User talk:Historygamer

Here's hoping somebody who knows the ropes better reads this. Otherwise, I'm literally talking to myself.

What brought me here was the article on Mig Alley, in military history. The article is said to be in need of repair.

Here are some thoughts.

The stretch of that article copied here seems to be the work of a Russian. Russians don't always have a complete mastery of English, which is understandable; my Russian is pitiful. The grammatical errors thus probably do not reflect more serious shortcomings.

he first USAF contact with MiG-15s occurred on November 1, 1950, with at least sixteen American F-51 [does he mean P 51 Mustang?] fighters being shot at by six Soviet MiG-15 interceptors of the 72nd GIAP, 28th GIAD led by WWII ace Mayor Nikolay V. Stroykov. According to the Soviet sources, at 14:15 hs one of the Russian fliers, Starshiy Leitenant Fiodor V. Chizh (Leitenant must be the transliteration into the Latin alphabet of the Russian word for Lieutenant) shot down a Mustang in his second attack run[3], which match {which correlates with the reported} with the loss of the F-51D of Aaron Abercombie (35th FBW, KIA), even when USAF asserts this aircraft was lost due to the North Korean flak[4]. Shortly afterwards three more MiG-15s of the same unit encountered ten F-80s, and Starshiy Leitenant Semyon Fiodorovich Khominich claimed to have shot down one of them[5], most likely the F-80C of Frank Van Sickle (16th FIS, KIA), even when once again USAF credits the loss to the AAA[6]. A week later, on November 8, 1950, a group of MiG-15s attacked a flight of P-80 Shooting Stars.[7]. A Soviet veteran pilot was recalling in his interview to a Russian newspaper that, following a week of dogfights, American pilots started evading engagements with the MiGs.[8] The inexperienced[citation needed] Soviet pilots initially showed little interest in pressing their attacks. Nevertheless, U.S. pilots quickly realized they were facing a formidable opponent, and the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, the only USAF unit equipped with the new, swept-wing F-86 Sabre, was rushed to Korea and based at Kimpo Airfield.

The site http://www.acepilots.com/jets/mig15.html has what I judge to be a good discussion of MiG 15s, together with photos and links to other articles.

This interview with an American F86 pilot describes the relative merits of the F86 and the MiG15; he seems fair-minded. One of the deciding factors in air to air combat, MiG15 vs F86 was that the F86 pilots were using G-suits and that allowed them to maintain consciousness during tight, high-G turns.

Soviet MiG15 pilots were probably veterans of WW2, though with a new model plane that had never seen combat, they must have been inexperienced in the combat use of their new machine. Other pilots, Chinese and Korean, tended to be less experienced. The book "Boyd", by Robert Coram [2002, isbn 978-0-316-79688-o recounts: "By June [1953, my clarification] the hotshot Soviet pilots were no longer flying in North Korea, and American pilots shot down seventy-seven MiGs without the loss of a single F-86. It was a turkey shoot for the F-86 pilots, ..." Historygamer (talk) 01:49, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The appropriate page for the comments above is Talk:MiG Alley. If you post them there, then if anyone cares about that article, they'll see them. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)