Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (58 page)

This was a shock to the notion of UN air superiority and another blow to those advocates who still hadn’t learned that bombers will not always get through. They did need protection, and though the F-80C was fine against Yaks, it was outclassed by the new Soviet fighter. There was really only one answer, and that was the F-86 Sabre.

Developed by North American, the XP-86 was first test-flown in October 1947 by none other than George Welch, of Pearl Harbor fame, and its defining characteristic was a swept wing adapted from the Messerschmitt 262 design.
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When airflow over a wing approaches the sonic region, it compresses, and as this denser air increases drag, it generally precludes straight wings from achieving supersonic flight. Even if a straight-winged aircraft was able to break the sound barrier in a dive, the thick, packed air would prevent control surfaces such as ailerons from functioning. Angling the wing back permits much greater speeds because the sonic shock waves form at the rear of the airfoil rather than at the front. This reduces drag, and with enough power an aircraft can transit the sound barrier.

But such a low-drag, thin wing also has much less area, so wing loading is greater, and the stall speed much higher. This is fine for an interceptor that never slows down, but in a high-g, turning dogfight a simple swept-wing design would be severely limited. To get the best of both worlds, North American adapted leading-edge slats (see page 165) that ran along 75 percent of the wingspan. As with the Bf 109, when the jet slowed down, the slats came out. This increased the wing area, lowered the stall speed, and allowed the ailerons to function.

In the fall of 1948, USAF Maj. Robert Johnson set a new world speed record of 671 mph with the F-86. The jet was delivered in February 1949 to the famous 94th Fighter Squadron, Eddie Rickenbacker’s “Hat in the Ring” outfit from the Great War, and it was these flyers who chose to name it “Sabre.” It was a fighter pilot’s jet.

Powered by a J47-GE-13 engine, the Sabre had a 0.45:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. Visibility was excellent, and the layout of the pressurized cockpit was superb, unlike the MiG-15. The Sabre had speed brakes, a fuel totalizer, and a decent gunsight. The weapons were fairly light, but the six AN/M3 .50-caliber Browning machine guns had a magazine capacity of 1,800 rounds. Numerous solutions were attempted, but the heavier M39 20 mm cannons only allowed space for five seconds’ worth of ammunition. The cannons also emitted large amounts of breech gases, and this sometimes flamed out the engine.
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In the end it was discovered that at ranges less than 600 yards the machine guns were a better answer. With superior gunsights and much better combat training, the Sabre pilots more than compensated for lighter armament.

The A1-C ranging gyroscopic sight was definitely more accurate than the optical system in the MiG-15. When the radar worked, it would lock at about 5,000 feet; the pilot put the pipper on the target, uncaged the gyros, and opened fire. Through the gyros the pipper compensated for g-forces and calculated lead for truly lethal aiming. The solution was more accurate with radar, as the ranging information was precise—again, when it worked. But even when it didn’t work the pilot could use stadiametric ranging by entering a wingspan and firing when the enemy filled the ranging circle.
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Radar, especially in a fighter, was still a relatively new technology, so many pilots simply caged the gyro and used it as a fixed sight. Col. Francis “Gabby” Gabreski, one of seven Americans to reach ace status in both World War II and Korea, didn’t like the sight. He said, “I could do better with a piece of chewing gum on the windshield.”

Maybe.

But technology advances, and fighter pilots have to advance with it. In the end with similar aircraft it was the pilot that made the difference, and despite the MiG’s performance edge, the UN pilots were unquestionably more aggressive and better trained. Yet because of post–World War II demobilization and the shortsighted budget cuts, an acute pilot shortage was a problem in 1950. The U.S. armed forces had been so dramatically downsized that President Truman was forced to involuntarily recall reservists from all branches of the military.

The Air Force and National Guard brought back on active duty 146,683 maintenance, support, medical, and flying personnel. These included twenty troop carrier (airlift) wings, five bomber wings, and fifteen various types of fighter wings. A positive aspect of this was that most of these men were veterans and required minimal refresher training to requalify. They also had skills you just can’t acquire in peacetime, and in the case of the fighter pilots it more than balanced out the numerical inferiority. A tremendous negative was attitude and motivation, and who could blame them? These were men who’d already had their lives interrupted once and rightly considered that they’d done their duty. If Washington had been so shortsighted as to let this manpower crisis occur, then it was their problem. No one was certain where this war would lead, so the whole moldy organization creaked back to life in preparation for a larger conflict.

Even the recall wasn’t sufficient, though, so pilot training was expanded and accelerated. Unfortunately, the American air force system was caught between two transitions: USAAF into the USAF, and piston power to the jet. The World War II aviation cadet program was still in place and in fact was expanded. In 1950 if a candidate was a high school graduate, was at least 20 years old, and could pass the entrance exams then he might be accepted.

Ed Rock was just such a man. Enlisting in July 1950 right out of high school, his first surprise was the Army uniforms that were left over, like everything else, from the Second World War. The Air Force actually had the recruits apply black dye over the brown shoes rather than just issue new footwear.
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Not impressed with life as a radio repairman, Ed applied to the new and expanded aviation cadet program as soon as he heard about it. After successfully passing a review from a local officer’s board, he was sent off for testing. There were standard academic tests, heavy on math, and a battery of specialized aptitude tests for flying. Sitting in a cockpit trainer, he had to manipulate the rudder pedals to keep a light centered. Among other things, there was also a turntable with a dot in the middle, and the idea was to keep a handheld wand on the dot while it spun. A flight physical was next. Eventually he was notified (by postcard) that he’d been accepted.

Basic flight training began with two weeks of academics on primary systems, local procedures, and meteorology. As before, this usually occurred at a civilian school that had been contracted to teach the course. Ed Rock was sent off to Bartow AFB in Florida to fly the T-6 Texan, taught by a former World War II Navy fighter pilot. This first phase hadn’t changed much since 1940, and the emphasis was on takeoffs and landings, overhead patterns, and basic aerobatics. The washout rate was typically high, as always, but if a student could hack the program, he accumulated some eighty hours of dual instruction with about forty-five solo flying hours. Grades were pass/fail, and the check rides in combination with the all-important instructor evaluations determined who went on to fighters and who went elsewhere.

Primary flight for Ed was at Bryan AFB, Texas, in T-28 and T-33 trainers. This was later changed to advanced training, where the first two weeks were again academics concentrating on aircraft systems, instrument procedures, and emergencies. Student pilots spent two months on formation, aerobatics, and night flights in a more powerful version of the T-6. Surviving another seventy hours of this, they progressed into the T-33 or F-80 phase. Learning now to handle a jet aircraft, they spent about sixty-five hours on complex aerobatics, cross-country flights, and, as always, formation.

Graduating from this first year got a student pilot his wings and a commission as a second lieutenant. Officer students arrived with their commissions from West Point or a four-year university, but both went through identical flight training programs. All told, if a pilot survived to get his wings, he’d log approximately 260 hours and be fully proficient at day and night operations, aerobatics, instrument flying, and, for the future fighter pilots, formation flying.

The USAF then sent the new pilot to a conversion course for his operational aircraft. The F-86 school was the “Home of the Fighter Pilot” at Nellis AFB in Nevada, just north of Las Vegas.
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The course lasted ten weeks and was combat focused. Bombing, strafing, and air-to-air gunnery using towed targets were all perfected under top-notch instructor pilots. Many of them were combat veterans, and Lieutenant Rock was luckily assigned to the “Cadillac” Squadron under Maj. Willie Whisner. A double war ace, Whisner had flown P-47s and P-51s in Europe and had just returned from combat in Korea with the 334th and 25th Fighter Interceptor Squadrons (FIS). With twenty-one kills to his credit, he was an example of the Air Force doing it right—rotating superbly experienced veterans back to pass on tactics that might save a young pilot’s life.
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When the pilot departed for Korea, he’d been in the training pipeline for about eighteen months and was now a fully qualified F-86 wingman with 350 flight hours.

His Communist Chinese opponent came from a much different environment and through a vastly different system. During the summer prior to the war, the PLAAF had one operational air “brigade.” This consisted of four squadrons of thirty-eight MIG-15s and thirty-nine La-11s, plus Il-10s and Tu-2 bombers supplied by the Soviet Union. Moscow was anxious to use the Chinese as surrogates during the Korean conflict for a number of sound reasons. First, they could evaluate their own training and equipment without initially risking Russian lives. Second, a defeat of the Koreans or Chinese would not be a defeat of the Soviet Union, but a victory would be shared. Third, it was an intelligence windfall of information about their greatest enemy, the United States of America.

So the VVS sent the 106th IAD to Shanghai to train Chinese pilots. In June 1950, 126 of the best candidates began the Soviet flying course. This included much more theoretical instruction than the Americans endured, with at least seven hours of every day in a classroom learning academics by rote. This was partially due to the average ninth-grade educational level of the Chinese students and partially because it was a Russian course. The organization of the Red Air Force was heavily influenced by the army (hence the brigade and regiment system versus groups and wings), and this mentality permeated the syllabus. Elementary training consisted of very basic flying in a Yak-18 followed by basic training in a Yak-11. A Soviet candidate would do this in a year and log about 180 hours, but the Chinese program was shortened to six months, graduating 120 pilots with sixty flying hours.

They then entered a ten-week conversion course to learn the MiG-15. Again, the syllabus was heavy into theory, special equipment (like radios), and cockpit orientation. Unlike their American adversaries, most of these men had never driven a car, worked on engines, or been exposed to much modern technology. A Chinese pilot received about twenty hours in the jet, for a grand total of less than a hundred flight hours during the course. None of this included weapons or gunnery.

Then as now, the Soviet system conducted combat training in operational units. The advantage to this is a frontline mentality and an immediate absorption of the latest tactics from the men who developed them. A pilot would also get very quickly familiarized with the geography and weather around his combat duty station. However, this method cost jets, time, fuel, and, most important, experienced fighter pilots, who now had to be instructors. There was also a mentality issue, since the total focus of the unit wasn’t on combat—it also had to deal with training.

The upshot was that at the “pointy end” of the conflict, you had limited numbers of exceptionally well-trained, often combat-experienced Americans. In the case of the Sabre pilots, they were flying a well-made and well-maintained jet designed to kill other fighters. It had lighter weapons, better aiming systems, more fuel, and could outfight the MiG-15 below 30,000 feet. The Americans were outnumbered ten to one by large numbers of hastily trained pilots flying a short-range jet that could outperform the F-86 but was notoriously hard to fly. The weapons were heavier, but the MiG wasn’t designed to dogfight, and the aiming system was obsolete.

If war were an air show, then the MiG would’ve had the edge. As it was, the situation (politics notwithstanding) favored the better-trained and more aggressive UN pilots. Even after the Soviets began flying missions, the kill ratios reflected this. Much has been written about this, and the issue is hotly debated on both sides. The importance of realistic kill ratios and battle damage assessments for air-to-ground missions lies in the validation of weapon systems, tactics, and training. As discussed for other wars, most air forces made a concerted effort to confirm such claims through wreckage and/or eyewitnesses. Depending on the fight’s location, this could be very difficult and, given the fast-paced nature of air combat, often incorrect. Add to it the fact that many aircraft that initially seemed mortally damaged were, in fact, flown back and landed.

In the jet age there was even less time for in-flight assessments, so reviewers relied extensively upon gun camera footage. There were several problems with this. First, the North Koreans simply didn’t do it, and if a pilot actually survived to report, anything he said was believed. This explains the laughable figure of 5,729 UN aircraft claimed destroyed by the KPAF and provides ample justification for dismissing their figures. The Chinese weren’t much better and claimed, by themselves, 211 Sabres destroyed. Soviet standards were theoretically higher but less so in practice. Their system filmed only when a trigger was depressed, so the shells were often not even at the target’s range when the pilot quit firing and the camera stopped. Ground Control Interception (GCI) input was also used to assess a kill if the radar contact disappeared from a scope, which they often did when planes egressed at low altitude. It is also good to remember that both the VVS and PLAAF used political officers to grade combat film, and these men had a vested interest in creating high kill numbers, so it was hardly the most objective of systems.