a lightweight discussion of WW2 aerial ops and the like

[r16]

my internet fame is kinda related to the Ault Report . In the heady days when Lockmart trolls would viciously attack and the F-35 was still free of encumbarance by officially accepted reports ı had the misfortune of implying that report had an addendum with an higher classification of secrecy . Called Operations in and beyond Tom Tiddler's Ground . Which is the Vietnamese-Chinese border and regularly overflown by the Vietnamese MiGs escaping the more numerous and at least as capable American fighters . The Chinese claims and complaints and probably a true assessment of their actual casualties were likely provided by people who could actually talk to the Commies , but just don't ask .

such a capability would be the envy of many and a reason for American after American kicking the door in and demanding complete control and having already prepared a long list of sabotages to be carried out against the Commies . Americans were like amazing in the 50s , ı hear , regularly embrassing their British "guides" . Umpteenth time explanations that the respect commanded was only due to a providing an honest postal service between people who hated each other yet somehow needed the beginning of some sort of a contact would go nowhere . Americans would then prepare further lists of Turkish Commies . Refusal of recruitment in hostile countries was treason enough , refusal to poison wells in Crimea or starting fires in Kazakhistan was simply too much .

broughton jumped right in . He was a rising star in USAF . He couldn't understand how people could dare defy him . Chats with Americans who "knew" gave him an "heads-up" . He had his own "tales" to tell . During the Korean War he had run the tests of an Oerlikon rocket system . After Washington declined to buy , the Swiss naturally sold it to the Russians and stuff . Broughton had a very nice personal experience to add to the mix . The mix the hawks for WW III in the 1960s could well use . After the Russians were proven chickens during the Cuban Crisis of 1962 . Olds had nothing about the Turkish angle , he was merely running against the limitations of Washington and McNamara's attrition warfare instead of a full World War . Russians would soon forget how scared they had been in '62 ; they were gaining confidence with each day America failed to defeat some bunch of Asians in Black pajamas . They would find heart and solace in the Vietnamese and would fire back , instead of immediate surrender , after the USAF dropped a couple of nukes out of the blue .

there is much talk on how the Americans would have wiped out North Vietnam if Johnson had let them . With much hate spewed on the fact that (for an example) no attacks could be carried out inside a 30 mile radius circle with Hanoi at its centre . Well , it took until December '66 or so for the US to field the jamming pods to enable its aircraft to penetrate the area . The pods were limited in number , then only enough for the 105s . When an F-105 crashed the two pods it carried were recovered , immediately flown to the US and with the parts that could be saved from their wreckage one complete example was assembled , to be immediately flown back to Vietnam again . December 66 was when the '105s started penetrating the heart of North Vietnam , their F-4 escorts had no pods to avoid SAM fire and they kept out . And the MiGs came up with a vengeance , they could hurt American jets somewhat . Before more pods were produced for the Phantoms .

broughton's account somewhere above is directly aimed at an American officer in the USAF , a friend of Turkey as was and somewhat doubtful about Commies and their reach in Turkey . An officer that would be charged with influence in the production of the pods . So that each pod would have an individual signature . So that the traitor in American ranks could tell his Turkish friends on which plane Broughton was flying . So that Russians could be informed . So that Christians could be reminded about the unfinished business of the Crusades . The loss of Don Asire was perfectly "understandable" , he had led the previous attack and signals intelligence had implied he was Broughton . When the places had changed on the fateful day , the Master Mig Driver had not even bothered to look around and had gone down straight on the target with assumption that he was the American atttachee that had solved the intricate mystery . And of course Olds would kill the murderer on January 2, 1967 .

the tale of Don Asire has of course caused mayhem locally . For the first place , ı even made it kinda clear that it was made up . The suspected Russian was first a SAM battery commander credited with 6 kills in 10 engagements . That made him an "ace" which didn't much suit the Americans , the victors of the Cold War , so they turned him into a MiG pilot with just 3 kills . Two EB-66s which he couldn't have killed because the claimed dates didn't match any official US lists . And Don Asire whom could have been saved by Broughton if Asire had not panicked ... The Wikipedia article has this rather long document that claims the Russians named the guy and showed a photo of him in some joint investigation into the MIA affairs . It's 1990s and Russians feel compelled to join the justification . The justification for 'stan . Because Americans have been killed in conspiracy , by conspiracy ... So we have a guy who didn't exist in the first place but was killed by Olds and stuff in 1967 but still available to join anniversary meetings in the 1990s and the photos kinda imply he looks good for a zombie . A cookie for the first one who spots the joke in that document , too ...

that's far too much for local discussion . Instead it's something else . ı had to post in CFC to squash rumours that ı actually knew actual aliens and was an actual space traveller in UFOs . This time it's assumed one of the oldies is Yzb. Volkan like ... Troublesome ; as Volkan's fists were as damaging as [heavy] machine gun bullets when it came to that . No , that Turkish comic series do not relate to any guy . The series is not even Turkish in the first place . With entire stories taken from Buck Danny , possibly with painting Buck's blond hair black . As such none of the guys seemingly in vogue today destroyed SAM batteries on Cyprus, nuked a mercenary outfit attempting to start a nuclear war between Red China and Russia, discovered a female Chinese agent onboard Skylab and stopped her from nuking the world, before or after catching a crazy MiG-25 pilot with biological doom of the human race in a vial in his hand, flew P-80s and A-5 Vigilantes and Cougars , F-100s in Africa against Drakens, discovered Atlantis with a West German clown in tow after coming back from yet another mission in space nor combined forces with Conan the Cimmerian and Wolverine to save the world from some trouble ı have already forgotten .

though the Americans truly hate the story where the Russians offer to sell MiGs and the lot after the American weapons embargo of the 1970s . Trapped by the convention and stuff the hapless Americans have been made to listen again and again to how the flier guy found himself in deep Kimchi while sampling a two-seat Flogger and the Russian instructor was indeed a fast thinker to save the plane and the lot and the flier guy wowing hell with the 23s and how he would never buy them . How the Russians developed the G variants and how the flier still refused to budge and declared only Fitters would do ! See , there is nothing to be concerned about , it's not real . ı was an idiot to think the MiG-25 was entirely copied from the F-15 after reading one such episode and looked with disbelief at all those hundreds of pictures that purported to show the Foxbat for like 10 years between the ages of 10 to perhaps 18 ... It ain't real , just copy those people who sat in the gardens of the bus garage of the Municipality and laughed at me and my supposed protectors . When the Ergenekon conspiracy had secured the country for the brave . In case it's too much for you to stop play spy .

 

[r16]

time to discuss the Navy Mission , where the Phantom validated the entire concept of the dogfight-killing-missile-capacity . At a time where the relaxed "peacetime" conditions allowed careful maintenance and adequate spares supply . As such me raising my eyebrows at USAF Phantoms spotting bogeys at 33 miles is a bit unjustified . In optimum conditions the equipment ccould detect aircraft at a distance of 100 miles . A Vietnam veteran in the hard worked Marines , John Trotti is qouted in an Osprey title thus :

When we picked up brand new BuNo 152 series F-4Bs in 1965 you could lock up the planet Pluto with their radars. By March 1966, if the Goodyear blimp got in your way at five miles the RIO wouldn’t have had a clue.

the Radar Intercept Officer sits in the back , his vision to the front is blocked by his instruments and the pilot's seat . And if you are about to mention that the blimb could have rudimentary aspects of Stealth , it would still have a metal gondola and the engines . Ospreys tend to be the source of these series of posts and they are so repetitious with the stories of how the Phantom radars were not operating in engagements . With the possibility of failure in mind radars would be tested on friendly aircraft nearby and their status ascertained before entering North Vietnam . In one case , a crew tested theirs and declared it fully operational . Only to discover it wasn't so during combat , yet able to spot their tanker for aerial refuelling on return . Their radar had a range of one mile ... The USAF mission with their first MiG kills taking advantage of "prepared before" saw repeat checks on the radar . And the missiles . None of it much helped . While certainly not an expert on early day electronics and the with everything read from books , ı can only say the early electronics were not robust enough for aerial combat .

and of course the idea seems a "foregone conclusion" that the first Navy kills were also "prepared beforehand" . Though considering the lead RIO would be a commander of Top Gun later on , let's say this was kinda more supportable . We have all heard there's a guy called Clausewitz , who probably died before ı was even born . And he said that war is the continiuation of Politics by other means . For the Vietnamese , war was a very necessary part of their politics . Their country was divided and the South -utterly corrupt- was entirely antagonastic to the North . Communist cadres of which might not have been a shining example of humanist attitudes but at least they were trying to improve their lot . Communists had by then learned that Revolutions seriously need economic success to measurably improve the living standarts of people . ı claim a lot of things , ı utter a lot of nonsense . One of which must be the claim that North gave up on the military conquest of the South in 1958 , while there must be hundreds of books with proof that the operations of the VC and stuff suggest the exact opposite . Eisenhower , while trying to reach a deal on Laos , never shied from reminding that he had a very tough fight with USAF over the attempts to use 3 nukes on the Viet Minh forces that besieged Dien Bien Phu . Especially Americans are welcomed to doubt that the Northern gameplan was waiting out until the people of the South could take it no more . While surrounding their center of gravity , North Vietnam proper , with rings of defence . Primarily by Communist movements all over the place so that Mao would never doubt Uncle Ho's revolutionary ardour and start an invasion , you know , to save all those peasants of entire Indochina from the Capitalist yoke .

camelot of the Sixties aka the Kennedy Administration was of the typical kind ; they saw weakness where Ike had seen strength and wisdom . Just like Dabya would make an invasion of Afghanistan his first priority , even more important than finishing the work that his father had started in Iraq ... About the time Bill Clinton took the oath as the President of the US . The prime goal of the US has been simply staying in Afganistan longer than the Russians did ; you don't see much change in the outcomes but it doesn't matter at all . The Vietnamese had defeated the French while the mineral wealth of Congo could wait ; the Belgians wouldn't suddenly grow fangs and wings to deny American corporations their place under the sun of merciless exploitation of Africa by the Whites . Washington thought American willpower had blunted Russian courage in Cuba while the exact reason for all that bluster , China's defeat of India had gone unpunished . China would be shown its place , by the defeat of its proxy , Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam .

chinese had shown they were extremely prone to help their proxies though . Their attempt at Korea might have been held back but the US population's ideas on a repeat of the stasis across the 38th Paralel might have been less than helpful for political aspirations . Combining that with McNamara program to conduct a general attrition of the entire Communist economies (by a little war here and there) is the reason of the Gradualism that would flourish under Johnson . After the assasination of Kennedy which was supposed to help with notions that Commies all over the world were real unhappy with the coup took out a strongman of South Vietnam and replaced the failure of governance with "proper" men that would secure the situation . Leading to the righteous justifcation of anything the US might have done . When Johnson set out with the bombing campaign he was dead serious of making sure that nobody would bomb a sh_thouse before asking him first . He had firsthand experience on how people could act out of bounds and almost wreck the entire US .

meanwhile the Commies of the North Vietnam were not exactly idle . They knew there could be war at any time and they needed lines of communications to where they would have to take the fight . South ... To prevent the assembly of a "Crusader" army that could reach out to the people of the North who would have bear a very heavy burden and pay a very big price when the US decided to fight Hanoi . The RVN could be very effective ; everybody hates invaders but the invaders could be quite literally the next of kin . Much preferable to live in poverty in a Capitalist country with a possibility of children becoming rich , than dying for Communism with knowledge the said children defiled and killed as well immediately afterwards . Oh , r16 is a commie apologist ? Am a Starfleet Admiral , am an apologist for things like Star Wars .

hence , the bridge over Song Ma was a wonder of the times or something . The North Vietnamese had blown the precedessor themselves , by colliding two trainloads of explosives in the middle . They knew they had to support operations in South Vietnam , they knew America would bomb every possible target to intedict their support for operations down South and the bridge had to be defended . By being extremely resilient to begin with .

 

[r16]

thanh Hoa was a very early target . Yet it was important enough for Hanoi to send its undertrained Air Force to battle . Extremely strong bridges last longer if enemy planes are not allowed to bomb it . After an attack on a Navy F-8 that rang Alarm bells throughout the Pentagon , see the next post for full response ... American aircraft had been overflying the North ; in 1964 a T-28 delivered to Hanoi by a Thai defector had shot down a cargo plane , probably supporting "Freedom Fighters" in the North . T-28 is a development of Mustang which could be flown by peasants with a little training , just like almost the entire range of WW II planes . Johnson had ordered overflights supporting God knows what and it falls to an Hungarian to write an Osprey title describing how
OPLAN 34-A had been approved in January 1964 by President Lyndon B Johnson, and it called for a 12-month programme of covert actions. Notably, OPLAN 34-A included the use of US Navy destroyers to perform coastal reconnaissance (codenamed DeSoto patrols) in the Gulf of Tonkin,with one or more aircraft carriers from the Seventh Fleet steaming close by to provide assistance if needed. South Vietnamese gunboats were also cleared to shell targets in the North Vietnamese panhandle.


In response, Ho Chi Minh gave the order, ‘Those who intrude into the Northern air space must be shot down’. By the summer the situation had become increasingly tense, following 202 intrusions in the first six months. On orders from President Johnson, the number of aircraft carriers in the South China Sea was steadily increased.

On 1 June PAVN Chief of Staff, Brig-Gen Van Tien Dung, ordered that the entire army be put on alert.

with mythology currently prevalent in Turkey , ı must say the 202 intrusions is quite a thing . Though this doesn't imply the North was blameless . Not having that many planes , Ho Chi Minh's private pilot took part in weapons supply drops down South ; helicopters would have been widely used but for the war and massive American air power presence in theater ... Americans still have 4 kills against An-2s , big biplanes with so much potential for covert action that the North Koreans used to field hundreds of them . Still , the American operations were far more visible . With America openly ready to fight with the North if they dared to return fire to the units of the South . Politics regularly need to prove one's bravery ; if the opposition can not dare , this means opposition's right to exist is forfeit .


Two month later, on 2 August, the destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731) came under attack from North Vietnamese torpedo boats while operating in territorial waters, and apparently assisting a covert South Vietnamese commando raid. This, and a reputedly fictitious second attack by torpedo boats two days later, resulted in Operation Pierce Arrow, a reprisal air raid on 5 August.

Pierce Arrow had been authorised by President Johnson in the wake of the Tonkin Gulf incident, the first wave of sorties being launched in the early afternoon of 5 August as soon as USS Constellation (CVA-64) joined USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) in the Tonkin Gulf. Both air wings flew a combined total of 67 sorties against North Vietnamese patrol boat bases at Hon Gai, Loc Chao and Quang Khe, destroying eight boats and damaging a further twenty-five. The petroleum-oil storage tanks at Vinh city were also struck, with the 90 per cent of the facility being destroyed.



ı was on a modelling site when ı actually kinda examined , on a strictly historical basis , on why Johnson failed to stop the "Night Battle"... While he had the inclination to be extremely wary of actual operations where he would be obligated to fight for real , instead for using the proxy way of bleeding the upstart Yellow Commies White . This must be around 2008 , when ı was happy , asking questions and stuff on this weird Turkish language forum , including the not very positively famous Johnson Letter of 1964 . And allowed to talk on it as well . Am expecting the readers of this particular thread to be somewhat familiar with my experiences over the years ... This was such a cool thing ... ı immediately linked the siege of Erenköy on Cyprus with the events , though a couple of what might follow was not known by me . Though Johnson knew it all ; he would laugh the loudest when every week or month JFK , bored with the tyrsts with Marilyn Monroe and the lot , would like order the delivery of some Turkish girl , some guy's sister or daughter , chosen at random from the catalogues long kept . A White House staffer would then type the demand and send it over to Pentagon and some American officer would tear the Presidential Order , throw it to the trash can and remind it wasn't that funny . When Barack Hussein came to Turkey on his first trip abroad as the POTUS and ordered the end of the country , ı understand , there was much laughter ... at Barack's audacity in trolling . Everybody agreed on the greatness of Ike's Folly in getting Turkey into NATO . Everybody tried hard to correct the wrongdoing , in 2016 some guy from Luxembourg says if Russia fights Turkey without striking Turkish land there will be no Article 5 to save us , you know this is like 52 years on . Barack Hussein is utterly spineless ; Kennedy had 15 000 advisors in Vietnam by the end of his Presidency ...

and of course , ı really enjoyed writing the part where Johnson almost had an heart attack when he heard that Ankara dared fighting back . Air attacks to break the siege was something , air attacks rarely hit anything . Especially when conducted by Turkish morons . There was talk of landing on Cyprus ! Johnson was just about to become the US President on whose tenure Muslims had dared to conduct amphibious landings on a Christian land or something and whatever ! Of course the US had previously taken specific care of denying such a capability in meaningful terms to Ankara , hence we would attempt to use the ferries of Istanbul , with kinda low draft . ı liked it even more when there was no issue to do a web search to find a reasonable photo so that ı could write "They are peaceful indeed..."

hence ı shamelessly steal this photo from the Cool Pictures thread .



ı believe it's part of a series of photos , because ı used one with similarly over-yellow background with the same over-mass of seagulls ; mine showed a "vapur" from the bows of the ship . When ı was sacked out of that modelling forum , possibly because of writing how old people like Fords and Hugheses of yore would like carry the likes of George Soroses of today like they would carry handkerchiefs (hence a negative comparision of greatness and stuff) the picture got also lost ... It would be neat to find the series ...

oh yeah ... Johnson and Vietnam . America went to actual war , instead of the cheap proxy kind , because the guy at the White House lost a fuse or two . And he so badly wanted to show the might of the US . Almost sexually desired to prove how lethal American weaponry could be against steamers and stuff that dared to conduct operations undesired by Washington . So what ? Johnson would knew people who allowed Pearl Harbour , all damage the USN got from the Tonkin Gulf Incident must be two fifty caliber slugs ...

 

[r16]

there was bombing .The landings got cancelled . Bombing served the purpose well enough . Johnson was unhappy enough . There's this confusion about whether the Greek response to the Turkish bombing involved aerial fighting and the results showed glaring inconstancies about West's prowess when it comes to controlling events . That Americans called the F-104 a fighter didn't make it absolute that the Greeks would turn behind Turkish jets and shoot them down . Actually what has Starfighter ever done in war ? The only time a Starfighter equipped force came on top happens to be Cyprus '74 and that not because it was us doin' the flying , but the other side didn't show up in the air .

it's actually an White man habit . Flying combat aircraft somehow requires an immense amount of ego -somehow failing to achieve success or getting bested hurts people so much . So they look for "White" enemies , if they can . The British took a lot of time to accept the Japanese could sink their capital ships ; it was either Tirpitz that got the Prince of Wales and Repulse . Or a thousand Japanese aircraft taking off from carriers . Considering the carrier pilots had already done so much damage in Pearl Harbour . Americans explained the slaughter of the unescorted torpedo-bombers in Midway with hints on the presence of German Bf-109's in action . Even with actual Russians fighting in Korea , the whiteness were assigned to the Honchos , the boss men who could fly well while the rest were merely Asiatics . And yes , the charge would now be a treacherous member of NATO having Russians onboard . Solution ? Threaten the said treacherous NATO member of no assistance when the Russians attack them ... Don't know why would Russians attack us , after providing such cover , but anything goes when it comes to conspiring our doom from the Oval Office .

what was even more unfortunate , in the mindless prolonging of the bloodbath , was that Johnson was very well informed in the fickle nature of aerial combat . 1942 was a bad year for the Americans and it would be awesome political clout for people like Johnson to appear at the frontlines . He duly made it to Southwestern Pacific to observe the grim realities of war , by taking part in a bombing run to Lae , then defended by a crack unit of Zero pilots . Actually or suspiciously , the plane to carry the future president of the US developed engine problems and turned back . While an aide of him was shot down in a B-26 , named by Wabash Cannonball , if am not mistaken by Saburo Sakai , the ranking Japanese ace to survive the WW 2 . Who , as you might known , was one of those pilots who kept fighting -after August 15, 1945 and ı don't mean against the Russians . Sakai mentions he was involved in the August 18 fight against B-32s ; (having renounced war totally) he was entirely passive to attempts that made him responsible for the loss of that B-26 in a deal , fortified by addition of kills he had never claimed in the first place . You know , there is such a charm in almost facing certain death at the hands of a Samurai of the Sky who was such a killing machine that he was one the very few Japanese sergeants and stuff promoted to become an officer for combat success . Or being the one of the only two Japanese soldiers and stuff given an important decoration while still alive . All coming to the bookstores of the US in 1964 , right about the Presidential elections . Sakai does a good job of portrayal of friends who were better than him ; or the guy that was always drunk and lived in a nearby brothel but managed to fly the Raiden well enough to survive the war . He would claim 360 kills only when totally drunk while close friends would keep it to 100 . Compared to Sakai's (Martin Caiden boosted) 60 .

johnson was extremely concerned at stuff like Honchos . He might well have been killed in WW II . That increased his awareness that the Yellow Race could raise pilots as good as the White man ... He badly wanted to avert any possibility of bringing in the Chinese as so-called Vietnamese fighter pilots . He desperately wanted to avoid a possibility of Russian actions that might humble the fine reputation of American air arms . He was extremely alert to any escalation ; made it even more obligatory for braver Americans to sneak behind the White House to strike blow after blow on the Reds to show that they were mere dogs ... The Reds were meant to accept the superiority of the Americans , period !

which made it inevitable that the Phantom's combat debut would be against the Chinese . Who promptly shot down one . With assurances that the VF-96 jet from Ranger was destroyed by friendly fire . Johnson was uber duber super duper spooked ...

 

[r16]

attacks on the bridge followed the first engagement ; they would make the bridge famous as the Dragon's Jaw . Inspired by the bends of river and widely publicized by the PR machine of Hanoi ... It had the strenght of a dragon and all the flak guns defending it would really spew fire . Navy attacks were constrained by the limited numbers of aircraft on the carrier decks . USAF took the lead . F-8s flying escort were surprised by the deployment of the MiGs , instead of being kept in China . USAF was ready for them , assembling some 80 aircraft for the task .

the Vietnamese came back , the bridge had to be protected . It's a sad story , if you will . USAF was still learning the ropes in assembling such large scale attacks ... South Vietnam was not that airfield rich in 1965 ; Thailand was hosting the F-105 force , bound the carry the brunt of attacks into North and the Thunderchiefs needed aerial refuelling to reach the target . Zinc flight had "timing problems with the tanker force" and were waiting for other planes to clear the area so that they could attack ; they were orbiting at a speed of 325 knots . Making them almost vulnerable to WW II fighters like Zero in diving passes . As you might remember from a previous post many planes on the same mission means mean many pilots talking on the same frequency . Zinc 1 and Zinc 2 didn't hear the warnings about the MiGs on the attack run . Zinc 3 was an ex-F-100 pilot , the day fighter of the USAF for the era , well versed in the use of guns . Zinc 4 was an F-105 gunnery instructor ...

but the thing is F-105 was bought as a nuclear bomber and USAF had tried a few times to get rid of the gun . The Thunderchief was meant to fly low to avoid radar detection of the Soviets if possible . Then to delay weapon system acquisition as much as possible if the detection avoidance failed so that radar guided flak would be unable to stop the F-105 from releasing the nuke . On the way back , the American pilot might have come upon a MiG or some worthwhile target that justified a strafing run . And take that out . The F-105 missions were all about destroying the war fighting capacity in the Warsaw Pact territory so that SAC bombers from England , Morocco , US proper and all those places ı don't even know about would find their way clear . As they flew on to destroy all those cities like Kiev and Moscow . As such nobody had paid much attention to the use of the gun . Which needed radar input for the gunsight and that was a mighty complicated operation to arrange in the cockpit . The gunnery instructor in Zinc 4 never had time to do it in time .

republic made its fighters big and cockpits were the envy of many . Starting with the P-47 . When Spitfire pilots in the RAF first saw the expanse and "luxury" , they joked the Thunderbolt pilot could avoid Luftwaffe fire by unstrapping and running around in the cockpit . With such pedigree , the F-105 cockpit came with an installed ashtray . So that the pilot could always blow himself up a bit with the pure oxygen he was supposed to breath ... Gunfire was an afterthought .

zinc 1 was hit bad in the first attack . Zinc 2 was then shot down . Zinc 3 was also damaged , flew hard maneouvres and got a MiG in his gunsight but he was so surprised by the action he failed to fire . Zinc 4 was supposed to fly wing on Zinc 3 anyhow . Zinc 1 flew to Da Nang , the combined USAF/Marine Phantom base but the plane was too damaged to risk a landing . Told to eject , Zinc 1's parachute failed to open .

they were escorted by 4 F100s though . This action happens to be USAF's debut of using AAMs in combat . The 2 Sidewinders missed . One of the MiGs was seen in a vertical dive and a different F-100 flight opened fire . The pilot claimed a victory and was denied .



Although [the American pilot] was confident that ‘his’ MiG could not have survived, he was only awarded a ‘probable’ kill because no one had seen a pilot eject or an aircraft crash. Requests to re-consider his claim were denied by the USAF, partly because President Lyndon Johnson had said that he did not want any MiGs to be shot down in case aerial engagements of this kind provoked North Vietnam’s Russian and Chinese sponsors.

a moment of "Oh, dear..." ? Makes sense only if applied to an early period when the MiGs were kept out of the fight ... As we will see shortly the Navy crews got Silver Stars instead of a shooting squad and a wall to stand in front of - on Johnson's orders ... And considering the requests were taking place at a time when he was flying a Wild Weasel F-105 ; a period when USAF had no trouble killing MiGs ...

it gets even better . The only VPAF pilot to survive claims all 3 of his wingmen were shot down by the F-105s !

Indeed, I was only able to escape through hard manoeuvring, but I lost contact with ground control in the process. Short on fuel, I had to land at the first possible opportunity, and I successfully put my MiG down in Ke Tam valley (Nghe An Province), but was immediately arrested by the locals – I was only able to regain my freedom after showing them my VPAF badge.

thanks to the Hungarian author who had full co-operation of the Vietnamese Air Force of the 1990s and stuff . Though am so prone to think that if he hadn't arrived at the Ke Tam Valley sans MiG , the locals would have given no problem with national insignia visible . OK , r16 makin' history again . No American pilot would ever turn down the chance to get the credit for a MiG kill , just ask one if you know one ... While the North Vietnamese are known for hoarding equipment in case Russians or Chinese made a deal with the Americans and stopped supplying Hanoi's war effort . They lost some 30 examples of early model MiG-21s to rust after hiding them in a cave with far too much humidity ... In 1965 , supply is assured : "Comrade, please more MiGs. These got destroyed."

today's summary : These posts do not claim Russians flew over Cyprus . Nor do they claim evil smellin' Turks were over there somewhere . And yes , the ranking Vietnamese ace has 9 kills and that's hardly my fault , right ?

correction to post # 259 : ı have read the Americans have recorded 5 cases of radar Atolls used in Vietnam .

 

[r16]

fighter pilot's is a demanding existance . Beginning right from the sheer speed of his mount . His ... Not only because the period under discussion is the 60s with no Her in the cockpits , but the proffession's image still reeks of intense amounts of Machismo . As for speed , travelling at 300 metres per second might leave no room for reaction ; calling instead for prediction . The jet pilot must be ahead of his plane , as the phrase has been aptly coined . All the books and movies might talk of the square jawed master of his plane with ice flowing in his veins , discovering his possible doom and grabbing the stick and pulling it into his lap with herculean effort and the plane clearing the top of the hill with inches to spare . Might happen or might not ... Nobody is above the laws of Physics in the real world ; reflex laced with brains help people to last rather longer compared to reflex alone ...

flying is a science and failure tends to mean death . There is story that is still in my mind , almost 30 years on ... Published in the official magaizine of the Air League , it was a reprint of a story from 1964 or so , from the The True Hitparade of Flying stories or something like that . There's this USAF pilot flying a Mach 2 plane taking off from an airbase in the deserts of the US . As flying is a science , everything has been calculated and everything predicts that he will take off safely to conduct his duty for the day . As high temperatures mean a lesser density of air , meaning less thrust and lift speed for speed , desert runways tend to rather long . Everything has been calculated according to the tables and a take-off distance has been given , almost half the lenght of the runway . The rest is like a deposit in the bank ; the pilot can withdraw them if needed . But than little mistakes have happened ... ı read that article maybe for hundreds of times ; my older brother had gone to the Inönü field of the Air League for a parachute course for the youth and had 3 of those magazines free ... And ı did actually counted every single of those little events . There were maybe 7 of them . Like , the pilot is told to wait longer on the runway and the morning sun rises higher and the heat lessens density that adds another 100 feet , 500 feet to the take of run . No problem , after the substraction of that amount he has still thousands of feet runway left . And the day turns out to be hotter that the weatherman predicted ; his fuel tanks have been loaded the day before and his plane is heavier than the pilot has calculated . No problem just another 100 , 500 feet . Still a deposit in the bank ... And so on . The net result ? The plane is heavier than possible for safe operation . No problem each jet runway has signs that show the distance to its end ; any pilot will have a list to check his speed as he crosses each of that signs . If faster keep on taking off . If slower , stop by all means possible . Or just drop your external tanks , it will be a mess to clean but you are just saving your multi-million dollar jet ... Wait , the runway has just been renovated with an extension . But the signs are yet to be moved . The pilot does nothing as he thunders past each of those signs in his take off run , he knows he is safe . The end of the runway comes and the jet is still on the ground , too fast for brakes . He jettisons his tiptanks , to no avail . He just runs into the hills in the end . His wife and children lived in the vicinity while he had been away to a different airbase on temporary duty . Everything a minor thing that could have been foreseen and not particularly problematic on their own , but lethal when combined .

that Broughton was responsible as the US Air Attachee or something about the F-100 crash mentioned on the previous page has been extremely hotly debated over the years , because it would look terribly bad for the maintenance record of the squadron commanded by a Turkish officer that humilitiated Broughton in a simulated LABS attack and yet unchivalrously declined a mock dogfight . Though it was clear he was no longer welcome in Turkey , ı understand , it took a while to sink in Washington . Living with people who think they are your colonial masters is always tough . And of course , you would always trust Kennedy to arrange it so that Broughton would be involved in a pony show by the USAF and the President of the US so charmed by he dashing F-106 squadron commander would be available to spend minutes instead of the 30 seconds allotted to Broughton by the itinary . Yet another hot debate topic , with the Americans always supporting that the JFK was not to be the President but his older brother who went down in a B-17 modded into a cruise missile ; Kennedy was always partial to aviators and it wasn't a cheery conversation about how Turkish Huns could do 260 knots on the deck and no more ...

oh , my ... So , why didn't he just crash his car into some tree ? Well , Broughton was very vocal on how evil Turkish lovers in the US , those traitors to the American ideals , were carrying out Moscow's orders . Jabara , the 2nd ranking USAF ace of Korea with 15 kills to his credit , was ordered to Vietnam as an F-105 unit commander . He lost his life in an auto accident . Another ace , Risner , went down and was captured . All of which proved that the Commies would be out to get him in the way those bona fide heros were taken out . He went to Vietnam on the peak of his powers through social networking . So that his commander , Robert Scott , in Takhli had to get a sign installed by the runway that said Scott was in command ...

frustrations struck harder just because of this peak of powers . 1960s lacked the tech to fight the war that needed to be fought . Flying immaculate displays in the 1950s meant nothing when it came to finding the target in the murk of Vietnam . And just because he knew Johnston was "partial" and McNamara could use the conspiracy , he came up with the most extensive scheme of supposed betrayal to the US . Another long running theme of mine that the Eisenhower's stern warning about the Military-Industrial Complex was to be "realized" in a different way with McNamara reforms killing certain companies for the profit of others ... McNamara would create the magnificient F-111 , Broughton just had to persevere a bit more in the F-105 and Olds to strive a little more in the F-4 . McNamara had to keep the war going on until the F-111 was combat ready ... Combined with need to attrite the overall Communist economic output , The US handily missed an easy victory . Which would have nothing to the guerilla war in South Vietnam , now that the North was not driving for one anyhow ... The defeat of North Vietnam by bombing in 1965 was not good for anyone . By going to war America forced the North to pay attention , North's success led to Russian blank check which required fulsome Chinese support . North survived 66 , and Broughton by the way . 1967 was good enough to lead North to think of going onto the attack . Which led to Tet in 1968 , by then there wasn't much of an heart in the US to fight . Stuck in the middle was Broughton . No more institutional will to expand his lists of Commie agents throughout the US military with contacts to Turkey .

which then supposedly handled the entire Red Operation in the Middle East to the detriment of the interests of the US . Remember the Six Days War and how it created entirely new dynamics after McNamara and the lot saw the writing on the wall that they were stuck for good in Vietnam and started this wholesale conversion to Zionism ...

none of the charges are true . Broughton did what he did in Turkey and created a whole scheme to get anybody he hated in Turkey . Washington approved it all 'cause Crusading has always been a favourite thing in the US where business interests are always conducted with missionary zeal . Washington disapproved it all by the thing that when our turn came in the 60s , they had lost thousands of planes in Vietnam and accusing us about it might have been a boon . Much worse if we also manage to defeat the Greeks in 1967 ! Broughton got into this rage , Turkestan was strafed , a nuclear exchange could well be in the cards . Israel had already created a void and the Arabs looked like dumb enough to waste entire Russian armouries in ineffective fighting .

even the political divide in Turkey would be of little use to Washington . Can you imagine them telling that Turkish officers in treason had informed the Reds so that Russians have been shooting down American jets in Vietnam ? All the Left would have coalesced around the accused . And all the Right as well , considering this little thing called Nationalism which was really really something before the 21st Century .. With the little phrase that a Turk is the equal of the entire world . That's kinda why the US organized a Leftist coup in Turkey by 1971 and then pre-empted it with a Rightist one . Just a minor part of the reason why Washington became a Muslim Jihadist supporter and soon an organizer so that "Muslims" wouldn't be affected by the tales that Broughton made up. And ask for Turkish advisors to resist the all conquering Zionist expansion . You know , by actually putting all the "Muslim" leaders into their positions themselves so that Muslims would never ask in the first place .

whatever ı tell here is not for the amusement of locals , so that shopkeepers in shops from which ı have never bought anything can regale their customers with lines of "BWAAHAAAHAA, they claim shooting down planes!" If anything of that had been true, that there had been any claims whatsoever , let alone a success of any sorts , your grandfathers would have known it . They were bound to be as smart as you are afterall . This is strictly for the future generations to see why we had to fry Americans in the end , in the WW III they have so badly wanted ... As for the Wikipedia account , Russians knew Americans better than Americans thought possible and traded the picture of some guy . Even the thing that the Russians and the Americans couldn't agree to write an entirely made up story should have been reason for people in Turkey to deduce unreality . They can't even decide to write him up in SAMs or planes ...

all too confusing ? ı am not claiming any single shoot-downs on this planet . ı have never . Ask your grandfathers .

 

[r16]

fighter pilot's existance is indeed a demanding one . The speed of his mount , giving him survivability from enemy fire also greatly hinders the task of destroying the enemy . The fighter pilot needs a whole lot of systems to be able to fight . Requiring the pilot to have the ability to use them , leading him to be somewhat scholarly . Yet another demand for brains in the fighter pilot . A combat jet is a massively capable instrument of war . It can't be just handed over to a guy collected from the street ... And considering the efforts spent on defence against combat aircraft , because of the havoc they can wreak , anybody who's smart enough to fly one must be smart enough to realize the terrible ways for him to get killed . As such finding entirely valid ways of avoidance which then tends to neutralize the massive investment in his mount and indeed him . Goverments do not much like the waste of money ; all those officials might have pocketed the cost of a jet which is not bravely flown by its pilot through other means ...

as such the fighter pilot must be driven . Enough to get killed when a war starts . A sense of duty to the society might exist in many people but do they have it to match all those exacting criteria that a fighter pilot needs to fly ? Perfect health , perfect conditioning , perfect mind and the whole lot ? And perhaps, a readiness to embrace death ?

the Vietnamese of the era had ample experience of being bombed . By the French ... They also knew the US was the leader of the Free World and as Communists they could always be targeted . And the French capability for aerial attack was a mere fraction of what the US might have done . Korea was there for all to see how a massive aerial campaign could stall even the most numerous of the Communist Armies . Fighting such aerial armadas in the air required more than raw courage . As such all the Vietnamese candidates for flight training were handpicked for their beliefs . Say in Communism , which tends to require an history of personal suffering , say malnutrition . And stunted development . The Hungarian authored Osprey title suggests Russian instructors were troubled with their Vietnamese charges . Especially with those chosen for the MiG-21 :

During the first six months of 1962, several cadets arrived at Krasnodar for conversion to the MiG-21. Vietnamese students had struggled with the subsonic MiG-17, and the supersonic MiG-21, with its high landing speed, proved quite a challenge to them. The ideal student would be 18 to 20 years old, taller than average, and of stronger physical build. However, a typical Vietnamese pilot was small in stature and light in weight, placing him below the minimum weight for the aircraft’s ejector seat, and making the fighter’s controls difficult to operate. This resulted in VPAF pilots experiencing real problems in physically flying the aircraft, which occasionally proved fatal.

The HUD (Head-Up Display) was above their line of sight, and their legs could barely reach the rudder pedals. Nor did they possess the physical stamina required for the type. When pulling between five and seven Gs, they had trouble with their vision and experienced dizziness, leading some instructors to install a mirror in the front cockpit so they could see when students fainted due to high G-loads.

a comparision with the Hungarians is than offered but not to prove the superiority of the White race .

The drop-out rate was high – sometimes only 20 out of 100 [Vietnamese] students would make it as pilots, with the rest becoming ground technicians. Compare these figures with the record of the Hungarian students – from the 38 who started flight training in 1962, 35 graduated as pilots come the end of the course in the summer of 1965.


However, it has to be said that most of the Hungarians already had a basic knowledge of flying thanks to being members of aviation sports clubs, while for many of the Vietnamese this was the first time they had ever seen an aircraft! Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Russian instructors jostled to be allocated with the Hungarian students, while trying to avoid the Vietnamese.

...Students flew during daylight hours only, and the Vietnamese had an advantage over the others when training time was allocated. Still, they needed about twice as many hours as the others before they went solo for the first time.


...Among the problems they encountered was the change-over from the Yak-18 [trainer] to the ...[MiG-17] fighter. An example of the troubles encountered by the Vietnamese pilots was recounted to the author many years later by a Hungarian fighter pilot who had been a cadet undergoing fast jet conversion at the time. He had asked his Russian instructor how the Vietnamese were progressing with their training, and the latter replied, ‘if five Vietnamese pilots take off in MiG-17s on a routine flight, twelve Russian pilots have to sortie in order to collect them from the sky!’


the need to be ahead of the jet and it's seen in all pilot training programs though it might have been a bit more prevalent for VPAF . Though


Each year a day-long medical was held for students at Krasnodar. The Vietnamese had a healthy life-style, for unlike the others, they did not smoke, drink or court Russian women! In their spare time they practised marshal arts in the gym and, despite, the Russians’ attempts to persuade them against it, studied the teachings of Mao. The Vietnamese always had a greater respect for China than for the Soviet Union, and back in Vietnam a graduate from the Chinese Military Academy would command the utmost respect.


through which we see the Vietnamese dedication to the task at hand . All either felt or were compelled to feel . War in the air ... The physical problems have also long been associated with the early MiGs , 15 and 17 . Lacking boosted flight controls they are always reported to cause issues for their Asian pilots . And perhaps not only for them . It might be early in the narrative but the MiG-17 had this button to press when the pilot needed hard maneouvreing . The control column would then extend out to allow the pilot to exert more power , even putting his feet on the dashboard if this was what it took ... It would allow the Fresco to outturn the F-14 and 16 in tests in the US in the 1970s ...

 

[r16]

commie propaganda ? ı was surprised to read that there have been only 20 defectors from the NVA during the entire course of the war . Where these guys walked 3 months to their duty locations around Saigon without much hope of ever returning home . With up to a million of them killed in battle . And it seems to be an official number ; if you are to blame the US Army for sprouting Communist propaganda , be my guest .

not many nations have come into "existance" with almost absolute certainity of war with the US . With recent experience of winning a bloody war against a major Colonial Power . "Patriotism" might not suffice alone ... especially in a country like the US where a guy smart enough to fly a jet can also use his capabilities elsewhere . Say , in making millions in the Stockmarket ... There has to be an allure ...

fighter pilots have always been hailed as "heroes" , distinct from other branches where people face equal risks . Starting right from the beginning , above the carnage of trench fighting of the Great War . The French , reeling from the wastage of the initial battles were the first to lionize their aces . The trenches might have negated any more possibilities for further Miracles of Marne , where French flights had found a gap between advancing German Corps , but heavy artillery duels could be even more deadly if they were spotted by aircraft . Destruction or protection of which thus became the primary task of fighters . Which were rickety contraptions of wood and canvas , lethal to foe and friend alike . Pilots needed the gifts of Youth to cope . In physical qualities of strength and endurance . And a certain amount of being dumb , a lack of comprehension . Especially about the unnerving discovery that would inevitably befell them ; that they were not invulnerable , that they were not bulletproof , that they were not immortal . Their commanders needed them available for combat , the necessary boost came through favourable newspaper coverage . With shooting down 5 planes , one could become an ace and bask in the glory . Say , in the City of Light . The question of how can be deduced from the next paragraph .

germans followed , keeping the coverage but paying attention to be different . Certainly in the WW II , you didn't count for anything before shooting down 20 planes and became an "expert ."The carnage of the East Front produced so many aces so quickly that Luftwaffe headquarters had to make arrangements with regards to medal distributions . To win a coveted Iron Cross that could open the path to the best tables in a restaurant or the bosom of the loveliest Frauleins you had to shoot down many more Ivans compared to Tommies who flew Merlin engined planes easily outperforming the ones Russians had .

british approach at first centered on playing it aloof . With this generalized concept of British being cool in contrast to the excitable Continentals . Acehood preyed on the vulnerabilities of Youth , London had no need for uncouth drunks singing on the tables half naked . But there was George Ball , a well behaved young one acting in good manners , he gained all the reputation the genre required . And it ended up in a personal disaster . Ball was a spectacular flier , he would climb under the unwary Bosche , formate with him and use the slide-down capacity of his Lewis machine gun to kill . Once famous and aware of his fame , he became obsessed about being killed in the same way . A lot of people had tried his method and it was far easier to describe it in words than doing for real in the air . His killer , the one to steal his fame , would do the same thing to him ... He carried a machine gun to fire underneath his plane for a while . Cut the performance of his plane and lessened the chance of further kills , so he gave up on the idea . He was still looking down while it was up ... In WW II , there were no RAF pretensions about being cool in the face of excitable Continentals .

russians had Nesterov , the first flier to "loop the loop" in 1913 , he also provided Russia with the first ever Taran victory , paying with his life as might have been guessed . Americans started under French command , they had the system already in position ; they introduced the concept of strafing kills in WW II to convert their industrial output to faster decimation of their opponents - at increased risk to the fighter pilots . Though the Japanese must have topped them all . When introduced in 1940 the A6M was such a threat that the Chinese simply gave up fighting and sat on their airfields , hoping to catch unescorted Japanese bombers . Cheated from victories and already filled to the brim with fighting spirit , a couple of Japanese pilots landed their Zeros in a Chinese field and started burning Chinese planes on the ground . At least we are told so by the Japanese ...

gaining a mythical status without any particular consideration of merits , the acehood was still much in vogue in Korea . The land of the Master Mig Driver , where the Russians fielded a better performing plane than the Americans and held the altitude advantage throughout the war . Unlike the WW II where the Japanese had started with the Zero and ended with it while the improved late-war American planes were leaps and bounds ahead of what they started the war with . And the fact that Luftwaffe didn't have the werewithal to fight everything in the USAAF arsenal at the same time was a factor ... After 1943 when Thunderbolts hounded Luftwaffe out of the skies of Netherlands . Acehood in Korea was certainly possible , with the swarms of untrained rookies taken up in instructional sorties above the battle lines so that survivors would have the best and sort of bloodiest training possible . The Master Mig Driver was almost the only problem .

generally a Russian veteran of the Great Patriotic War , though the Chinese had also some capable names in the fray , the guy would look for weakness in the American formations and suddenly would strike . Americans had learned not to tussle with obviously capable opponents and they would dive down where Sabres were better , the Russians refused the invitation and they stayed up . Fights would be over soon , without any particular casualties to either side and American pilots while never sure of the quality of their opponents of the day , would have a story to tell at the bar while having a cold beer . And since some of those MiG pilots were indeed excellent shoots Americans responded with the Fluid Four , a formation where the #1 was the designated shooter while the other 3 planes were to look around . Killing MiGs was good for the Pentagon , though the primary motive was saving forces against a possibility of the breakout of WW III in Europe . American tactics never called for maximum numbers of victories but minimum losses . If you wanted kills so badly you would have to fight for them . In later years, when it was ascertained that Stalin did not want a general war , American pilots were "allowed" to cross Yalu and add to their scalps by attacking MiGs at low level , taking off and landing at their bases . Not everybody did , flak guns can be extremely hazardous to the health of fighter pilots .

this was the time when "Boots" Blesse wrote "No Guts, No Glory" . An ace himself , Blesse prepared a manual that illustrated the realities of the aerial combat during the Korean War. Say , as a wingman you have to keep station on your leader ; if you can read barely read his tail number you are at the correct distance . Have this much % RPM in your engine while your leader must have that much %RPM . Look out , because if you don't you will be dead . And the easiest way to be a Leader [and get a chance to fire to kill and hopefully become an ace] is to be the best wingman in the squadron . This being war , there is a possibility that you might find yourself going head to head with a good enemy pilot . If at this altitude and under those circumstances , do that maneouvre , just at this time . If that didn't do the trick and the enemy is still at a position to fire , don't worry , he will solve whatever problems you might have in this life ...

 

[r16]

the impact of "No Guts, No Glory" must better examined by qouting from Mike Spick in a book of his . A nice and tidy one called The Ace Factor . Was a member of a book club in the UK for a while in the 90s . Would help my late father , convert my earnings into Pounds , wait for hours or something at the bank to get the cheque for 25 or 30£ and the books would be in the post . And sometimes they were really worth reading over and over . The book , printed in 1988 , has spots of age on many pages and a re-check proves my memory is not exactly failure-proof . It is Albert Ball in the post above , not George ... And ı think my description of Blesse's work is still passable . So ...

... rules were evolved ... And the most remarkable of these and certainly the most comprehensive, and which became for many year the fighter pilot's bible, was 'No Guts, No Glory'...

...certain themes are recurrent. The concept of mutual support is perhaps over-riding. Two men can see more than one, and four can see more than two. The flight leader is the striker, and both his wingman and the second element are where possible used to protect him. Much stress is laid on keeping all flight members aware of the situation at all times, while survival is also given high priority. This possibly accounts for Korea being a relatively 'safe' war in terms of fighter combat compared with many Wold War 2 campaigns. It also accounts for the comparatively low victory per 100 sorties ratio achieved by the Sabres. With each flight of four aircraft being made of one shooter and three protectors, the offensive capability was reduced by a fair margin. On the other hand, the low loss ratio sustained by the Sabres throughout the conflict justifies this operational philosophy.


What No Guts, No Glory really did was to lay down ground rules for combat in a manner never before attempted. It said to the novice pilot, this is what we expect of you and basically this is how to do it. Here are most of the situations in which you can expect to find yourself, and this is how the situation should develop. Having studied and absorbed the article, the young pilot could then, provided that he could keep his cool, both see the situation at the outset and anticipate what was going to happen. Thus armed, he was better equipped to survive and gain practical experience...

[an] interesting exhortation is to assume every adversary is the world's best until he shows that he is not. This shows a surprisingly cautious , if very professional attitude, with the unposed question, 'does the other guy know something that I don't?'


spick goes onto re-print the bulk of what Blesse wrote , 28 pages long in a book with around 210 pages ... Allow me a few snippets

Assume every pilot you meet is the world's best (you can swallow your pride that long) and manoeuvre your aircraft accordingly until he shows you that he is not.

...Two good aerial training fights a week are the minimum number necessary to stay in practice. If you aren't fighting the enemy, practice among yourselves.

[while discussing the uses of speed brakes in a dogfight] Obviously, the combat area is no place to experiment with this theory. Don't waste your flying time - practice!

... The line between Ace and POW is a damn thin one at times, not because you aren't good or aren't smart, but because you can't control circumstances. One other reason -let's face it- no matter how good you are, there is another pilot somewhere just a little better.

...Knowledge dispels fear - know your job and coolly do what is required according to the circumstances.

...In training, you must avoid these flight leader versus flight leader duels. You are not in front to impress anybody. You are there to teach them. If you should get a man behind you, avoid 'pride manoeuvres'. Pulling the aircraft straight up and then kicking it off into a semi-spin, or dropping [landing] gear or flaps, and other such senseless manoeuvres would all get you shot down instantly in combat. There is also a good possibility of spinning a pilot of lesser ability into the ground.



writing is tough ... Started this strand of the narrative with a couple of Ospreys to provide a basic guideline . Now that when left to my own , my output is just a muddle . Yet almost every sentence inspires to use something else as an example . Say , the flight leader vs flight leader fights should readily lead to a discussion of some Hollywood production where Robert Mitchum has one against a loudmouth in his outfit . The movie happens to be the one where Casey Jones , the MiG driver , was introduced to the world . And ı think shot down ...

or maybe ı should stick to Spick's book and get something about flight training . This time with the recollections of

Johnnie Johnson , who was to end the war as the ranking British ace with 38 victories, attended an Operational Conversion Unit ... in [1940]. He was later to comment :

... Althought the instructors were good fellows they were few and we were many, and they seemed content to teach us to fly the Spitfire but not to fight it. We searched desperately for someone to tell us what to do and what not to, because this, we fully realised, would shortly mean the difference between life and death. We knew we were to face a period of great personal danger,and that if we survived our first few fights we would be of some value to our squadrons. But our problem was to get through half a dozen fights? We wanted a man of the calibre of Boelcke or Mölders or Mannock or Malan to explain the unknown and to clear our confused and apprenhensive minds; but on this occasion the right senior officer was not present.

johnson was indeed of some value to RAF . Many aces have been shot down a few times and lucky enough to survive , losing valuable aircraft in the process . Erich Hartmann with 352 was downed fully 18 times . Johnson was never hit in a dogfight except once . He mistook a flight of '109s as Spitfires over Arnheim , he got in front and wiggled his wings to take command . A lot ... The German commander was finally fed up ; clouds have saved many pilots . Mölders and Malan are German and British fighter leaders of WW II and known for their coaching of tyros . Mannock did likewise for the pilots of RFC in the Great War . While Boelcke is rightly known as father of aerial combat . While it's true that the Allies were having a merry time of shooting down German reconnaissance planes here and there ... Indeed Roland Garros had a few to his credit when he was forced down by ground fire and his plane was examined by the Germans , inspiring them to develop an interrupter gear . First put to Fokker E.I which had its first combat sortie under control of Boelcke ... Who then went to play an important part in the "Fokker Scourge" , which turned the enjoyment into a deadly contest . Mike Spick again :

Oswald Boelcke was already emerging as an analytical thinker and theorician as well as a fighting pilot, and from November 1915 he had begun to send reports on tactics, organization and equipment...

This total absorption with all aspects of air combat was moulding him into not only a great fighter ace, but arguably the greatest fighter leader of all time, and certainly the most influential, often referred to as 'the father of air fighting'. If the case seems overstated, consider that when his fighting career started, combat between aircraft was a haphazard affair, with contestants knowing only what they wanted to do but having little or no idea how to achieve it, and ended less than eighteen months later as the result of a flying accident having put air combat onto a scientific footing, using formations rather than individuals, his legacy being a set of rules for air fighting that needs little amendment for use in the jet age. He put his own theories into practice, and died as Germany's ranking ace. It can be truly said that Boelcke laid the foundations on which the fighter pilots of all other nations built.

...Boelcke launched into a through training programme, mainly aimed at teamwork. As he stressed over and over, it did not matter who scored the victory... [as long as it was] won... With a hand-picked bunch of medal-hungry fighter pilots (and whoever heard of a fighter pilot with a small ego?), this was not easy, and seems to have caused him a certain amount of exasperation.


the guy also was the first to give Dissimilar Air Combat Training , using captured enemy planes to discover and teach strong and weak points of types used in the fighting . He would also brief throughly , before and after combat ; using his and his men's experience to teach and learn at the same time . But if he was so good and everybody copied him , why didn't Johnnie Johnson have a proper training ?


too much training is not a good thing for a war of attritition . Teach a fighter pilot how to evade a superior enemy force and he might evade all enemy forces ... Take Johnson's time , 1940 and the Battle of Britain . The summer of eternal sunshine and the Radar from which there is no hiding ... And the statistics suggest that the RAF squadrons scrambled could find their targets , the Luftwaffe planes , only one thirds of the time . And especially in the beginning the British were generally outnumbered and usually outfought . But Anglosaxons , if not the British , had more potential than Germany and given time one of the sides would have to give up and it was likely to be the Germans . Hence they had to be barred from lucky hits or actual success by a battle of attrition in the air . The RAF pilots had to fight , irregardless of the odds . If killed , they would always be replaced . And allow me to skip this chance at Anglosaxon bashing , because it is what war is . Always an hell , always requiring dead people ...

 

[r16]

or bored people ... Bored to death people . Readers of this thread will readily know that ı was the laughing stock of the town where ı worked in this museum and the joke developed that ı was some spy . The fun so great that people who have been real over the years have taken pity on me ; ı have more than enough posts in CFC that has helped me skirt trouble . Considering turning the joke into a fact made the town people feel better at first and unhappy later as they failed to get me included in the cornucopia of conspiracies that swelled in the country . Conspiracies so outrageous and which , as a net result of being directed by the US from afar , ended up in the wholesale support of the Civil War in Syria . To which ı have had this weird opposition and the debacles have kinda made me right . Almost appear real .

which am not , and even stressing that again and again doesn't help . The town was agitated , ı understand , over the last week's series of posts . In which yours idiotly attempts to tell how people have ended up with accusations of aiding and abetting North Vietnam in an unjustified war against angelic America . Apparently because those people were like unable to fight the Greeks in Cyprus . And despite my almost mind numbing numbers of repetations on the falsehood of them all , ı hear there's an opinion that some guy was sent to Vietnam to die ! The guy was never in much risk or danger , except once in the airport of Hong Kong where some guy named Bruce Lee appeared to beat the cr_p out of him , you know , being affiliated with the CIA and stuff . And even then nothing happened , with the Walking Tower placing himself in between . Now , this Walking Tower guy is reported to be some guy with extensive height of a guy that would be justifiably on the posters on the walls of recruitment offices in the US . And expansive emptiness between the ears ... Which means , you know , he was somewhat dumb . Filled with notions of how the US deserved to be served by limb and life , if it came to that . Country , Nation , Ticonderaga ! Which will mean nothing to any reader unfamiliar with the Turkish phrase of "Vatan, Millet , Sakarya" . Oh yeah , the Walking Tower , when compared to the younger generation , is a physics professor !

the younger generation ... Rated as the dumbest ever , actually .

the younger generation is so dumb that one must inevitably conclude something is amiss and conduct a scientific survey to establish the percentage of blondes amongst them . The younger generation which seems blissfully unaware that they would be able to tell the difference if people had aided and abetted North Vietnam . The younger generation which regularly fails the grasp the irritation on repeated garbage of how they have been helping Turkey . Yours idiotly takes advantage of a spare account in a strategy site and he could make no sense about a leading member's accostations to get an acknowledgement of the fact that US supported Syrians have been fighting US supported Syrians . Turns out Pentagon supported Kurds have been forcing CIA supported Jihadists out of a village or two . ı could figure that out only when the Hürriyet newspaper was led to print the story . Which then means ı should start talking against them Russkies , so that they will stop stopping America's unstoppable master plan for the Middle East . Because you know , Pentagon is protecting this country from Jihadists by using the seperatists . Please thank God that am not real , ı might have been offended ...

otherwise the series of posts since #257 have gained yours idiotly a couple of references in an aviation forum . One asking for evidence of how Serbian Fulcrums have shot down American planes with K-25 missiles , the Sparrowskis ... With pictures , too ! Otherwise , it's not real , it didn't happen ! The other , still by the same resident Lockmart troll , kinda describes yours idiotly with kinda massive personal problems . As if ı ever said Serbians shot down planes with Sparrowskis . Zvezda must be the one coming with a new Fulcrum scale model kit ; reviews seem to be ravin' about it ...

and locals of course . Instead of watching the State Channel's series on Ottoman ninjas , they apparently talk about what ı have been parroting over the years . ı think one or two have even came upon the references on the National Anthem , seems the National Anthem must not be the National Anthem ... ı don't know why . It might be because ı once said Akif used to work in Berlin in 1917 , writing propaganda material for a pro-Ottoman / German Jihad . Which then presumably negates İstiklal Marşı as acceptable ... for yours idiotly , the secular Sunni Hanefi Starfleet Admiral ... Those youth are concerned for nothing , when the smarties gracefully accept the leadership of 300 million Sunnis to become the 6th member of the UN with veto powers , you know , on the strenght of those 4 to 7 nukes our Saudi brothers bought from our Pakistani brothers , all such nonsense will be removed like totally . 'Cause our Saudi brothers love us totally ; looking kinda like Western Europeans those youth will possibly be set aside as suicide vest wearers instead of growing their beards to their bellies . No more Mehmet Akif then ...

am 30 to 32 years away from caring about the gigling of 14 year old girls . Confused ? Am now almost 46 ... Not in the high school or something . The locals should rather watch the Ottoman ninjas , instead of debating what is written or what is not .

summary : Not much to be concerned about unless the reader is some dumb blonde and American .

 

[r16]

there is hardly any trace of dumbness when it comes to the mental prepation of the fighter pilots and stuff . It is no surprise that it took almost 40 years something the caliber of "No Guts, No Glory" to appear . The planes' propensity to kill people must have remained at a similar level , even in peacetime . Giving pilots even more reason to think about what the hell they were doing would have been "counter-productive" ... Instead it became the creation of a stereotype , an undying image , an uncompromising mindset . A brave guy , a smart guy , a strong guy , heavy drinking , skirt chasing , rule bending , living fast . And reinforced with classy writing . Something the pilots themselves loved ; helped them hide their trembling hands and twitching eyelids . It was not fear , but a very long night that caused the stuff as they walked to their planes for the dawn patrol . In WW I or II . In 1950s jets are getting real expensive and people must survive to get some experience . It's the age of the jet bomber with a nuke or two on board ; there's indeed no room for error ...

we have seen Boelcke coming up with a couple of rules . Which came after a colleague , Immelmann was killed and he was sent on a tour on the East . Because he would no longer be in the area for a while , it had to be put on paper . So that the novices who were coming into service in ever increasing numbers could have something to hold onto as they attempted to learn their trade . Mike Spick then references Malan's rules from 1940-41 and finds them to be almost exactly same , for the same reason . Fighter pilots came to believe they were born with with greatness which couldn't be transferred to others by training . And training others fully tended to prove them wrong ; so they tended to avoid training others . Werner Mölders was called a father by the pilots under his command , not because he was older than them by a few years but he cared to teach them . Without any concern about being bested , like their fathers would try to . Mölders was really liked ...

seems harsh . Shirking responsibility of adequate training . Was probably easy to justify in peacetime . While the demands of wartime precluded a through workup anyhow ... Oh sure , there were training flights and all those mock dogfights ... Which the "teachers" trashed the "students" throughly until the student gained enough currency in aerobatics to have a claim to hold onto . As the day's flights were discussed over a couple of drinks . When the students grew up to be teachers they held onto the same , because that was the way they learned and the next generation could well learn in the same way . Even Blesse warns about the training fights ...

...

my niece asked for some novels or anything to that end a few days ago before she left for school . ı just remembered as she was to leave and grabbed one that was somehow left in the room , instead of carried down to the basement to create some more space for the computer and stuff . A James Mitchener work , 1300 pages , too . On the very first page he says he had 30 months of real research for that fiction thing . Inspires me , the wannabe historian , to check more sources . And guess what , Blesse's work is not a war-time publication ...

Following more than two years of combat in Korea, ten-victory ace Frederick “Boots” Blesse codified the USAF’s Sabre tactics in the classified confidential “No Guts, No Glory!” instruction manual he wrote as the F-86 training squadron ...commander at the Nellis “Fighter School” in 1955.

he must have been fed up with the system enough to buck the trend ... Those interested in the history of the Airwar in Vietnam will remember he also worked hard to get gunpods when he became the commander of a Phantom wing ...

and the picture indeed tells it all . Should check Wikipedia for the "Hunters" movie but we can all see the guy was almost prescient in knowing what would Hollywood do . In which we see a passable F-86 downing an F-84F or something ...

 

[r16]

was planning to write on the "training level" of the Sabre pilots , but the pull of the Hollywood is so mighty . So here it goes ...

or how the Ace Race , the competition to be the best , the manliest man , reached a new low with Lt. James Low . Mike Spick uses his case in the most neutral way possible .

... But as better Sabres reached the units, the pace gradually stepped up. At the same time tactics and teamwork were improved, with often remarkable results. Young James Low, just six months out of flight school, scored the fifth out of his eventual total of nine in June 1952, to convincingly demonstrate that a natural flair can be more effective than a high experience level.

a few more lines from Spick's book to help understanding what will come next .

There are two main difficulties about fighting in the stratosphere. Firstly the air is thin; engine power falls away, and the wings give little lift. Manoeuvre has therefore to be gentle if formation is to be kept and altitude maintained... Secondly, visual acquisition becomes difficult. The air is very clear and the sunlight is harsh. Reflections from the cockpit onto the interior of the canopy become a problem. At the same time, the eyes of the pilot tend to focus on a point about eighteen inches in front of his nose, basically due to the lack of suitable external visual references. Often the only clue to the presence of other aircraft would be the occasional 'flash' in the sky as the sun glinted on canopies or polished aluminium. This would tell the pilot where to look, after which 'they would jump into focus', as more than one pilot put it.

these are the reasons for the "disciplined" teamwork for the leader and the wingman . Once spotting an enemy the leader was alone responsible for prosecuting the combat . As planes twisted and twirled in the air sunlight would glint off them in all possible directions and more planes would see the fight and be "tempted" to join , just like blood attracting sharks . Wingman then was supposed to look out and warn the leader for enemy attacks , so that the leader could take his and hence wingman's planes out of danger ... Blesse lists some 25 points of basic principles of attack . Number 9 is "Look around; you can't shoot anything until you see it." Number 10 follows : "Keep the aircraft you are attacking in sight. One glance away is enough to make you kick yoursel for ten years."

because the speeds are high and the plane capabilities are low , once losing the target you are most unlikely to catch it again ... Oh , the number 1 naturally talks of the teamwork between the leader and the wingman , if one of them has to leave the area for any reason the other must leave as well ... Because teamwork is of utmost importance and the wingman is mostly free of the requirement of firing on the enemy , leaders in Korea would be pilots who had arived "earlier" thus having a certain level of experience . An idea of when to attack and when to run . The tour of duty for Sabre pilots was flying 100 missions to the Mig Alley , by the Yalu River . Let's assume A and B are 2 Sabre pilots with A having arrived in Korea a few months earlier . A would be the leader with extra experience and B the wingman . A would complete his tour of duty and with say 55 missions , B would be ready to lead ; given pilot C as his wingman . B would lead for the rest of his tour and hopefully get a chance to kill a MiG or two . Considering as a fighter pilot he rightly or wrongly existed for the shooting down of enemy planes . C would get his 50, 60 missions and replace B while leading D ...


now James Low himself :

I'd be flying wing, and we're looking and searching, and I'd say, 'OK, I've got a bogey at ten o'clock, now he's moving to twelve, and now he's moving to one.' And I'd say, 'It's a MiG'. and these guys, I could see them straining, looking for him. And I'd say, 'We're going to lose him' and they'd have to say, 'Well, you take the bounce.' And then they'd fly my wing and then I'd go shoot them down...

... I could see the airplanes. I had 20/10 eyes and I saw them before these other guys did and they said, 'Well, OK. you take the bounce.' And I'd say, 'Are you sure now?' and they'd say, 'Yeah. you take the bounce' and we'd drop the tanks and go and get 'em.

we have seen that seeing MiGs was all important ... Blessed with his eyes , Low would be the first one to see and we might also expect that he would err on his description where the MiG was ... Everybody desperately searching , while he kept an eye on . He knew his trade all too well .

When I first went over, I found out the squadron which was getting most MiGs, which was the 335th, so I signed up for that and I was lucky to get in 'D' Flight, because the other three flights in the Squadron weren't doing very much. It'd just depend on who the leaders were. The guys [in D Flight] were aggressive; they were street smart. And the other people just kinda toured around there and diddled this and diddled that, got a little action here, a little action there. But we, the 335th, did a yeoman's job.

not only pilots wanted to be aces but also wanted to command the best fighters . D flight wouldn't want to loose a kill by searching 180 degrees off the direction Low had called , they would have to give up the lead and possibly the kill to him . Even if on his first fight he left his leader to shoot down a MiG ; the very big No No in Korea .

Low received a fair share of criticism for [that] single mistake. Most vicious was Capt James Horowitz, who under the pseudonym Salter wrote the novel The Hunters. His character Pell is by both Salter's and Law's admission based on the latter. Not until The Hunters was made into a movie did the wrongs of the book get righted to some extent. Jim Low has his own views about Horowitz:


'...He didn't want to fight - he wasn't in the clique. He was the kind of guy who says. 'I think I've got MiGs over here', and [they were Sabres] coming up from down below. But he got out of there and got home and he was a good writer. The first book he wrote was The Hunters. I was at Command & Staff School and Harry Thyng, he was a Wing Commander [in Korea]. He called me from California -he was CO at Western Air Defense Force, and he said, 'Hell, they're coming out with a book and a movie, you'd better sue them if you want.' Because all he (Salter) did was take a pot shot at the aces. But then Dick Powell [the film director] took care of it and everybody was a hero. Bob Wagner played my part. But everybody had an agenda - some people wanted to go over there and do their tour, some guys were recalled [to duty]; they had families. They just wanted to get their missions over and come home. Hell, I was a young buck and I loved the action. I enjoyed it -I've been a hunter all my life. I knew how to lead in firing a gun, I'd always hunted ducks and deer.

wikipedia has this thing about a guy offering his wife in bed for a crack at Casey Jones . Thyng most likely to be the commander in question , can't tell whether Low was married at the time . Jones being a prime Intelligence target and Australians manning a secret listening post on an island off the Chinese coast it would be most likely that a warning would be transmitted and Thyng arranging the flights so that the best one , namely D , would be in position for the engagement . And Low would be all over the frontpages of all newspapers in the US .

he does mention he had taken a couple of beers to the radar observers . Who then called for a scramble ; just chance , right ? Once again good eyesight as the leaders of the flight searched somewhere else . By the time he became an ace it was such a thing that it had to be discovered that " He was one of a new breed of pilots who managed to master" the radar gunsight on the Sabre "unlike many earlier jet aces" trained on the gunsights of WW II type . Those people had to resort to firing real close to their targets . Which tended to destroy the MiGs convincingly enough to be recorded by the gun camera . Unlike Low's economic firing that tended to require witness support from the members of the agressive D Flight of the 335th Fighter Squadron . The problems seem to arise from Horowitz being in the same flight with Low and somewhat unfortunately flying the Sabre of an ace who had completed his tour and left . With Low with a reputation to risk others and taking over claims that "rightfully belonged" to leaders and asking for support in witness reports ; so that the benefactors of Low might get equally doubtful testimony later on . This doubtful witness mechanism is so widespread but anyhow .

low had been faster than our imaginary flier B in making to a leader . In 44 missions claiming 3 as a wingman and 3 as the leader presumably changing at the halfway point . Ordered to the US to cool off the feelings , he was given a 3 month tour instructing on the use of the gunsight . On his return to combat he was made to fly some 40 more missions as the wingman .

 

[r16]

this is not anything about on how Americans are liars but the issues that led to a certain level of overestimation to combine with real hatred against this country of mine . We have seen bogus claiming with conspicious disregard to orders and safety of others .

Though the figures mean little, it is interesting to note that the USAF claims account for 792 MiGs destroyed by F-86s for seventy-eight Sabre losses in air-to-air combat. In comparison, the Soviets alone claim 1,097 UN aircraft 'kills' for 335 losses on their own side. The Chinese air force claim 271 shot down for 231 lost, and the NKAF make the somewhat ambitious claim for 5, 729 aircraft shot down, but will not divulge losses on their side.


downing planes for the Capitalists might have got you laid , failing to down planes for the Communists could have got you a ticket on the next train to the Gulags . Even when the pilot is bold enough to face Americans or Stalin himself , a mismatch in the MiG-15 design puts the guncamera out of sync with the cannons :

Furthermore, the exaggerated Korean War MiG-15 “kill claims” made by the Soviets were largely because the S-13 gun camera was not aligned with either the gunsight or either cannons’ ballistics. It ran only while the firing buttons were depressed, these frequently being released – ending the filming – about the time the shells were arriving at the target’s range, so the actual effects of the shooting were not recorded. Film “graders” commonly included unit commanders and political commissars who would confirm a “kill” – sometimes even if one had not been claimed by the pilot – when the camera’s crosshairs touched the target for two movie frames. That meant, as one Russian historian admits, “that the results of combat by [MiG-15] divisions were subject to greater errors”, and consequently units generously exaggerated their official “kill” claims.

ı always have this great respect for Osprey titles and let me qoute a chapter almost in full , from Duel #50 :

In fact, the only relatively reliable method is to research the air arms’ logistics accounts where unit losses incurred are documented. Even these, if political pressures influence their accounting, can be flawed, but because of the logistician’s responsibility to account for issued equipment they will be relatively accurate. While recently released official Soviet and Chinese histories now provide a reliably objective view into the Communist MiG-15 losses, the often fragmentary and conveniently inaccurate causal determinations in official USAF aircraft loss records provide the historian with immense work researching each aircraft written off to determine if it should be more correctly attributed to enemy fighter action.


A thorough, individual review of USAF Korean War F-86 loss records results in the determination that 224 Fifth Air Force Sabres were lost during the conflict. Forty-seven pilots were killed, 65 listed as missing and 26 captured, with another six wounded but able to return to friendly control. Of the 224 F-86s lost, 40 were in non-operational accidents, 61 to non-enemy causes during operational sorties, 18 to AAA and one to an enemy bombing (night Po-2) attack. This leaves a maximum of 104 lost as a result of aerial combat. Seventy-eight of these are known to have been due directly to action by MiG-15s, with another 14 caused by fuel starvation as a result of combat or battle damage, bringing the total number of Sabres lost during combat with MiGs to 92. The remaining 12 failed to return from their missions, and with their losses not observed and the pilots listed as MIA, the cause of their demise
is unknown.



Soviet archival records state that 335 MiG-15s and 120 pilots were lost in Korea, with 319 of these aircraft and 110 pilots being shot down in combat. All but ten of the downed MiGs fell to F-86s. The PLAAF admits the loss of 399 aircraft in Korea, of which 224 MiG-15s were destroyed in combat – all exclusively by the Sabre – with the loss of 77 pilots. North Korean losses are not yet known with certainty, but in 1953 a defector estimated that KPAF MiG losses numbered at least 100 jets, of which about one-third had been claimed by F-86s. Overall then, during the course of the conflict approximately 566 MiG-15s had been destroyed by Sabres. Of all these, only 49 were flown by members of the two elite V-VS divisions that fought over the Yalu primarily during 1951. The remaining 517 MiG-15s were lost by PVO, PLAAF and KPAF units in the 18 months from February 1952 until the ceasefire went into effect on July 27, 1953.

Accepting USAF losses as described above, this generates an overall “kill ratio” of 5.835 MiG-15s destroyed for each Sabre lost. However, against the Soviet’s best – the crack 303rd and 324th IADs – the ratio nears parity at 1.4-to-1. Interestingly, when the 324th IAD was flying the early model MiG, the “kill ratio” was 8-to-1 in favour of the F-86A. Once the MiG-15bis was used, it dropped to 1.2-to-1, indicating that the two variants, and the men flying them, were nearly equal in capabilities. The aerial battles of 1951 in terms of “kill ratio” alone were essentially a draw. But against the other Soviet, Chinese and Korean MiG divisions, the F-86A/E/F reigned supreme with a “kill ratio” of 9.07-to-1.


The obvious conclusion is that while the F-86A/E and MiG-15bis were probably equally matched, the F-model Sabres flown by well-trained and experienced American (and British and Canadian exchange) fighter pilots were far superior to their inadequately trained and marginally experienced adversaries flying an increasingly outdated jet fighter.

While the overall ratio of 5.8-to-1 does not meet the USAF’s Korean War mythology of a 10-to-1 “kill ratio”, it stands as one of the highest in the history of aerial combat. Finally, this discussion should end where it began – “kill claims”. USAF F-86 pilots claimed 800 MiG-15s destroyed when “only” 566 were lost. This results in an overestimation – based largely on gun camera film recording of hits, but the target surviving to RTB – of 29.25 per cent.

Although Soviet V-VS units had stringent “kill claim” criteria on paper, of which their flawed “film grading” procedure was the central basis, it was rarely assiduously applied. For example, not only would victories sometimes be credited based on film alone (even if the pilot did not claim a kill), GCI reporting that the target had disappeared from their radar scope was considered adequate confirmation, when actually the target had descended beneath the radar coverage and escaped. During the first 16 months of combat Soviet V-VS units claimed 218 F-86s destroyed when only 36 (35 to the two elite IADs and one to the 50th IAD) had been lost. This results in a 600 per cent inflation rate in victory credits over actual Sabres destroyed!

The follow-on Soviet units claimed an additional 429 F-86s destroyed, and the PLAAF (which had even less stringent criteria applied less rigorously) credited its divisions with 211 Sabres destroyed, for a total of 640 F-86s claimed destroyed when 62 were actually lost – an exaggeration of over 1,000 per cent! Outrageously, the North Koreans claimed to have destroyed 5,729 UNC aircraft, but do not specify how many of this astronomical figure were supposedly F-86s.

Clearly, unit “kill claims” and official “victory credits” cannot be used to determine who won the battle for aerial superiority in “MiG Alley”.

 

[r16]

which-ace-has-more-kills type of history is a though one ; luckily people have been there long before this wannabe historian . And now that Turks have never had an ace , that greatly helps as well ! Personal traits are always involved and any ace can have a battery of historians to espouse his case . ı have never actually studied the Christian debates on how many angels can dance on a pin , but ı sincerely doubt that they could be conducted with more vigour than the effort spent on aces .


just allow me to say that Mike Spick references official USAF studies of 1970 that consider those unaccounted planes as shot down air to air and gives a number of 103 indeed . Doesn't matter much apart from a little worsening of the exchange ratio .


oh , ı can just see the younger generation incensed at the obvious mismatch of what ı have been talking nonsense about and the "facts" . Even today's posts on Low and how ı might "grant" him 3 instead of 9 , when the files of the Commie bean counters prove it's just 30% off ... Hear that there have been sour faces and ı can surely play that game . Guess they will not ban the Turkish Police motorbike patrols from watching Kurtlar Vadisi ... That TV show is a great poisoner of mind , it conditions its viewers to think gasbag big : When they hear "The younger generation which seems blissfully unaware that they would be able to tell the difference if people had aided and abetted North Vietnam" , they inevitably remember world conquering , Sharon Stone kissing Polat Alemdar and consider Turkish assistance would mean making short work of the US and South Vietnam and Hanoi rolling on and on , for a Communist victory in 66-67 . It's more that they would have tapes of radio recordings that immediately precede or follow the destruction an American jet with an unmistakeable cries of joy in a language other than Vietnamese , right ? When Low was acting as a p_mp with an i , to get the fight against Casey Jones , the guy was nothing but a Russian . Jones was famous only for being good , not for being a code name . It was Broughton that added it to the mix and merely as an instructor of the Russians who were "killing" good Americans over Vietnam by the treacherous help of bad Americans .

low wanted the fight , because he was a god among men and he would prevail . Where Lt Col Glenn Eagleston had failed . ı used to down him a lot when playing Aces over Europe , a Dynamix flight simulation that ran so nice in a 486 ... Returning to reality

By [June 1951] the combat experience of the Soviet pilots began to show in an increased aggressiveness, improved combat proficiency and heightened confidence over what they had displayed in the past. Tactics had matured to where almost every [4 strong flight] was protected by a [2 strong] covering formation. This led the Sabre pilots (and USAF Intelligence) to believe that the covering fighters were Russian instructors directing Chinese students... , and they began referring to the [covering formation] as “honchos” (Japanese for “boss&#8221.


The red-nosed MiGs of the 324th IAD were particularly visible, and thinking these were the personal markings of one or two senior Russian instructors, the covering flight leader was frequently called “Casey Jones” (a legendary aggressive American locomotive engineer). His wide-flying wingman was rarely seen, leading the Americans to believe that “Casey Jones” primarily operated solo.

According to ... Lt Col Bruce Hinton ... , “Ol’ Casey, also known as ‘Honcho’, was an exceptional pilot. His normal procedure was to sit up high all by himself, then dive down at a very high rate and attack any F-86 that seemed isolated and alone. He was easily spotted in the air since his MiG had a significant paint job, with a red nose and fuselage stripes [sic]”.

On June 17, in the first battle of this series, “Casey Jones” turned out to be Capt
Sergei Kramarenko.

former wingman of Kozhedub , the ranking Soviet ace of WW II , and as you see , nothing even remotely close to Turkish stuff . He hit Eaglestone's plane pretty bad , made a name and from then on any MiG driver who looked like dangerous was Casey Jones , a cut above from the normal and a lethal danger ... The eventual outcome was so goofy for the Americans that even after its "defeat" in July 1974 it continues to sting . Yours idiotly mentions the younger generation is the dumbest of a actually quite capable line of people from the US , all those seniors groan and signal Ankara : "Don't" ; knowing it to be the truth . Having no clue , some "carrot" immediately gets added here ... As all those people regain their beaming smiles as ı pass , others elsewhere in country fumble and gamble and make declare the great Earthquake of Istanbul will no longer be in 2030 , but possibly in 2045 , '75 or 2150 . From this , ı deduce the leadership of the to-be Sunni superpower with a population of 300 million souls have a plan to compansate our Saudi masters with yet further construction projects in Istanbul ... After the '99 quake some 10 open fields and squares were set aside as location of tents and hospitals and the like as millions of people tried to cope with the disaster . ı gather 7 have been already turned over to construction companies , obviously last 3 will not be necessary as Saudis stop earthquakes with their petrodollars . You would be even dumber than the younger generation if you were to doubt that Saudis can bribe fault lines 20 kilometers deep ; instead of leaving the 3 squares intact ... Yours idiotly saved a million lives sitting right on his chair , right or something ?

 

[r16]

the Ace Race had its Russian version . Coloured by the realities of a totalitarian system that always had Gulags for people who failed . And bitter ... Sides accuse each other as cowards , liars and cheats . Stalin had wanted a little attrition and hopefully a trouncing of the USAF Bomber arm to dilute pressures on Washington politicians for a pre-emptive strike . He got the second , the first started to hurt Russians themselves more ; though the Sabre victories were also dulling Mao's ambitions for wider action ... It seems Russians were quite unhappy with the great victory of the Communist Bloc and stuff by the 1949 success that added China into the Balance of Power calculations as a "Red" ...

the Russian accounts are from a book that was a co-production between Russians and Americans in the heady 1990s , where the world had but one Superpower and had seen the infancy of the Web . Where the issue of Aces naturally sprang up and the "fight" was indeed on . The Russian authors "chose not to question question or embellish the pilots' reminiscences, choosing instead to present their stories, along with the latest historical facts and photographs from the Russian military archives." They had "valuable editorial assistance" from a "noted aviation writer" ; the American in question is described as an expert on the Korean War by Osprey authors . He cautions that "These first person stories by Soviet officers ring with authenticity. Like real life -and like reminiscences by American pilots- they are inconsistent." Hence "this volume" contained "editorial notes that were added to point out important discrepancies between Russian viewpoint and American records." let's say American records are used as more authoritative ...

of course the accounts differ , almost widely . It's interesting to see Russians charging Americans with shooting pilots on their parachutes ; just like Americans accuse the Communists . With a Russian claim on how 4 Sabres took turns in firing on a single guy , we learn

the unwritten American rule against shooting at a man in a parachute. No treaty, law or regulation forbids this method of attacking an enemy in wartime but American pilots claim not to have negaged in this practice.
seems contentious . All accounts of Americans are always solely presented as that they pointed their planes to the man in the parachute to record him on the gun camera so that he could be as an obvious proof in a kill claim . Kramerenko , already "outed" in this narrative as Casey Jones , was shot down :

I had to abandon the aircraft by parachute. And though there is an international agreement banning firing at an unarmed pilot, the F-86s attacked me while I was descending by parachute. They made firing runs twice, but did not have a chance for a third try: I had plunged into clouds. [Editor's note: No such international agreement exists. Nor did any USAF rule prohibit firing on an enemy pilot in a parachute. However, it was an American "unwritten code of ethics" not to fire upon a man in a parachute.]

being brought up by all those books and movies where Americans never did and dastardly enemies always did , ı must day ı was really disturbed by a paperback on the actual Top Gun , coming to the bookshops after the Movie version ... With the dictum on "Gun his ass, while he swings." Which was more in line with the shock tactics of Hoser , which apparently also included bumping into non-coms by intention as he left briefings . Made the his students , already accomplished fliers and hence possibly full with the beginnings of hubris , pay attention ...

pepelyaev was the ranking Soviet ace . "Claiming" 23 and credited with 20 . It's perhaps the passing of the years , possibly bitter rivalry , maybe availability of western records and the fall of the Soviet Union , but he has always been straightforward that not all claims were accurate ; he also concedes "the enemy scored more kills." Besides , one of the most bizarre accounts of of the entire war involves him . According to this 8 examples of F-94s , a relatively pointless development of T-33 , were used in USAF reconnaissance mission to a major Chinese city some 200 kilometers behind the border with 7 of them of shot down in the end . American records suggest only one was shot down -at night- throughout the entire war and the plane didn't have the range to fly that far anyhow . A commanding officer of his adds further spice with a claim that the radar and afterburner equipped F-86D version saw combat in Korea as the F-95B . Which in all probability is a mistake of the Russians who interviewed the General by the 1990s ...

 

[r16]

these are the stuff that negates much of the Russian narratives of the era . Russians will claim there were American jets in camouflage ; all the pictures , you know most acceptable as proof for the requirements of history as a science suggests otherwise ... 1990s were an ample time for the American word to be the only word when it came to be the truth . As such the American editor vacillates , once he says the Sabres were all natural metal , once he says a few were painted in a test . Such vacillations happens to be a trademark of this particular author ; he can say No F-102s ever fought with MiGs and two pages later states that one was shot down by a Fishbed . No F-100s ever fought a MiG is what writes ; just paragraphs later after an mention of first USAF attack Thanh Hoa , posted earlier in this thread . American camouflage , dirty green with white wing bands near the fuselage , would have certainly helped Sabre pilots across Yalu , in their "prohibited" attacks on MiGs taking off and landing . Which were so telling on the Russians that one reportedly said that no pilot could survive such attacks . And of course , the Russians had their own MiGs with camouflage ...

There was also another tactic that proved to be very dangerous to the Sabre pilots as it was difficult to spot in advance. A small number of the MiG-15s in-theatre were painted up in greenish-brown camouflage so as to allow them to blend in with the terrain below, and the pilots of these aircraft regularly performed the ‘Uppercut’ manoeuvre.

When employing this tactic, either an element of two MiGs or a flight of four would position themselves, with the help of their [ground control] at between 20,000 ft and 25,000 ft in the path of an F-86 patrol. As the Sabres dove down for a firing pass, several more camouflaged MiGs would be laying in wait at low level ready to zoom up and ambush the attacking F-86s as they bottomed out of their dives. Usually, the Sabre pilots were totally focused on the enemy fighters they were attacking, leaving them vulnerable to attack from additional jets.

Ultimately, this tactic proved to be unsuccessful for the MiG squadrons, as all Sabre pilots soon became very wary of attacking pairs of communist fighters trolling around at the lower altitudes.

which of course readily proves the term trolling was in use in Korea , too . Otherwise , the basic Communist paint scheme was "in the main

unpainted, bar their red stars, [tactical] number and occasional nose flash." It seems Russian units had their vertical tails painted red.

though ...

Amongst the units identified through their markings, one in particular seemed to get more than its share of publicity within the Sabre ranks in 1951. The regiment flew MiG-15s that were painted powder blue overall, as opposed to the majority of communist jet fighters that were encountered.. The powder blue jets appeared periodically during the last two years of the war, and their pilots displayed superb airmanship.

2Lt Ridout encountered this elite regiment during one of his early patrols over the Yalu River;

‘On this particular mission, ... there was a heavy cloud deck about 500 ft above us, which was just enough to keep the MiGs from dropping down on our “six o’clock" ... ‘Suddenly, we were shocked to find four MiG-15s coming out of the cloud layer right onto our “six o’clock”. Obviously, they had some very good GCI support, and these pilots could handle the instrument flying to perfection!


...2Lt Ridout’s flight back to Kimpo was uneventful, but the debriefing proved to be quite the opposite. The Intelligence people were very interested in the communist pilots’ change of tactics, and the fact that all of the MiGs encountered were powder blue in colour. It had been some months since this elite unit had crossed swords with the Sabres, and their colour scheme made the jets very difficult to see in clouds or hazy conditions. Several days after Ridout’s debriefing, it was confirmed that he and his section leader had run into a crack East German all-weather unit. Post-war, the USAF discovered that most Warsaw Pact countries had sent MiG-15 regiments into Manchuria in order to gain valuable experience fighting F-86s.

actually there not a single anectode of any American pilots shot down by the powder blue MiGs . That the Warsaw Pact did not exist until 1955 is not a reason enough to mock the account either , Russians ruled all the countries that would join the WP ... Though the East Germans is a revelation of sorts . This print book ı have on American aces has this profusion of Czechs , but it's from mid 1980s . When all those Luftwaffe veterans were still active , and some rather hate-filled with the decade as POWs . Hartmann remained incarcerated until 1955 ... As such the other Osprey title treads this lightly :



According to most of the 51st FW pilots that were engaged in combat in January [1953], their foes were some of the best MiG-15 pilots ever encountered in Korea. Flying distinctively marked jets with blue undersides and copper-coloured uppersurfaces, these pilots were all classified as ‘honchos’. Years after the war had ended, it was discovered that these men were from an allweather fighter regiment posted in from East Germany, which may have included a number of ex-Luftwaffe pilots within its ranks.


the stress on "posted in from East Germany" ; making a serious distinction . Instead of Communists can not hack it , this claims Russian majority with a couple of advisors . And mind you , these Osprey titles are from the 2000s with no Warsaw Pact and the odd thing that there's not a single book on the exploits of all those Warsaw Pact pilots who fought in the name of Communist fraternization ... Qouting all the books in random order


In debriefing reports, the MiG-15 pilots were put into two categories – ‘honcho’ and ‘student’. Col John W Mitchell, who assumed command of the 51st FW from Col Gabreski on 13 June 1952, stated that when his wing intercepted MiGs, the ‘students’ gave his pilots an easy time of it and they usually scored some kills, but the ‘honchos’ posed a different challenge altogether. ‘When we locked up with one of the instructor types, we knew immediately that our skills would be tested to the limit’.

... ‘From time to time in the curious air war over Korea, you met a MiG-15 pilot that possessed exceptional skills. We referred to them as “honchos”, and being masters of air tactics, they were very dangerous to go up against. Their nationality was not known at the time, and it remained a mystery for decades after the war. I can tell you that any Sabre pilots that locked horns with this elite bunch never forgot the encounter!' (Lt Col George L Jones)

...Indeed, the only enemy pilots who seemed equipped to deal with [American tactics] were the ‘honcho’ instructors, who usually operated in formations that were smaller in number than those typically associated with the MiG-15. These pilots would match skills and aggressiveness on an equal basis with their counterparts flying F-86s. However, when the MiG formations were extremely large, the ‘honchos’ usually tried to avoid getting caught up in the disorganised ‘fur ball’ fights synonymous with these engagements. When they wanted to fight, the instructors would venture south of the Yalu River with just a handful of their best students for company.


which we have rather throughly examined by now , didn't we ? All the super MiGs were 15bis series and they were flown by the Russians themselves , though the stories of "WP" pilots suitably served the narratives to justify sabotages in Eastern Europe . Those people did not deserve American good will and their suffering accentuated by the CIA could only be helpful in all those uprisings the West seeked .

yet the powder blue MiGs would survive . They made "good copy" ; with USAF lacking actual Russian planes for movies , the nearest thing , F-84Fs were given a coat of such paint and Red stars and filmed . And many years later , yours idiotly would be utterly confused as "Airwolf" , that supersonic helicopter , shot down one or two every month ... TV series saved money then , by re-cycling movie effects .​

 

[r16]

and the "surprise" of the day . Kramarenko refuses being Casey Jones ! Resolutely and pointblank !

It was known that an ace pilot, a colonel, a commander of an American air wing, used to fly under cover of a pair of Sabres. Operating freelance, the three would appear suddenly at places where least expected, attack at once, and go away suddenly just as they appeared. I can't say they kept us in fear, but certainly made us aware of them and caused us to be on the alert.

using the very same engagement in which he damaged Eagleston's Sabre beyond repair and he almost got shot down as well . And got ID'ed as Jones . Later on he borrowed Kozhedub's MiG and drew Americans' attention as that machine was "smoke" coloured . Very unfighter-pilot likely ... Instead of opening a gift shop and selling mugs , he declines fame as the most famous bogey of the Korean War ?! And declares Casey Jones was an American Colonel ?

once again the printing dates of the books ... In the 1990s , it can be rather unsafe to be too "good" . You know , with the Desert Storm in mind . 19-01-1991 ... USAF F-15s fighting Iraqi MiG-25s ... One pulling 12 Gs inside the turn of the Foxbat as it slows down with a defensive turn . Sidewinder shot from 9000 feet away , immediately decoyed . Sparrow shot , the fuse doesn't work . Sidewinder shot from 6000 feet away , decoyed . Finally the second Sparrow kills . Also targeted by a missile from the wingman . So ?

Despite the fact that [the American pilot] had flown the visual engagement extremely well, and had employed his weapons properly, the ... 'Foxbat' still required a total of 5 missiles to down it. To illustrate the point, every one of the ... shots would have been classed as kills in a peacetime exercise. [The American pilot] credits the 'Foxbat' pilot with having put up a good fight - one of the few IrAF pilots to do so throughout the war.

if this was a movie script , there would be this dog by the table , laying on its belly , comfortable ... Yet its ears would go immediately vertical by the end of the qoute above !

the two American pilots involved in that fight "would hypothesise over cigarettes and coffee that when they finally got to engage the IrAF, they might actually end up pitting their skills not against the Iraqis, but against Russian advisors known to be in country training local pilots." Because , you know , if that MiG-25 pilot was an Ay-rab , he would never know which lever to pull to use decoy flares . ( For those of you who don't know , the lever operates a wire and pulley system to ring the bell in the central fuselage compartment of the MiG so that the hookah smoking midget can lit up a molotov cocktail and throw it out as a flare . )

and Russians would find and engage them American fighter pilots , because the two were detailed to shoot down Saddam Hussein's plane as he ran from Iraq on the 3rd day of the war . There was a second Foxbat killed in the same engagement , which exploded like the Death Star and the wingman who shot it down says :

Look at it this way. They were either the best or luckiest Iraqi pilots in the world, or they were not Iraqis at all. They should not have survived to the merge -our tactics, weapons and training should have seen to that- but these guys used tactics both before the merge and at the merge that really impressed me. I often wonder.

almost simultaneously with this action another F-15 unit gets hurried orders to engage . The USAF pilot commanding even generously offers a scalp or two to F-14s ; but it seems the AWACS controlling the fight doesn't want the Navy in , with all those fancy nose cameras to record the events ...

The Iraqi pilots flew some anti-western manoeuvres to deny the radar [of the F-15s] accurate data and defeat the AIM-7. Prior to this mission, we had received intelligence that there would be pilots other than the Iraqis participating in the air picture, and this validated, in my opinion, that possibility. These guys had it together, and knew what they had to do.

after downing one MiG-29 , the Americans run into trouble with IFF ; seems the Iraqi jet was a F-15 or 18 in electronic terms . To no avail , as superior American airmanship crashes the enemy into the ground ; as the enemy tries to turn with an Eagle . End of the story ? Of course , no ... Provided with an Iraqi set of IFF codes to operate in the dense SAM fields around Baghdad , the Americans stink as MiGs and the Saudi F-15s try to shoot them down . To prevent such eagerness in the future , the USAF has to guarantee scalps to the Saudis , which will be realised as the twin kills of Capt Shamrani ...

flying fighters is not merely glamorous but a strategic necessity ; American airpower is unstoppable because all sorts of enemies assume their planes will be shot down without fail . This ensures American air supremacy far more than all those training and all those missiles . And stealth that makes Americans think they are unvisible to God Himself . As such this fourth Osprey title just referenced repeats USAF propaganda that after the shootdown of the South Korean airliner in 1983 , the Russian fighter pilots stopped flying in fear of the F-15s . It lacks that harrowing , bone chilling picture that reputedly was taken by the "gun camera" of a Fulcrum which was shot down . Clearly showing an inbound Sparrow , the photo was secured when that wreckage was found and investigated by American special forces . Then turned out that the picture in question was a PR shot , taken in the US in a missile test . The book solidly criticizes 1 Tactical Fighter Wing of USAF for its single kill of the 1991 war , without a single reference to preparations in case it all ended up as the Armageddon with half of an F-16 Tactical Wing tasked with nuclear strikes in Iran under 1 TFW escort . Armageddon is a reason why Americans act like the owners of the world , 'cause if you disagree America is always ready to start one . It legitimately ignores the shooting down of Speicher , an USN F-18 pilot left on a limb as the USAF AWACS was setting up an USAF victory instead of employing F-14s ; as the book went to print in 2004 this was not "known" . Because Dick Cheney had decided in the buildup of the US Defence for his Presidency for 2000s , no Dabya then ? Which decided there was no place for the F-14 . To balance the single helicopter kill of the Tomcat , there's a concerted effort to loose that VF-103 Tomcat to a Foxbat these days .

it even whitewashes the "splendid" show of force that shot down two American helicopters in error , which came after repeated reminders that protection of Kurds from Saddam's wrath actually did not mean USAF jets could keep harassing Turkish helicopters operating against the seperatists . Instead there's this background on a pilot involved in the blue on blue incident . Turns out he had claimed a helicopter kill in 1991 , though the action was more likely involved "shooting" down a Mercedes Benz ... Cars can travel fast enough for fighter radar sets to decide through Doppler effects that they are low flying helicopters ...

for those English-as-the Native-tongue persons who find this particular post a bit vexing :

there are no victory claims against the Powder Blue MiGs so far , because all the power Ike had amassed by then made it sure that he would be among the people who would really want to hear it personally from the victorious pilot . Nor the limited number of CFC members who frequent the WH forum can actually come up with a believeable grasp of the concept about a whole Luftwaffe Geschwader experten enslaved , fighting under the Red Star with an unit insignia of a Greenheart behind bars .

it's a political fiction . Which failed to make a dent on Eisenhower who remembered the most ardent proponents had also come up with the tale of the National Redoubt , the Alpenfestung .

 

[r16]

internet being internet , it solely depends on chance to find what you are actually looking for , but ı did find it in the very first page ı opened in an aviation forum , the Russians who were to escort Saddam out of Iraq . Turns out they were Iraqi Foxbat pilots in an interceptor squadron flying reconnaissance versions of the same . Hence actually unarmed while attempting to lure some unwary American fighter pilots who would go totally nuts when presented a chance to kill some MiGs . So that they would follow the Foxbats into the heart of the Super MEZ of Baghdad , where all those SAM batteries could combine their firepower to overwhelm any sort of electronic trickery the American jets could conceiveably have . The Ground Control failed badly and the F-15s surprised the Iraqis . In such a situation the right thing is of course pumping out all sorts decoys ; American secret files of the time suggested the Iraqis were rather afraid of radar guided missiles . To this you will have to thank the splendid efforts of the Osprey series once again .

it's this strange tale of Tomcats laying waste to whole ranks of Iraqis . Americans would have supported this heartily , to prove the superiority of American weapons over the ones of the loser Russians . But for the fact that Iran was like Enemy #1 at the time . As such ı don't ever remember reading anything positive before ı started surfin' back in 2005 or so . Had seen Top Gun of course , but my attraction to the F-14 actually dates back to 1981 or 2 when ı was this kid living nearby a civilian airfield and one day early in the morning there was this jet noise . Got on the top of the house , half roofed half left open ... And there they were , two of those grey things possibly carrying out a TARPS mission in some NATO exercise .

hence it was awesome reading to discover Tomcats totally dominating the best the Russians could offer , including the Russians themselves . Which is really odd , this claim of Russians deploying aircraft and pilots to fight the Iranians as pseudo Iraqis . The author has been catching a lot of flak on this ; world opinion changes wildly in swings . People these days are unbelievers in such notions that Russians having invaded Afghanistan could project into future when an Indian victory might have debilatated the Pakistanis while a clear cut Iraqi victory could have toppled the Molla regime in Tahran to let Tudeh in . Give another 50 years and the Bear would be in the Indian Ocean ... The author in question is actually in some-not-so heated antagonism with a guy ı tend to share opinions on the glorious Sunni Jihad in Syria , though having actually helped me gain entrance into some forum on the F-14 where the moderators seemed to have a thing about vetting members , has still some credit left .

with or without Russians , Tomcat was cool . No doubt helped by the fact that the long reach of its systems helped a lot to get some numbers of Iraqis long before the merge . Would give comfort to the Iranians ... It's once again reading on the web that ı have learned the loss of the leading tactician of the Iranians was such a shock that they had to come up with an explanation in 1984 or so ; the guy had crashed into a cruise missile flying around on that stormily cloudy day for some reason , no way that he could have seen it coming with Stealth in mind . Later on (as lack of spares started to hurt and Iraqis had a blank check for access to the best of the West) losses started to mount . Hence to keep morale up the Iranians did the Casey Jones thing ; they invented a super-duper Iraqi pilot , called Rayyan something . Which means the Falcon or something and put him in a Foxbat and shot him down while he was still at 4 kills . People laugh at this , too , calling it an invention of the author in question . They say the F-14 is a dumb plane -as it has been repeatedly proved by the late 1990s exercises where the USAF had the Tomcats' number . Of course helps greatly to explain why the Iraqis gave a wide berth to the Iranian border in 1991 instead of fighting great battles and stuff to ambush the limited numbers of Americans using the Iranian airspace . You might remember the unfortunate 1 TFW from the post above . Until the day Saddam made a deal with the Iranians , stressing the need to contain and control the Kurds which might be tempted to fight Ankara instead . With the casus belli of no 'stan . After the then already known American victory ; Iranians could keep some of the planes but they were expected to return the better airframes . The Turkey Shoot that followed must have provided more than half of kills of the Desert Storm . And yet Casey Jones unexplicably fails to make an appearance , in the so many kills USAF failed to make . Casey Jones always appears only when some MiG turns inside some USAF ace that handles his jet like some god . Pulling Gs is such a manly thing , when some guy out of the blue out-mans some god , that god will love to think the opponent is the best of the world (after him of course) and not some punk from some 3rd world country .

the above paragraph needs explanation ? Oh , the possibility of Iranians taking potshots across the border with a little fast and handy deliveries of Phoenix missiles from the USN . Faciliated by the "neutrality" of Iran and all those bases and radars on the Iranian soil . Afterall , it's such an Iraqi complaint that the Iranians are full of revenge against Iraqi aircrew of the 1980-88 war ; there's always talk of assassinations taking place even after the American invasion . The author in question uses this "fact" to explain why the MiG-25 pilot who supposedly shot down Speicher never claimed the kill , let alone reporting that he fired missiles . ı think the author in question might be really disliking the current Iranians instead of creating a fable for the current Iraqis .

speicher was dead on the day . Americans "discovered" he was alive when Saddam survived 1991 and used the case for MIA actions ... Americans in their kinda fundamentalist editions believe they are the only good people on earth and all their enemies are mere torturers , evil and unredeemable . They take pleasure in tormenting their captives and satisfy their animalistic urges on single individuals , because they are not man enough to face the multitudes of Americans who know how to deal with them . Wait , this is not something American specific , but anyhow ... It took a bit for Americans to "discover" Speicher was dead , almost when they were ready to leave Iraq . Just trust ISIL to really massacre some hundreds if not thousands of Iraqi conscripts at Camp Speicher , imposed on the hapless Iraqis by Americans and simply "abandoned" in the general abandonment of 2014 , 'cause every think tank loves ISIL . It would be some novel where Speicher , pilot of the USN , member of the Blue Angels , the demonstration team of the American Navy and reputedly of Jewish extraction is alive and still suffers and still awaits rescue , but as you know ı can't write cr_p . And Sly (Stallone) is getting rather old for Rambo VI , maybe it should be Jason Statham , if not possible to do it as some Hell's Angels version ...

 

[r16]

speicher is also a reason why Kramarenko declines to be Casey Jones . The Osprey title references that he served "as air defence advisor to the Iraqi and Algerian air forces." We have already seen the work of the MIA commission that has been sent to Russia after the Cold War . Of course it's very possible for POWs to be tortured for secret information and that secretly ; without any notification that they were captured . But kept alive ? The forensics in the 1950s was not the art depicted in the CSI series , all those cases could have been closed with a mere shrug that all those pilots were shot down and they burned to a cinder in the wreckage . There's a full thread somewhere on how the S. Korean 747 shot down in 1983 was only slightly damaged and all those people survived the force landing and dozens if not hundreds of people are still captives . At least the thread starter is a relative to one of the victims .

... there is no doubt that the Communists were actively searching for F-86 crews. Retired Soviet Col Viktor A. Bushuyev, Deputy Chief of Intelligence for the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps, stated in an interview for the American MIA organization Task Force Russia, that the Russians had attempted to interrogate an F-86 pilot likely to be 1st Lt Robert F. Niemann. He was shot down on 12 April 1953 near the Sui Ho reservoir and is still listed as MIA. A further F-86 pilot 'Maj Delit' has been mentioned by Soviet interrogators. This is most likely to be Maj Deltis H. Fincher, who was shot down by MiGs while on a Yalu patrol on 22 August 1952; he is also listed as missing in action. The intriguing point here is that of the F-86 Sabres shot down in Korea, 55 per cent of the pilots in those machines are still MIA, a far greater percentage than of any other group. The case for many of these 'missing' airmen having surviving combat is strong, but we may never really know what happened to them.

pepelyaev had some POW interrogated for specific F-86 capabilities :

I shot down an American Sabre pilot. He ejected, but broke his leg on landing and was taken prisoner. I asked the reconnaisance department to ask him how much time it took the F-86 at different altitudes. He gave some information but later we found from combat experience that he had lied.

odd thing about Communist interragations . Especially in Vietnam the questions did never seem to aim for techical information but eluciting confessions ... to be used for PR ... about the crimes of Yankee Air Pirates but never about what that red button did , and what that blue button did .

but no , in the appalling 1990s the last thing any Russian wants is an allegation that he was complicit in the disappearance of Americans in the mountains of Korea , jungles of Vietnam or sandy wastes of Iraq . Especially in view of possible explanations of the illness that viciously struck American veterans of the Desert Storm ... Americans receive caskets time to time from Vietnam and bury the contents with full military honours and provide a "case closed" to families ; but that would have done greatly for 'stan to "establish" Russian "acquitances" of certain people were blood thirsty torturers and murderers of fine Americans , if not sadistic owners of slaves in some dacha .

...

yeah , 3 dots to add some suspense .

hoping ı won't be sued by Osprey people allow me this copy-paste ...

‘I flew a number of these Air Force-dedicated missions, and easily the most memorable of them took place on 27 February 2003. This operation was deemed to be so important ... that ATARS ... from each of the two-seat Hornet units were dialled into this classified, priority mission. An IrAF MiG-25 “Foxbat” was suspected of having landed at a military airfield in western Iraq after entering the restricted No-Fly Zone, and CENTCOM wanted proof. This mission had been urgently requested ... so as to provide Air Force strike aircraft with quick targeting imagery of the MiG-25 so that they could in turn rapidly destroy it, thus demonstrating to the Iraqis that CENTCOM had the ability to conduct time-sensitive targeting (TST).

‘I was given a special waiver to break my crew duty day of 12 hours to help plan and lead this hop. At the time of our planned return, my duty day would be over 21 hours. The flight was to take off at 0130 hrs local and take about 3.5 hours to complete. Thanks to a contractor accidentally severing a power line to our planning cell, all mission-planning computers were down. Planning for the sortie was therefore conducted on a map with a string and an aeronautical slide rule on a wristwatch.

‘We had to plan to get three F/A-18D Hornets to western Iraq from Kuwait with no air or SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences) support. Indeed, we were expected to self-escort and provide intra-flight SEAD, as well as conducting the all-important reconnaissance aspect of the mission. To make matters worse, less than an hour before take-off, the Air Force informed us that they couldn’t spare the tankers to get us to the target area and back. In light of this news, we were going to scrap the flight, but the Air Force made it a “priority mission”.

‘We hastily reconfigured the jets with three external fuel tanks and two AIM-9Ms for self-defence, and removed the HARM, and their pylons, so as to reduce the wing drag, and therefore save fuel. By our calculations we would all flame out before reaching base if we flew at tactical air speeds. ‘To solve this problem, we flew fuel conservation profiles similar to an airliner. For recap, so far we were alone, low on fuel, tired, going far, far from base, flying profiles that asked for us to be shot at and only had two AIM-9Ms apiece for self-defence – don’t forget that this mission was also being performed at the death hour of the morning. Damn, if nothing else I just wanted to see how this “circus act” ended up!

‘Ingress was tense, but uneventful. The target area was extremely quiet – almost too quiet for a suspected landing site of a valuable MiG-25 fighter. We were expecting some form of greeting, but nothing. The stillness of the morning put the question in our minds, “is it really down there, or is this just a wild goose chase?” Egress was tenser still, since we hawked the fuel gauge every other second. Baghdad could be seen all lit up on the distant horizon to our north.

‘The radio was quiet, for nobody else was up at the time ... until the tracking radar of an SA-6 “Gainful” SAM gave my ship a critical lock indication, meaning that the battery had locked onto my jet and was about to fire, if they had not already done so. A rapid crew coordination meeting was scheduled and conducted, lasting about three seconds from start to finish, to put out chaff and flares, but not to manoeuvre unless we saw a missile guiding on us. We had to save fuel, as we either had fuel to cruise home or to threat react, but not both. When exiting the [No Fly Zone], we conducted a mission handover with two RAF Tornado GR 4As heading for the same target. We made it home with less than 1100 lbs of our 16,700 lbs of fuel.

‘The net result of this mission was that the tapes to record the images failed – an all too regular occurrence with ATARS ... and we got nothing. That was not the end of the story, however, for I had told the aircrew to record all displays and provide a running mission commentary to the recorders to help the maintenance Marines troubleshoot the recce systems. Fortunately, the cockpit tapes recorded the SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mapping pages of the images that we tried to take.

‘Once back at Al Jaber, I helped the Intel ... produce a mosaic from video captures of the displays to confirm that the airfield that the MiG-25 was suspected to have landed at was covered with barricades, fences and corner reflectors, rendering the runways unusable. End state – the MiG was never found. The fog of war, I guess. For the aircrews’ efforts we got sleeping pills from the flight surgeon, since we had been up for over 30 hours. Good night!

‘We were quite critical of the Air Force in our post-mission debrief because they had asked us to perform this mission at short notice, but had not supplied us with any support in respect to tankers, SEAD or CAPs.

 

[r16]

so let me , yours idiotly , to translate this into layman terms , myself being a layman . Americans are just about to invade Iraq and some Iraqi Foxbat dares to enter a No Fly Zone . As if Americans and the lot do not already know they were all buried under the sand by then .




the USAF wants a "victory" and instead of flying a Predator in asks for the Navy to send up some F-18s . Can't tell the pilot in question is also a former Blue Angels member or of Jewish extraction . Which might not be even real but gets repeated repeatedly because it's to serve a purpose or something . As pilots are still human at the end of the day , there are rules to prevent them getting too tired and making mistakes and crashing in the middle of Iraq or similarly unsavory places . Then this contractor dude accidentally removes computers off the game . Manual flight plans take a bit more time , tiring if not also delaying the pilots . Also allows mistakes with regards to the places of enemy SAM batteries . Contractor is already a suspect , right ? Wait , USAF says no tankers ! The guys have to remove HARM missiles they need to defend themselves from SAMs and apparently can not even lug Sparrows . ATARS is recce specific F-18 which also lacks the cannon ... They don't want to go - but USAF demands it . To do it , they can't even go fast .


speicher Mk. II , but the Iraqis were entirely spent ...

while at it ı get the thankless job of attempting to explain it to the future inhibitants of this planet that despite their supposed efficiency the youngest generation is indeed the dumbest of all and take issues at any suggestion that their brand of fundamentalists number more than a few and do stuff . To the extent of forgetting their simplistic "hate" and creating "justification" after "justification" instead of acting . And of course , the dumbest ever ones make faces to encourage , if you will , that Facepook page or something ı don't have but apparently have been busy issuing insults all over the town . Just as an example this morning ı walked by a couple of people busy talking about either my "bravery" or crassness in insulting women . They even take pride apparently in that the Goverment knows ... Yeah , of course they know who this hero is , on the web , insulting people ı don't even know . See , this is what makes yours idiotly halfway the right dude to rant all this nonsense , which you know , kinda happened ...