@glitterbag,
glitterbag wrote:Oral is claiming the Soviet pilots were more involved in the air battles than they actually were.
I am gauging their participation correctly.
glitterbag wrote:Yes they do, but they are also crafty enough not to insert large numbers into conflicts to hopefully conceal their activities as long as possible before the eventual detection by NATO or the US. That could catapult them into a conflict they may not be ready to begin.
I guess that depends on what "large numbers" means. They inserted enough that there were nearly as many Russian air aces in the war as there were American air aces.
glitterbag wrote:You unknowingly have just assured oral that the Russians kicked the US pilots butts in North Korea. No one is saying the Soviets then or the Russians now are not formidable, certainly I hope we never have to enter another world war to see if we (US) can still survive. But since you are the flyer here, you can be the authority that oral is looking for to confirm his views on US military capability.
I am not looking for confirmation of my views. I already understand that I am correct.
@oralloy,
Check the declassified DOD sites. There are quite a few.
@glitterbag,
glitterbag wrote:One other thing George, I was addressing Korea, not Vietnam or Libya. I didn’t think oral had claimed the Russians kicked our butts in Vietnam and Libya, I’m pretty sure the topic was the supiority of Russian pilots in Korea.
I initially included the Vietnam War. But when I went looking for sources, I found that my belief that there had been a heavy Soviet air presence in North Vietnam appeared to be in error. After that I focused only on the Korean War.
@glitterbag,
Well I hope Oralloy isn't using my post to suggest that Soviet Pilots were a major presence in North Korean air ops - they weren't, rather there were a couple of dozen reports of Russian speaking pilots during that long war. In any event no one kicked our ass in Korean Air Operations. Initially the MIG 15s (of which there were many - some flying from airfields in China ) were both a surprise and a serious threat. Once the F-86 drivers figured out their slow roll and pitch rates at high speed ( and that took only a month or so) we racked up a high (12 0r 13 to 1 ) against them and sustained it throughout the war. Individual USAF pilots also shot up several of the "protected" airfields in China.
@georgeob1,
Thank you for finally seeing it. it. You were so eager to complete what you assumed was my incomplete narrative, you jumped in to correct your assumptions of what I was trying to tell Oral. Then you round it out by proclaiming how absolutely aghast you are of my lack of knowledge on two other conflicts that no one, absolutely no one was talking about.
If you have never read Oral (and I can't blame you if you don't) Oral now believes you corrected my errors about the swarms of massive numbers of Soviet pilots flying all over Korea kicking our ass. He seems to forgotten China, but thats an other issue, isn't it. He has absolutely zilch zero zip clue about how many resources, and people, skills, training, the leadership, the sciences, tactics everything that has to be cobbled together to engage in a major conflict.
I was simply defending our pilots in Korea, he simply can't get his hands around it because of his worry over the 2nd amendment, It blinds him.
@glitterbag,
I wasn't eager to see anything, but I'm glad that confusion is cleared up. I'll confess that I only scanned oralloy's post. I also thought the thread, including posts of others, had become far too focused on the technical merits of the respective nation's aircraft, to the exclusion of other equally or more important factors - some which I spent a long time learning.
Every military aircraft has strong and weak points relative to the capabilities of those of it's potential foes. In a few cases one completely outclasses the other and little else is important. However history reveals such cases are few. In most cases the doctrine governing the use if their aircraft by commanders and pilots, together with their adaptability and creativity, is a good deal more determinative of the outcome. Examples in history abound.
One of those few cases was the F6F Hellcat. Based solely on "kills," it was the most effective American naval fighter in World War II. I believe I am correct in saying that it had more than 5200 kills. It completely outclassed the A6M Zero, but not necessarily in flight performance--there they were roughly a match, with a slight advantage to the Zero. In 1942, during the Midway campaign, the Japanese launched a rather feeble effort at the Aleutian islands, which fooled no one as a diversion, because the naval codebreaker Joe Rochefort had established that Japan's First Air Fleet was going to attack Midway, and hope to lure in the American carriers.
But one Japanese pilot landed his Zero on Akutan Island. They had orders never to let their aircraft fall into enemy hands, even if it meant a power dive into the ocean. It was acceptable to land and set fire to the aircraft, which appears to have been what this pilot intended. However, he landed on soft ground and the plane flipped, killing the pilot. The Americans discovered the Akutan Zero, and the Army Air Corps shipped it back to thee lower 48, repaired it, and let their test pilots (and one assumes, Navy test pilots also, after all, Navy pilots found it) fly the aircraft. They discovered failings which Grumman noted when designing the Hellcat, and discovered that the ailerons froze up over 200 knots, so that the way to escape a Zero on your tail was to power dive, and then roll right (the Zero did not roll right as fast as it could roll left).
But the superiority of the Hellcat was the same thing which made the P38 Lockheed Lighting deadly to Zeros and all other Japanese aircraft. It was incredibly simple, and from my viewpoint, idiotic on the part of Japanese aircraft designers. They achieved high performance and long range because they did not have armor for the engine compartment or the cockpit, and they did not have self-sealing fuel tanks. Even when the Zero outperformed the Wildcat, and shot one down, the survival of the American pilot was highly probable. Just as the American Volunteer Group leaned flying P40s in China, if you could put your guns on a Japanese aircraft, he was, literally, toast. Both the Navy and the Army Air Corps used API ammunition, armor-piercing incendiary. If an American pilot could put just a few rounds in the engine compartment, that sucker was going down in flames. When the Hellcat replaced the Wildcat, the Japanese shot down very few Navy fighters. The Hellcat kill ratio was 19:1.
@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:Well I hope Oralloy isn't using my post to suggest that Soviet Pilots were a major presence in North Korean air ops
No. I am backing that up with my own facts.
georgeob1 wrote:they weren't, rather there were a couple of dozen reports of Russian speaking pilots during that long war. In any event no one kicked our ass in Korean Air Operations.
37 Soviet pilots became aces in the Korean War.
georgeob1 wrote:Initially the MIG 15s (of which there were many - some flying from airfields in China ) were both a surprise and a serious threat. Once the F-86 drivers figured out their slow roll and pitch rates at high speed ( and that took only a month or so) we racked up a high (12 0r 13 to 1 ) against them and sustained it throughout the war. Individual USAF pilots also shot up several of the "protected" airfields in China.
Doing good against poorly-trained North Korean pilots is not the same as doing good against a Soviet ace.
@glitterbag,
glitterbag wrote:Oral now believes you corrected my errors about the swarms of massive numbers of Soviet pilots flying all over Korea kicking our ass.
No. I believe that I proved you wrong all on my own.
And I have.
glitterbag wrote:He seems to forgotten China, but thats an other issue, isn't it.
I've mentioned China in every place where it is relevant to the discussion.
glitterbag wrote:He has absolutely zilch zero zip clue about how many resources, and people, skills, training, the leadership, the sciences, tactics everything that has to be cobbled together to engage in a major conflict.
I understand these issues better than you do.
glitterbag wrote:I was simply defending our pilots in Korea, he simply can't get his hands around it because of his worry over the 2nd amendment, It blinds him.
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with Barack Obama's treasonous sabotaging of the US Air Force.
@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:Every military aircraft has strong and weak points relative to the capabilities of those of it's potential foes. In a few cases one completely outclasses the other and little else is important. However history reveals such cases are few.
A plane with little air-to-air capability, like the F-35, will be such a case when it comes to air combat. It'll be a terrific ground attack plane though.
I guess there is still a chance that they will find a way for it to detect enemy planes in the air. But I prefer to see them actually demonstrate this capability before I assume that it exists. So far the only thing that the F-35 has demonstrated is an
inability to detect enemy planes in the air.
georgeob1 wrote:In most cases the doctrine governing the use if their aircraft by commanders and pilots, together with their adaptability and creativity, is a good deal more determinative of the outcome. Examples in history abound.
What happens when enemy pilots are just as well-trained and skilled as American pilots?
@Setanta,
As a result of light structural weight, achieved by eliminating armor and self-sealing fuel tanks, the Zero had a lower turning radius than any of the US aircraft you listed. It also had firepower to equal that of the best U.S. fighters. The higher powered, better armored US aircraft could out accelerate the Zero in a dive, and both the F6F and the P-38 ( and the F4U) had a higher top speed. Initially (the F6F wasn't introduced until late 1942) the Zero was a serious challenge to all of our combat aircraft because of its superior maneuverability and frankly the better training of the initial cadre of Japanese pilots. Later U.S. pilots learned never to attempt to out turn a Zero in a dogfight, and instead use their better top speed and accelerating capabilities to make individual passes ( effective tactics to shake a Zero off your tail were either to dive and open the separation, or pull up into a vertical climb and wait for the Zero to stall and drop into a dive - then you were on his tail).
Another often ignored factor was the Japanese practice of keeping their pilots in combat squadrons - in contrast the US practice of recycling at least 10% of squadron pilots annually back to the pilot training commands. A result was that, after the Battle of Midway, the Japanese had lost nearly all of their front line carrier pilots, and their replacements arrived with little current tactical knowledge or skill. In contrast U.S. replacements were far better trained for the then current situation. One consequence, after Midway, in the Battle for the Marianas, US carrier aircraft shot down ~420 Japanese aircraft with a loss of only ~15 of ours.
The essence of all this is that the situation was never static - tactics and the people involved varied over time and the battles that occurred. U.S forces (necessarily) planned on a long war of attrition and were quick to learn from early engagements. Japan ( also necessarily) planned on a short war and inducing the U.S. to negotiate a peace. Both lost ships, aircraft, and trained people, but the U.S. was better able and more effective at replacing them.
To a large extent these factors applied in Korea as well. Not so much in Vietnam. The NVA was far more adaptable and learned very quickly to defeat, in sequence a series of our tactics and techniques for jamming their SAM guidance radars. They also exploited the various LBJ/McNamara follies and USAF's rather fixed tactics in their F-105 strikes ( we lost about 350 of them in the war). The Navy fared a bit better in this area, mostly because we were less centrally organized and every carrier air wing had it's own tactics and doctrine..
@oralloy,
I believe you are ill-informed and don't really understand the stuff you are writing about here.
@georgeob1,
History records that there were 37 Soviet fighter aces in the Korean War.
@oralloy,
I don't know what is your source for the "facts" you keep repeating, and I also know, from a great deal of personal experience, that they don't amount to much anyway. It appears you lack any experience or practical understanding of this subject - and several others you write about here..
@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:I don't know what is your source for the "facts" you keep repeating,
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_War_flying_aces#Soviet_Union
georgeob1 wrote:and I also know, from a great deal of personal experience, that they don't amount to much anyway.
What doesn't amount to much? Skilled enemy pilots? Facts?
georgeob1 wrote:It appears you lack any experience or practical understanding of this subject - and several others you write about here..
Your perceptions are flawed. I completely understand everything that I write about.
@oralloy,
If all you have is Wikipedia you don't have the entire story. You should take some quality time and look up the declassified records/reports from AFSS. You will have to read more than a paragraph because these will be the original reports not Cliff Notes. I realize very few people like you have the patience to do extensive reading of incredibly complex history regarding US military actions, but it can be compelling.
@georgeob1,
The technique you describe--climb until your opponent stalls, then roll over and get on their tail--may have been inadvertently taught to the navy fliers by the Zero pilots themselves. That was exactly the trick the Zeros had used on the Wildcats. In October, 1943, Ens. Robert Duncan shot down the first Zero splashed by a Hellcat. Minutes later, a Japanese ace is diving on one of Duncan's buddies, so Duncan fired a burst, even though he was out of range, and the Zero peeled off. Now they got in a turning race, and finally, the Zero peppers his tail with cannon fire. Then, to Duncan's amazement, the Zero went vertical. This was what Zero pilots had learned to do with the Wildcat. But now, Duncan got on his tail with a super-charged, 2200 hp engine. When the Japanese pilot rolled over, expecting to see a stalled-out opponent, Duncan was right behind him, and he splashed his second Zero of the day.
For whatever motivated them, I think the Japanese were mistaken in their aircraft design protocol. Shoot down an American aircraft, and the pilot had a really good probability of survival. Shoot down a Japanese aircraft, and the pilot was very likely dead before the wreckage hit the water. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, also known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, the Japanese lost more than 430 carrier-based aircraft, and about 200 land-based aircraft. About 95% of the aircrew were killed. The USN lost about 125 aircraft, but their total dead for the Battle of the Philippine Sea were about 110--and most of those were killed when a battleship was damaged by Japanese aircraft. About 90% of American aircrew were unscathed when shot down. At the end of the battle, the Japanese only had enough aircrew left to man a light escort carrier.
By the way, I agree with you about rotating air crew, and using them for instructors. That's what happened to Ens. Duncan, and he had just gone back on the carrier flight line when the attack on Wake Island was launched and Duncan got his two Zeros.
@Setanta,
I agree. For a landlubber you do know and understand a lot of this stuff. You're right about the vertical maneuver. Before the introduction of the F6F (in late 1942, and after the Battle of Midway) this wasn't an effective tactic - the F4F "wildcats" had a lower Power to weight ratio than the Zero and the F4F would stall or drop his nose first. With the F6F that situation was reversed, and it was they that won the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" . The combination of a new U.S. Navy fighter and the loss of all the experienced Japanese Pilots at Midway made the difference. After the Marianas the Japanese were putting pilots with fewer than a couple of hundred flight hours into combat, and it showed in the outcomes. Ultimately this was a factor in the subsequent Japanese decision to use them as Kamikazes.
The vertical maneuver is an interesting tactic. Done correctly, the aircraft wing is at zero "g", and the aircraft will simply stop its climb, without a wing stall, enabling the pilot to control the reversal with his rudders. The trick is to keep the enemy in sight in your mirrors and reverse just after he does. It worked just as well for F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam.
I became obsessed with fighters when I was an adolescent, first with the fighters of the Great War, and then fighters of the Second World War. Aircraft development was moving fast in those days. In about 1930, the Italians has the most advanced air force in the world. By 1940, they were so hopelessly behind, that a handful of Spitfires, launched from carriers and landed on Malta, would wipe out flights of dozens of Italian fighters sent out on hopeless fighter sweeps to clear Malta for the bombers. Only three WWII fighters retained their superiority over a period of years--the Bf109, the Spitfire and the Zero. For the rest of them, it was an extraordinary fighter which was not obsolete within a year or two of going into production. The big advantage for the United States was the number of aircraft design and manufacture companies.
