Sabre vs MiG

I remember someone saying the F-86 was more maneuverable than the Mig-15, I've heard quite the opposite. Wich is true ?

Best regards, KBO.

 

Early model F-86 gets beat by the MiG 15
Late model F-86 roughly holds its own against or is better than the MiG 15 thanks to slats & slots etc.

 

That very much agree's with what I've heard. All I've read about it says in the initial stages the MIG-15 was the more maneuverable plane, but some upgrades to the F-86 changed this.

Best regards, KBO.

 

That's an accurate summation. None of the F-86A pilots liked those planes. The later models were another story entirely, with their pilots being totally devoted to these aircraft. It did, however, take a number of improvements and modifications to bring this about.

 

sabre was called the MIG KILLER so i think that tells the story

 

sabre was called the MIG KILLER so i think that tells the story

No, not really. Care to explain why an unofficial nickname over-rules any of the points already discussed?

 

Q: What were the MiG’s advantages over the F-86s?

Mahurin: Because the MiG-15 was lighter than an F-86 it could climb a little faster. While its forward speed during the climb wasn’t quite as great as an F-86, it could still climb at a higher angle of attack, and so, it appeared to us that the MiG could really climb. And, because of its lightness, the MiG-15 could reach a higher altitude than the F-86, high enough so that we couldn’t reach them, up above 45,000 feet.


Q: Compare the MiG-15 to the F-86 Sabre.

Blesse: Air-to-air fight was like a game. You had to know the rules. You had to know what you could do and what he could do. We had pretty good information on the MiG. It was a point defense airplane, smaller and lighter than the Sabre; it didn’t carry as much fuel. Consequently it could out-climb us at any altitude and had more than double our rate of climb above 25,000 feet. It could outrun us at any altitude. So a MiG pilot had a lot to work with. But if you’re an F-86 pilot you had a couple of things you could try with this gopher, and one of them is turn. You don’t want to try to outclimb him if he’s behind you. So you measure these things into the fact. When you first sight him you hope to get an advantage by getting in his rear quarter. You know that he’s immediately gonna turn into you, and you need to know how to respond. You close in as close as you can. With fifty caliber machine guns you gotta get within 1200 feet to do any good. Most of the airplanes I shot down were within 400 to 1000 feet.

It’s a matter of training and practice. What if he turns into you and gets too close, and you can't make that turn? You gotta know what to do. You gotta know that the nose goes up, and let him come down, and then when you come around you’ll still be behind him. If you try to stay on his plane, you’re gonna stall your aircraft. Pretty soon you’re in trouble because he’s gonna reverse his turn, and you’re gonna be on the outside going away from him, and you’re going to have him behind you. That's what we tried to teach. We tried to make sure that our people didn’t unnecessarily expose themselves to a disadvantageous position in combat.

...


Q: Compare the MiG-15 to the F-86 Sabre.

Blesse: Air-to-air fight was like a game. You had to know the rules. You had to know what you could do and what he could do. We had pretty good information on the MiG. It was a point defense airplane, smaller and lighter than the Sabre; it didn’t carry as much fuel. Consequently it could out-climb us at any altitude and had more than double our rate of climb above 25,000 feet. It could outrun us at any altitude. So a MiG pilot had a lot to work with. But if you’re an F-86 pilot you had a couple of things you could try with this gopher, and one of them is turn. You don’t want to try to outclimb him if he’s behind you. So you measure these things into the fact. When you first sight him you hope to get an advantage by getting in his rear quarter. You know that he’s immediately gonna turn into you, and you need to know how to respond. You close in as close as you can. With fifty caliber machine guns you gotta get within 1200 feet to do any good. Most of the airplanes I shot down were within 400 to 1000 feet.

It’s a matter of training and practice. What if he turns into you and gets too close, and you can't make that turn? You gotta know what to do. You gotta know that the nose goes up, and let him come down, and then when you come around you’ll still be behind him. If you try to stay on his plane, you’re gonna stall your aircraft. Pretty soon you’re in trouble because he’s gonna reverse his turn, and you’re gonna be on the outside going away from him, and you’re going to have him behind you. That's what we tried to teach. We tried to make sure that our people didn’t unnecessarily expose themselves to a disadvantageous position in combat.



http://www.acepilots.com/planes/f86_sabre.html



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Q: You're in the cockpit of an F-86, and you’re out after a MiG. Describe what’s going on in your mind and what you’re actually doing with your aircraft.

Mahurin: It depends on the circumstances of the combat. On several occasions, I dogfought, like World War I, with a MiG. Once we started fighting about 37,000 feet, went around and around down to the ground and back up to about 26,000, before I shot him down. So that hadn’t changed much since World Wars One and Two. It was very exciting and a lot of fun. On a couple of other occasions, we caught them when they didn’t know we were there. That was just a matter of going in and shooting down an unaware pilot. But we could outperform them with the F-86's slab tail, we could turn faster than they could, we could dive faster, and we could pull out quicker. We didn’t try to climb with them, because they could climb higher than we could. We tried to keep the combat on those elements where we had an advantage. Whenever they were gaining an advantage, we could always leave, we could always turn around and dive away.

When you talk to a pilot, especially a guy like me who has a lot of years on him, his stories get better by the moment. The next thing you know, his airplane was a dud, but due to sheer combat capability he was able to shoot down twenty enemy aircraft.

Just after the war, a North Korean pilot named Ro Kim Suk defected with a MiG-15 and landed at Kimpo airport just outside of Seoul. The MiG-15 was sent to Wright Field, and Chuck Yeager did the performance tests on it, which revealed that the F-86s was slightly faster. The Sabre had lots of combat capability that the MiG didn’t. Above all, it had the creature comforts that I talked about earlier. The MiG-15 wasn’t as good as the F-86, but all in all it was a pretty good airplane. A lot of them have survived, and once in a while, F-86s and MiGs show up at air shows, and it’s quite a sight to see them. Especially when you realize that one of them used to be an enemy.

 

The Mig had some important advantages over the Sabre as has been mentioned, in ceiling and rate of climb. When it came to combat the Sabre was a much more stable gun platform compared to the Mig. The advantage the Mig had in firepower over the Sabre( 1 37mm, 2 23mm cannon, as opposed to 6 .50 cal) was offset by the slow rate of fire of the cannon. It was much easier for US pilots to get rounds on target, than it was for the communists, although it often took only one cannon round to wreck a Sabre.

The Mig was a somewhat unstable aircraft. I remember reading that in the event of a spin, pilots were instructed to punch out after the third spin, because there was no hope of recovery after that point. Chuck Yeager put this to the test, while test flying a Mig 15 in Okinawa in the early fifties, and it almost cost him his life.

 

a WWI Biplane fighting at 37,000 feet...going down to the ground and then up to 26,000 feet......

The Fokker DVII and the Sopwith Camel had a top of only 19,000 feet and i would want to know how long that manouvre would have taken to get back to 26,000...

But getting back to topic ...
in that dive going to the ground the cockpit glass of the Mig-15 would freeze up, making the pilot unable to see it's target (it didn't have a good window/cockpit heater)....so that is an advantage for the Sabre too!

 

Yeah, being able to see one's opponent is always an advantage!

 

I realize this topic--prop-aircraft shooting down MIGS--was a few pages back...

There was actually a prop-plane that was an "Officially recognized ACE" against MIG 15s during the Korean War. NO, it wasn't a Corsair, or a Sea-Fury.

It was a B-29 SuperFortress
Tail code # 44-87657
"Command Decison"
19th Bomb group/28th Bomb Squadron

Tim

 

I may have been recognised at the time but IIRC later research did not support the claims.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

Tony:
I've seen documentation of the kills, and the gunnery stations and crewmen credited with the "confirmed-kills."
There is a web-site maintained by a retired "light-bird" Colonel that flew B-29s in Korean War. He documents the history of each B-29 in Korea. (One hundred planes total.) His research is extensive.
Executive Decision's nose section--actually a reproduced example--is on display at the USAF Museum.

Kill breakdown as follows:
SGT Merle A. Goff-Tailgunner- 2 confirmed kills
SSGT Michael R Martocchia-Central Fire Control-2 confirmed kills
PFC Henry E. Ruch-Right Gunner-1 confirmed kill

Tim

 

In WW2 the USAAF did their best to check the validity of kill claims from their bombers over Germany. As a result, the claims were scaled down quite a bit before being officially verified and approved.

After the war, it was possible to check these kills against Luftwaffe losses, and it was discovered that the official kills were overstated by something like 1,000%...

TW

 

Having got in trouble in the past on this site for suggesting that bomber gunner's actual kills vs claims were on occassion something like .1%... are you sure?

I've read that Confirmed Kills compared to Actual Losses ran at something like 3x for fighter pilots and 10x or more for Bomber gunners, Claims were much greater, but tended to not be Confirmed in a lot of cases.

 

1,000% = 10x

TW

 

Of course it does, and yes I am an idiot...

 

Guys, I just got home from an air show in Winston-Salem, a city near the one I live in. The featured attraction was a fully restored F-86 Sabre, and I got to see it fly!!! I took pictures, and if any of them come out and I can figure out how to do it, I will post them to the forum, probably in this topic. This Sabre, BTW, actually fought in Korea. I feel so blessed to have seen this beautiful aircraft flying again!