davebender
1st Lieutenant
What sort of gun sight were the MiG-15s using? If MiG-15s couldn't hit a B-29 then how did they expect to hit a much smaller fighter aircraft moving twice as fast?
Komets in the skies above Germany
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Shortround6
Major General
Is has to do with rates of closure. A Mig chasing an F-86 might actually have a speed difference meaning the range says relatively constant. range may only change a few dozen yards per second. even a stern chase on a B-29 could mean a range change of around 150yds per second.
davebender
1st Lieutenant
That goes a long way towards explaining why so few F-86s were shot down in Korea even though the MiG-15 was superior in firepower, ceiling, acceleration, climb and turning.
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- #25
Sagittario64
Airman 1st Class
The MiG-15 was actually a reworked Focke-Wulf Ta.183, right?
Thanks for the links.
Rudi Glogner seems like a good fellow. I'm sure he'd be genuinely happy to know that his Mosquito was able to return to base. I'm also sure he'd be genuinely unhappy to learn its crew were killed in a takeoff accident a couple of weeks later. Given TV's proclivities for creative editing, it wouldn't surprise me if he were already aware of both those facts.
The Mossie in question was a PR machine, so this bumpf about dogfighting a heavily-armed Mossie is completely inaccurate.
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davebender
1st Lieutenant
It appears to me both the MiG-15 and F-86 were influenced by the Ta-183 swept wing airframe. However I don't think either aircraft was a modified copy of the German jet.
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- #28
Sagittario64
Airman 1st Class
yes, but could the 163 pilot know that it was a reconnaissance mossie? youre traveling quite fast, so specific identification seems pretty hard
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- #29
Sagittario64
Airman 1st Class
could you give me another source for that 163/mossie encounter?
PM me your email addy and I'll send you one.
Edit - As the Mossie was on its own, in daylight, at high altitude, I guess Glogner was clear it was a PR machine. IIRC he doesn't mention armament in his interview. Also, the encounter was near Leipzig, which the USAAF doesn not appear to have raided that day. Some of that's from memory, will double-check.
Edit - As the Mossie was on its own, in daylight, at high altitude, I guess Glogner was clear it was a PR machine. IIRC he doesn't mention armament in his interview. Also, the encounter was near Leipzig, which the USAAF doesn not appear to have raided that day. Some of that's from memory, will double-check.
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American superiority in Korea was largely brought about through many of their pilots having seen combat during WW2, so they were experienced, whereas the Korean and to an extent the Russian pilots were not. Pilots like Col Gabreski, who said that the F-86's gunsight wasn't as useful as it could have been in combat, he used to stick a bit of chewed gum on the windscreen and named it his "gum sight". Early experience with the unit proved that it had its weaknesses and it broke down a lot.
Most certainly not. Davebender's right, there was certainly German influence in researching swept wing technology (all the Allied countries developing combat aircraft studied German research into this area post war), but the design of the airframe was carried out by the Soviet research institutes. The MiG-15 was powered by an unlicenced copy (Klimov RD-45) of the Rolls Royce Nene engine though. The prototype was, in fact powered by a British built Nene.
I'd like a copy of this too please, if I may, mhuxt; I have a book with a description of the attack from the British crew's combat report:
P/O R.M. Hays and Flt/Sgt M. Phillips: "Gotha and Lutzkendorf targets photographed then attacked by three Me 163s. Aircraft shot up and landed at Lille..."
P/O R.M. Hays and Flt/Sgt M. Phillips: "Gotha and Lutzkendorf targets photographed then attacked by three Me 163s. Aircraft shot up and landed at Lille..."
Arossihman
Airman
Not disputing this post merely clarifying my memory.....the soviets not the americans captured designs of the ta-183 right? The americans and or british captured flyable examples of the 262 correct? Now going completely off the reservation, did they ever build the trideflueggel? my spelling is probably way off on that one!
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Sagittario64
Airman 1st Class
Triebflugeljager
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
According to Wiki
"The Triebflügel had only reached wind-tunnel testing when the Allied forces reached the production facilities. No complete prototype was ever built."
Focke-Wulf Triebflügel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Triebflügel had only reached wind-tunnel testing when the Allied forces reached the production facilities. No complete prototype was ever built."
Focke-Wulf Triebflügel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Soviet pilots certainly had WW2 combat experience with many of them aces in the GPW.
From: [email protected] (Al Bowers)
These are from Jon Eckel and David Lednicer, respectively.
16 Soviet pilots of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps made ace. The highest scoring was Evgeni Pepelyaev, with 23 confirmed kills (12 F-86s, 6 F-80s, 4 F-84s, and one F-94. Most of the Soviet pilots that were sent to Korea were veterans or aces of World War II. Ivan Kozhedub, a 3-time Hero of the Soviet Union with 62 German kills to his credit, was one of those sent.
The 64th was secretly sent to fight in the Korean War in Nov 1950. They did quite well, shooting down 1,300 UN aircraft of all types while losing only 345 of their own. MiG-15s piloted by Soviets outscored the F-86 guys at around 2:1. However, MiGs in the hands of North Korean and Chinese pilots were knocked down at something like 13:1 by the USAF. There doesn't seem to be any Chinese or Korean aces.
I don't have all the details of this but there is supposedly a lot of good info on this in the Oct 1990 through May 1991 issues of Aviatiya i Kosmonavtika. If there is anyone who can read Russian who has access to these, I'd like to know more details. The 28 December 1991 edition of Krasnaya Zvezda should contain some info, too.
http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/smallarms/russianpilots.htm
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
Take those numbers with a grain of salt. Those Soviet pilots grossly overclaimed some of their victories. They were being paid for every UN plane they knocked down while any negative combat reports were dealt with a heavy hand. I'm sure JoeB will jump in here.
For what its worth...
Russian Aces of the Korean War - MiG-15 Pilots versus USAF F-86s
For example Yevgeny Pepelyaev was credited with over 22 victories but claimed he was "absolutely sure" of only six of his victories, of which he had seen only two of the aircraft crash into the ground. This was referenced in Werrell's, "Sabres Over MiG Alley: The F-86 and the Battle for Air Superiority in Korea" according to Wiki.
I think I posted on an old thread where the Soviets claimed the entire amount of F-86s that rotated through Korea as well as every F-80 deployed to Korea.
This is from a Russian site. Take if for what its worth
Korean Air War
Against the UN, the Kill ratio was probably between 2:1 to 3:1 depending on who's numbers you want to believe. Throw in the Chinese and N. Koreans and you're probably looking about 5:1 to 6:1.
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Gixxerman
Senior Airman
The Mig 15 is quite different to the Ta-183.
There are some superficial similarities but the 2 planes are like chalk and cheese.
If you want to see what the Ta-183 might have become had the war dragged on long enough (and Germany had the materials fuel to fly them) then look at what Tank did in Argentina with his design.
The FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II is what the Ta-183 might have been......and it is plainly no Mig 15.
Having said that there's a great shot in one of the 'Luftwaffe Secret Projects' books (the fighter one; P137) which talks about the Focke-Wulf Messerschmitt wing and shows the Mig 15 wing the F86 Sabre wing together, clearly implying each was heavily based on German design.
Undoubtedly the German influence is there but it would be simply wrong to claim the German work was lifted whole-scale and both Russian American engineers did little with that basis.
I don't think it's going too far to say that those wings, especially as they ended up, with their various sub-systems (with powered controls etc) are in a more advanced state than the Germans ever had them.
Not that that's so surprising in a Germany collapsing around their aerospace engineers.
But I think it would be churlish to deny the German research provided a sound basis with sweep as a deliberate design feature (and not an accidental CoG thing, as it was in the Me 262) undoubtedly a great step forward.
