A&S: MiG-15 "parked" American bombers during the Korean War
The first news about the appearance of the Soviet MiG-15 fighter in Korea caused panic in the US Air Force, writes Air& Space. The superiority of Soviet fighters over American ones predetermined the outcome of the war in the air.
The Korean conflict had been going on for almost six months by the morning of November 30, 1950, when the American Air Force B-29 Superfortress bomber, which was raiding an air base in North Korea, was slightly damaged by a fighter that was moving too fast, and therefore it could not be identified, and the bomber's shooter did not have time at all fix it with the guidance system of your machine gun.
The Lockheed F-80 jet fighters with a rectangular wing accompanying the bomber undertook a symbolic pursuit, however, accelerating, the unidentified fighter quickly turned into a dot, and then disappeared altogether.
The bomber crew's report caused an organized panic in the American chain of command. Although the pilots' description of the invading aircraft did not match any of the samples used in this theater of operations, American intelligence officials quickly made an educated guess. They said it was a MiG-15 fighter jet, which most likely took off from an air base in Manchuria. Prior to this incident, analysts believed that Stalin had given permission only to use MiGs to protect Shanghai from Chinese nationalist bomber raids. This moment was a dark omen: China's involvement in Korea was increasing, and Soviet technology was spreading.
For the crews in the cabins of the hulking "Superforts", this aircraft, which rapidly cut through their formations, became a source of suffocating fear. "In my opinion, everyone was scared," says former B—29 pilot Earl McGill, describing a noticeable lack of radio conversations during the flight of his four-engine Boeing aircraft — these were the machines that ended World War II — shortly before the attack on Namsi Air Base, located near the border between North Korea and China. "During the preparation for the first task, we were provided with information about the interception that took place. I was as scared that day as I've ever been in my life, even when I was flying combat missions on B-52 aircraft (in Vietnam)." Previously, there was a lot of black humor in conversations in the room for pilots on duty. "The guy who was giving instructions about the upcoming route looked like an employee of a funeral home," adds McGill. He conducted this briefing in a special top hat, which is also worn by undertakers.
On one of the disastrous days in October 1951 — it was nicknamed "Black Tuesday" — MiGs shot down six out of ten "Super Fortresses". McGill's first encounter with these aircraft was typically brief. "One of the shooters saw him. Only a small silhouette was visible," McGill recalls. — That's when I saw him... — the shooters opened fire on him." The centralized firing system on the bomber provided some protection from fighters, McGill emphasizes.
The pilot of the MiG-15, Porfiry Ovsyannikov, was then the target at which the arrows of the B-29 bomber were firing. "When they started shooting at us, smoke was coming, and so think, was the bomber set on fire, or was there smoke from machine guns?" he recalled in 2007, when historians Oleg Korytov and Konstantin Chirkin interviewed him to create an oral history of combat pilots who took part in World War II, as well as in the Korean War (These interviews are posted on the website lend-lease.airforce.ru/english ). Russian historians asked Ovsyannikov to evaluate the small arms of the B-29 aircraft. His answer: "Very good." However, MiG pilots could open fire from a distance of about 700 meters, and from such a distance, as McGill emphasizes, they had the opportunity to attack a group of B-29 bombers.
"The MiG-15 aircraft came as a very big surprise to us," said Robert van der Linden, curator of the National Air and Space Museum. If we compare with the North American A-86 Sabre, which was urgently adopted after the appearance of the MiG-15, then we can say that "the MiGs were faster, they had a better rate of climb and greater firepower," he notes. And the pilots who flew Sabre fighters knew this.
"You're absolutely right, it was humiliating," says retired Air Force Lieutenant General Charles "Chick" Cleveland, recalling his first encounter with a MiG-15 fighter. He piloted the Sabre in Korea in 1952 as part of the 334th Fighter-interceptor Squadron. A few weeks earlier, the squadron commander, the famous ace of the Second World War, George Andrew Davis, died in battle with a Soviet fighter. (Davis was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.) At that moment, Cleveland, having made a sharp turn to get away from the MiG, exceeded the parameters for dumping Sabres and briefly went into a tailspin — according to him, all this happened "in the midst of an air battle." Cleveland, despite the mistake he made, was able to stay alive and then became an ace of the Korean War, having 5 confirmed downed MiGs on his account, as well as two unconfirmed ones. Today, he is the president of the American Fighter Aces Association and he still respects his opponent, whom he had to fight 60 years ago. "Oh, it was a wonderful plane," he says by phone from his home in Alabama, "It should be remembered that in Korea this small MiG—15 was able to successfully do what all these Focke—Wolfs and Messerschmitts were not capable of During the Second World War, he squeezed the bomber aircraft of the United States of America out of the airspace." Since November 1951, the B-29 aircraft remained on the ground during daylight hours, and sorties were carried out only at night.
Inevitably, the history of the MiG-15 returns to duels with Sabres, and this rivalry determined the outcome of the air war in Korea. However, the connection between MiGs and Sabres began during the previous war. Both of them drew inspiration from the concept that arose as a result of the desperate search for weapons samples at the end of World War II, when the Allied air forces gained numerical superiority over the German Air Force. In a desperate situation, the Luftwaffe High Command held a competition. The winner of the "Extraordinary Fighter Competition" turned out to be an aircraft presented by Kurt Tank, head of the Focke-Fulf design bureau, and designated TA-183; it was a model of a jet fighter with a single engine and a high t-shaped tail. In 1945, British troops entered the territory of the Focke-Fulf plant in Bad Ailsen and confiscated drawings, models, as well as data obtained during wind tunnel tests, and they immediately shared all this with the Americans. And when Berlin fell, the Soviet troops began to analyze the material in the German Ministry of Aviation and found there a complete set of drawings of the TA-183 aircraft, as well as invaluable data on wing tests. Less than two years later, and with an interval of only a few weeks, the United States of America and the Soviet Union introduced a single-engine jet aircraft with wings positioned at an angle of 35 degrees, with a short fuselage and a t-shaped tail. These two planes were so similar to each other in Korea that the American pilots, eager to record some moment on their account, mistakenly shot down several Sabre planes.
None of these fighters were copies of the Tank model. Primitive aeronautical research, as well as the limited availability of engines and the materials used at that time inevitably led to the similarity of the models being developed. The first jet aircraft developed by the Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau (MiG) located in Moscow was the MiG-9. The primitive MiG-9 engine, a BWM twin engine captured in Germany, turned out to be insufficient for the intended characteristics of the MiG-15, but Moscow had practically no experience in creating superior-quality samples. Instead, the Rolls-Royce Nene engine was originally installed on the MiG-15 — magnificent in its innovation and thoughtlessly supplied to the USSR by the British.
Wanting to bring a thaw to Anglo-Soviet relations, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee invited Soviet scientists and engineers to the Rolls-Royce plant to study how British engines of excellent quality are made. In addition, Atley offered the USSR licensed production, and this was done in response to a solemn promise to use these engines only for non-military purposes. This proposal amazed the Americans, who made loud protests. And what about the Tips? Ilya Grinberg, a Soviet aviation historian born in Ukraine, believes that "Stalin himself could not believe it. He said, "Who in their right mind would sell us such things?“" Greenberg, a professor of technology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, emphasizes that the presence of Artyom Mikoyan himself in the delegation - "Mi" from the name "MiG" — should have served as a warning about the consequences of the proposed deal: Rolls—Royce engines delivered to the USSR in 1946 were urgently installed on aircraft MiG-15 and successfully passed flight tests. By the time this fighter was ready for mass production, it was possible to solve all the engineering problems related to Rolls-Royce's Nene engine technology, and as a result, a copy of it appeared under the designation Klimov RD-45. The British, according to Greenberg, complained about the violation of the license agreement, but "the Russians just told them: look, we've made some changes, and now it can be considered our own development."
But, as in the case of copying cars from Western Europe in the post-war Soviets, the engines produced in the USSR were inferior in quality to the originals. The period from the beginning of the use of Klimov engines to their failure was measured in hours. "Based on the state of the Soviet aircraft industry at that time, it could be assumed that quality control at MiG enterprises was inferior to the level that existed in the West," Greenberg notes. The materials for the parts subjected to high pressure did not meet the standards. The tolerances were insufficient. In fact, some problems on MiG aircraft were related to wings that did not fully meet the requirements. Greenberg describes an archival photo of a production line for installing engines on the first generation of MiG-15 fighters. "What can I say here? — he remarks hesitantly. "These are not people in white jumpsuits in high—tech production at all."
However, by this time, another Soviet design bureau, headed by Andrei Tupolev, copied to the last rivet two Boeing B-29 aircraft, which made an emergency landing on Soviet territory during World War II. Greenberg claims that the achieved production accuracy within the framework of the Tupolev project was transferred to work on the MiG program. In fact, "the project to copy the B-29 pulled forward not only the Soviet aviation industry," he emphasizes. Although MiGs continued to be inexpensive to manufacture and unreasonably Spartan, the final version of this aircraft, which took off in 1947, proved to be durable and reliable.
The first wave of F-86 fighter pilots from the 4th Aviation Regiment included veterans of World War II. Obviously, they had to confront inexperienced Chinese pilots at the controls of the MiG-15, trained by Russian specialists. However, it soon became clear that the North Korean MiGs were not flown by recent graduates of flight schools. The pilots of the Sabre fighters called the mysterious MiG-15 pilots "honchos", which in Japanese meant "bosses". Today we know that battle-hardened pilots of the Soviet air Force were sitting in the cockpits of most of the North Korean MiGs.
Chick Cleveland describes meetings with MiG pilots, whose skills involved not only training in classrooms. Cleveland was approaching the Amnokkan River at an altitude of about 12,000 meters when a MiG flying at high speed appeared in front of him. The speed of both planes was approaching Mach number when they flew next to each other. "I said to myself: It's not a drill anymore, it's real now." Using the Sabres' superiority in speed and turning radius, he used acceleration and ended up in the tail of the MiG. "I got very close to him, and it seemed like he was sitting next to me in the living room."
Remembering at this moment the stories of World War II pilots who forgot to pull the trigger in the midst of an air battle, Cleveland looked down for a moment to check the position of the toggle switches on his Sabre. "When I looked up again, that moment was no longer in front of me." Cleveland looked both forward and backward "and all around him on the whole horizon" — nothing. There was only one chilling possibility. "I turned my F-86 slightly, and of course it was right under me." It was a clever attempt to turn the tables, made by the MiG pilot, who sharply limited the fuel supply and, slowing down, found himself below, and then behind the enemy who was graying on his tail. "I gradually became a fox, and he turned into a dog," says Cleveland, laughing. However, after several maneuvers, the Sabre regained its position and again found itself on the tail of the Russian pilot, who had to resort to "classic MiG tactics" — he began to climb sharply. Cleveland fired several bursts at the MiG's engine and fuselage, after which it slowly shifted to the left, dived down and went towards the ground. Given the characteristics of the MiG, diving at high speed indicated a crash, not an escape strategy.
Due to the fact that the MiGs questioned the superiority of the United States in the air, the Americans tried their best to get Soviet technology at their disposal, but they managed to get a MiG-15 capable of flying only in September 1953, when the North Korean defector pilot No Kum-Sok landed his fighter on Kimpo Air Base in South Korea. The flights on the Korean MiG were supposed to demonstrate clearly what kind of machines the American pilots had to deal with. To evaluate the Soviet fighter, the best pilots of the United States Air Force, Captain Harold "Tom" Collins, from the Field Wright Air Base Test division and Major Charles "Chuck" Yeagger, were sent to Kadena Air Base in Japan. On September 29, 1953, the first Western pilot took off in a mysterious MiG. This flight confirmed the expected excellent qualities, but also revealed the less pleasant characteristics of the MiG-15 aircraft. "The defector pilot told me that the MiG-15 tends to stall at a set speed when overloaded, even at one G, and also breaks into a tailspin, from which it often cannot get out," Collins noted in 1991, giving an interview for the collection of memoirs "Test Flights at Old Wright Field Air base." "A white stripe was drawn on the front panel, which was used to center the steering handle when trying to exit the corkscrew. He said that before his eyes his instructor went into a tailspin and then died."
Test flights showed that the speed of the MiG-15 did not exceed Mach 0.92. In addition, the aircraft's control system was ineffective when diving down and performing sharp maneuvers. During the air battles in Korea, American pilots watched as MiG-15 fighters approached the limits of their capabilities, after which they unexpectedly fell into a tailspin at high speed and collapsed, often losing wings or tail feathers.
The Soviet pilots also knew the characteristics of the Sabres well, as the American pilots knew the capabilities of the MiGs. "You will not force me to attack them at maximum turning speed," stressed Soviet MiG—15 pilot Vladimir Zabelin in one of his oral speeches, translated in 2007. "In that case, he could easily have been on my tail." When I went to their tail myself, they knew that they could only get away from me as a result of horizontal maneuvers… I usually attacked them from behind and slightly below… When he started the maneuver, I tried to intercept him. If I didn't knock him down during the first third of the turn, I had to stop the attack and leave."
In 1962, the Finnish Air Force acquired MiG-21 aircraft from the Soviet Union, and also received four MiG-15 training aircraft at its disposal so that their pilots could familiarize themselves with the exotic characteristics of the MiG cabin. Retired test pilot Colonel Jyrki Laukkanen concluded that the MiG-15 was a well-controlled and maneuverable aircraft "provided that you knew its limitations and did not go beyond safe piloting. In fact, you had to keep the speed no higher than Mach 0.9 and no lower than 126 knots (186 kilometers per hour); otherwise, controllability began to lose." Landing could be difficult due to manually inflated pneumatic brakes, which quickly lost their effectiveness. "If they warmed up, then you didn't have any other control or braking options other than turning off the engine and watching where you ended up—it usually ended up on the grass."
Laukkanen believes that there were certain oddities in the cockpit of the MiG-15. "The artificial horizon of the MiG-15 was unusual." The upper part of this device, representing the sky, was brown, while the lower part usually indicated the earth and was blue in color. This device was made in such a way that when the aircraft symbol was lifted down. "It worked as if it had been assembled upside down," Laukkanen marvels. "But it wasn't like that." The fuel gauge for the MiG-15 was also, in his opinion, "especially unreliable," so Finnish pilots learned to determine the amount of fuel using a watch. As the main test pilot, Laukkanen flew more than 1,200 hours on a MiG-21 aircraft with delta wings. (He was also the only Finn to fly a P-51 Mustang fighter on his own.) "In my opinion, the MiG-15 did not have any special mysticism," he says. — My favorite aircraft, which, unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to fly, was the F-86 Sabre."
A more objective indicator of the relative strength of MiG and Sabre fighters is the number of enemy aircraft shot down, but such data on the loss ratio is difficult to obtain. For example, at the end of the Korean War, Chick Cleveland had four MiGs shot down, two presumably shot down and four damaged MiGs on his account. "And when was the last time he saw a MiG in a deadly high-speed dive down? My wingman and I chased him during a high-speed descent and an attempt to hide in the clouds at an altitude of about 700 meters. I was sure that he would not be able to do it. But we did not see the ejection or collision of the aircraft with the ground, and therefore it was counted as suspected." After a thorough study conducted by another Sabre pilot half a century later, his "probable" MiG was eventually replaced by a confirmed shot down by the Air Force Commission for Correction of Military Merit (Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records). In 2008, he belatedly became known as ace.
According to Porfiry Ovsyannikov, the Soviet method of confirming the results was not particularly accurate. "We carried out attacks, returned home, landed, and I made a report," he said. — We participated in a dogfight! I attacked the B-29. And that's it. In addition, the enemy openly talked about this and reported data on the radio: "In such and such a place, our bombers were attacked by MiG fighters. As a result, one of our planes crashed into the sea. The second one was damaged and crashed on landing in Okinawa.“ Then the film from the camera mounted on the cannon was developed, and we studied it. It showed that I opened fire at close range. As for the other pilots, some did it and some didn't. They believed me, that's all."
Immediately after the end of the war, the data on the superiority of the Sabres were greatly exaggerated. 792 MiGs were reported shot down, while the US Air Force acknowledged the loss of only 58 Sabres. The Soviets, for their part, acknowledged the loss of about 350 MiGs, but they claimed that they had shot down an incredibly large number of F-86 — 640 aircraft, which accounted for most of the fighters of this type stationed in Korea. "I can only say that the Russians are terrible liars,— says the pilot of the Sabre, Cleveland. "At least in this case."
In 1970, the United States Air Force conducted a study codenamed "SabreMeasures Charlie", and the number of losses in air battles involving MiGs was increased to 92 — as a result, the loss ratio of the F-86 was seven to one. After the collapse of the USSR, the archives of the Soviet air force became available to scientists, and as a result, the losses of Soviet MiG fighters in Korea were set at 315 machines.
If you limit statistics to a certain period, then important conclusions can be drawn. Writer and retired Air Force Colonel Doug Dildy notes that when piloting MiG-15s by Chinese, Korean and newly arrived Soviet pilots, statistics actually indicate a loss ratio of nine to one in favor of Sabres. But if we take the statistics of the battles of 1951, when the Americans were opposed by Soviet pilots who fought against the Luftwaffe during the Great Patriotic War, then the loss ratio is almost completely leveled — 1.4 to 1, that is, only slightly in favor of the Sabres.
Data on the Korean air war supports this interpretation. When the honchos returned to the Soviet Union, the less experienced Soviet pilots who had arrived to replace them could no longer compete on equal terms with the F-86 pilots. The Chinese lost a quarter of the aircraft from the first generation of MiGs in air battles with an upgraded version of Sabres, which forced Mao Zedong to suspend MiG flights for a month. The Chinese received upgraded MiG-15bis fighters in the summer of 1953, but at that time it was already planned to sign a ceasefire agreement. The MiG-15 aircraft were soon replaced by MiG-17s, in which the necessary improvements were made — mainly due to cloning technologies from two captured F-86 Sabre fighters.
By the spring of 1953, Soviet pilots who remained in Korea began to avoid collisions with American aircraft. Stalin died at that time, the truce in Panmunjom seemed inevitable, and no one wanted to be the last victim of the war. Ilya Grinberg summarizes the opinions of people who have been in the cockpit of this good fighter: "The Soviet pilots at the controls of the Mig-15 viewed the air battles in Korea simply as a job that had to be done. In the end, they did not defend their homeland there. They considered the Americans to be opponents, but not enemies."
While the outstanding aircraft of the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau was making a name for itself in the West, Soviet citizens had almost no idea what the name meant. The F-86 Sabre aircraft became a symbol of American air superiority in the pop culture of the 1950s - it was included in film scripts, appeared on magazine covers, as well as on stencils of metal boxes for school lunches. However, in those years, the MiG-15 fighter remained a mystery to the Soviet public. "We didn't even understand what the name meant, and we found out much later than you think,— Greenberg notes. "In any Russian aviation magazine, you can see an image of the MiG—15, but the caption will always be like this: a modern jet fighter."
In the mid-1960s, an inexplicable and typical change of policy occurred for the Soviet bureaucracy, and this fighter, stripped of the veil of secrecy, ended up in public parks. "I remember very well when the MiG-15 was displayed in our district park," says Greenberg. The plane was not placed on a pedestal and was not part of any monument, as is often done now, but it was simply driven into the park and put brake pads under the wheels. "I remember very well how excited I was when I saw this moment for the first time. We children climbed on it, admired its cabin and all its devices."
And ten years before that, information about the successes of the MiG-15 in Korea gradually began to spread among the pilots of the air forces of the Warsaw Pact countries, as well as some states in Africa and the Middle East. Eventually, this fighter was used by the air forces of 35 countries.
Author: Stephen Joiner
