryzhkov disengaged. The rest of Harbour’s flight simply did not notice the Migs and thought that Harbour’s plane was shot down by flak and credited the loss to the AAA.
May 15 1952: the F-86E of Col. Walker Mahurin was hit by flak after strafing some trucks. Mahurin asserted that he was hit two more times by flak later and forced to bail out and he became a POW. But he also asserted that his cockpit filled with smoke and fire after the first hit. In that same area and time the MiG-15 pilot Major A.R.Prudnikov (821 IAP, 190 IAD) reported that he saw one F-86 leaving a trail of smoke, he attacked it and shot it down. It’s clear that the unfortunate Mahurin, with his cockpit full of smoke, did not notice Prudnikov’s MiG coming in, and when he was hit for the last time, he took for granted that it was flak again.
September 9 1952: USAF admitts the loss of 3 F-84s downed by MiGs of 726 IAP (Jimmy Alkire, William Suffern and Warren O’Brien). But besides that the Soviets provided the serial numbers of 9 more F-84s (BuNos 51-766, 52-798, 51-113, 51-464, 51-451, 47-551, 51-318 and 52-191).
September 14 1952: Besides the admitted loss of the F-86E of Paul Turner by the MiG pilot M. Chumachenko (878 IAP), the Soviets reported 3 more shootdowns, all of them with tail codes found in the wreckages: FU-727, FU-725 and FU-555.
October 6 1952: One MiG-15 pilot of the 726 IAP, V. Smirnov, claimed to shot down 2 F-86s. According to Seidov/German book ´Red Devils over the 38th Parallel´, the guncamera check shows that such victories were scored at point blank range – 30 meters or less. Addittionally, the Soviets provided 2 tail codes of the wreckages: ´FU-202´ and ´FU-170´. No comment of such losses in KORWALD or other records. For this single combat action, Smirnov was awarded with the Red Banner medal
November 18 1952: According to USAF records, the F-86E of Jack Turberville (25 FIS) was lost due to a ´malfunction in the oxygen mask´. However, about at that same time and place the Soviets reported that a MiG-15 pilot of the 535 IAP, B. Siskov, fired against a Sabre at point black blasting it out of the sky, and returned to his airbase with debris of the Sabre imbedded into his MiG.
February 21 1952: the book ´Red Devils ove the 38th Parallel shows that the MiG-15 Ace Semen A. Fedorets (913 IAP) scored his third kill when he shot down one F-86 which had shot down the MiG of S.I.Babich. The Sabre pilot bailed out and was captured, his name was Vincent Stacy. The US records shows that Stacy scored a MiG kill that day (shared with R. Carter) but neither KORWALD database nor other American source mention his Sabre as a loss or him as a POW. Apparently USAF ´forgot´ this particular loss.
June 5 1953: USAF records mention the loss of the F-86F of Flt. Lt. James Ryan (16 FIS) over the ´MiG Alley´ due to the engine suddenly ´exploding in mid-air´ and Ryan bailed out. But Seidov/German book shows that at the same time a flight of MiG-15s of the 224 IAP took by surprise a CAP of Sabres, and Sr.Lt. Grigorii Berelidze forced the pilot to eject. So either Ryan probably didn’t notice the MiGs until it was too late due to the ´uppercut´ tactic used by Russians at that time and thought it was an engine failure or it was an intentional miss-atribution of a loss by the USAF.
You fail to recognise that the battle over “Mig Alley” went through various stages. In some periods, the VVS was dominant achieving ratios of 2-3 : 1 while at other times the USAF had similar kill ratios. From late 1950 till 1952, the only times the USAF had such kill ratios was when veteran units were being rotated back to the USSR leaving only inexperienced units to hold the line.
From late 1952 onwards, VVS participation was reduced significantly and the PLAAF was the main force. With some exceptions, the PLAAF were mainly novices and the USAF had a favourable kill ratio in 1953 but nothing like the 15 : 1 or 10 : 1 non-sense.
I can only assume that you are blinded by your national pride.
I’m not Russian
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