Talk:List of Korean War flying aces

Deleted
I deleted the "ww2" kills because they are simply irrelevant here, and put shared kills as an add-on to the existing ones. Its not fair to add the "half" kill to a single kill, because its not the way the score is kept. Second: US pilots are the only ones to keep such a ridiculous score, instead os simply attributing the kill to whoever shot last. Same goes for "damaged" aircraft. A kill is a kill and everything else comes separately.


 * U.S. pilots do not keep score or award air to air victories, this is done only after interviews with witnesses and review of gun camera film. For your information the British also had partial kills. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.10.45 (talk) 22:30, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I deleted the mention of the F4U Corsair in the following sentence. "...only the Sabre and the upgraded F4U Corsair fighter could match the Soviet-built fighters in single combat."

The F4U Corsair only shot down one Mig-15. Marine pilot Captain Jesse G. Folmar scored one Mig kill in the F4U, but it did not "match" the Mig. The Mig pilot made a critical error, getting in a turning battle with a propeller driven airplane. The US Navy Ace Lt. Guy Bordelon who flew the F4U killed five piston engine ground attack aircraft. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moose1942 (talk • contribs) 18:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That's subjective opinion. Do you have a book source to back it up? — Ed! (talk) 20:29, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Missing
James Risner is missing on the list, according to his article he is also a Korean War ace. Beside he is known for his stunt of trying to push his wingman's damaged Sabre home. They used that on a episode of JAG.

Its described in a Time-Life book about Jetfighter and Bombers.--92.227.197.145 (talk) 09:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

He was listed with the partial name Robinson Risner. I corrected it to show a complete name: James Robinson "Robbie" Risner. James Rodriguez 10:15, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

William Westcott
The link to the article about ace William Westcott directs to the wrong guy. (A Brit with the same name who died in 1925.) Feeling too lazy at the moment to edit it, but thought I'd bring it up. D(r)ead End (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Misleading use of "acknowledged" in several of the claims
There are several notes with communist pilots' claims "acknowledged by USAF" and that kind of uses needs to be removed.

How can USAF "acknowledged" other country's pilots' claims? It does not even know the dates, times, and locations of those adversaries' claims. How could it "acknowledge" them?

For example, in the entry of Chinese pilot Wang Hai, it states "Although the US Air Force acknowledged Wang's nine victories, ....". It is very misleading. US Air Force has never acknowledged Wang Hai, nor even any foreign pilots' claims, because it is not of its business. Also, as far as I know, PLAAF had never published the details of Wang Hai's claims but maintained that he shot down 4 UN aircraft and damaged 5. Without the details (date, time, location, details of actions), how can USAF "acknowledge" non-verified claims?

We should remove those notes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhwang.us (talk • contribs) 05:30, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Misleading or one sided view in Controversy section
I think this section needs to be looked at as it reads just to highlight the issues with Soviet claim number rather than all claim numbers which were all subject to issue FEAF included. Also the way it reads is misleading e.g. the NK Pac losses are aircraft losses to all sources not just air-to-air. This is a point made about FEAF number later in the section which makes the test look it is not holding to NPOV. There are also significant additional questions that can be raised against many of the FEAF numbers e.g. the 78 Sabres. Many who have researched this topic view this number as 'accepted air-to-air losses only'. Such an equivalent number is difficult to bet at from soviet sources as many aircraft that were 'killed' were simply rebuilt time and time again holding the same bort number. I cannot recall the source off the top of my head but it was 225 F-86s that were lost in total and when you look at the reasons for loss it starts to get very grey. Why should so main aircraft be lost to AAA. The effectiveness of the AAA is significantly higher than in other conflicts. There does not seem to be a factor that was driving this. As the Mig-15 proved, gunnery on the B-29 was too slow to keep up with the attacking aircraft. Many mechanical failure that resulted in loss, some post action. So there are plenty of holes that can be poked in the data on all sides of this conflict. I am not saying that e.g. the NK volunteers were not over claiming, I believe they were, its just everyone was. The text read as though there is an issue with just one side hence the NPOV problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.96.93 (talk) 19:06, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you find a Cold War scholar that summerized exactly what you just said? If not, then WP:OR is not allowed. Jim101 (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Sure, I'll see if I dig some of this out. There was a set of magazine articles, some in Russian some in English that made these points. It's been a while since I have been through all of this stuff, but I'm sure some of this also cropped up in books also. I will go back through Zhang's Red Wings and there was one from Tepsurkaev that made some comment to this. The problem with WP:OR though is that it swings both ways. I can find 5 references from Lake & Thompson with different sets of numbers/ratios leading to different conclusions. These stretch from 10:1 all the way to 2:1. I just don't believe that the article is NPOV. I do understand that this is an English language site and hence the vast majority of reference material can also be questioned for POV (such is the situation with most conflicts), but even Dorr, Lake & Thompson states "Ascertaining the exact number of kills scored by UN pilots in the Korean War is probably impossible in addition to the problems posed by too loose criteria for awarding the total number of enemy aircraft destroyed has progressively been reduced since the war, and the number of admitted air-to-air losses has steadily risen. An air-to-air kill loss ratio which appeared to be in the order of 10:1 after the war now appears closer to 2:1.Of USAF victory claims recognized at the time, only some were eventually awarded as credits in the aftermath of the war, thus producing a considerable shortfall in the final wartime totals-it has never officially been revealed which claims failed to become credits Therefore, the numbers of kills listed for USAF pilots in this appendix represent claims, not credits." (ISBN1-85532-501-2). But you don't even need to go this far to understand the nature if the conflict. Take the highest scoring USAF ace, the majority of McConnell's kills were at the very end of the war and involved breaking ROI and crossing the Yalu to shoot aircraft taking off or landing. These were not furballs, but duck shoots. Zhang covers this pretty well on the basis of his loss lists in the appendices for the 64th IAP. I will have to re-read to be able to extract quotes, but this was clearly the conclusion I came to at the time.
 * Good stuff. Looking forward to your contribution. Jim101 (talk) 17:53, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

This page is full of misleading and wrong information. For example, in Chinese ace Wang Hai's entry, it stated "Although the USAF report listed Wang's nine victories, historian Zhang Xiaoming contended that only four victories were actual kills while other five were damages." As far as I know, China has never released the detail information about his victories except for the numbers, how could USAF report listed an enemy pilot's victories? Another example is Li Han whose official credits were one kill and 2 damaged. He was not an ace.

There are a lot of controversy about the Korea Air War. However, I would suggest people to look at the number of personnel lost or captured to see which side's number is more reliable. Here are two examples. First, Russians and Chinese claimed 861 Sabres (650 + 211) over the airspace of North Korea and China. However, there were only 26 Sabre pilots among the 220 USAF POWs. Second, 303rd and 324th IAD claimed 317 Sabres. Unfortunately, there were only 50 - 120 Sabres in Korea at the time. It's simply impossible for the 4th FIW (TOE 75 Sabres) that faced these two Soviet IADs to have such a heavy loss without disintegrating. So the Russian claims could be nothing but tremendously bloated. Jhwang.us (talk) 03:50, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Russian kills
Nobody besides the Russians believes Nikolai Sutyagin got 22 kills, nor 20 either. Most none-Russian sources (both "Western" and others) highly doubt this number. Finnish aviation author and air battle expert Kalevi Keskinnen based on post-war registries and other proofs claims he had around 5, that it's possible they counted airplanes destroyed on the ground, which were included for propaganda purposes (it's well known both sides exaggerated the numbers, being the first real war of the Cold War). Leaving the table as it is, without even a comment, is misleading. Sutyagin was almost definitely not the top ace of the Korean war, and less of jet aviation (in this case it's an Israeli pilot with 17 kills confirmed both by Israel and Egypt). Kalevi Keskinnen also most probably never got 19 kills, it says that "most Western sources accredit him with more than 20", but actually most Western sources accredit him with far less. The reference to this is Mike Spick's book, but actually Spick makes it clear that the numbers may be way lower. In his book, Spick acknowledges the Israeli pilot as top ace of jet aviation, so both figures at once are impossible. Virum Mundi (talk) 12:32, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

October 2023
User:瓜岛不是天堂，而是绿色的地狱 I have reverted your edits as vandalism. You have already been told that if a pilot did not score 5 or more aerial victories they are not an ace and do not belong on the page. Mztourist (talk) 06:32, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * One of Zhang's achievements was not recognized2023100804 ace.jpg--茶圣 (talk) 20:26, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * If you don't have WP:RS for 5 kills they don't belong on this page. Mztourist (talk) 03:04, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I would add User:瓜岛不是天堂，而是绿色的地狱 when you restored Zhang Jihui to the list, you also removed the photo of the F-86 engaging the MiG-15. I strongly disagree with you doing that and you should have at least explained why you thought the removal was appropriate. HiFX (talk) 02:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)