F-86 vs Mig-15, Who wins?

Originally Posted by sze_j86

Previously, I asked a question of F-16 vs Su-27, and I realized I might have been a bit vague on the details.
This time, I'd like to ask what would happen in your opinion what would happen if an F-86 took on a Mig-15.
Disregard skill of the pilot, radar, rockets, and everything. Simply bullets and the plane.
In your opinion, who would win?
Thanks

There's a lot of variables to consider. Different versions of the F-86 have different performance capabilities. For example the F-86F has twice the engine thrust of the F-86A, possibly to address/match the MiG-15's better rate of climb.

From the "bullets" point of view, the F-86A's guns are better suited for dogfight than the MiG-15. The MiG-15's guns were intended to engage large bombers, so they were larger and had slower rate of fire.

For comparison, the F-86A was armed with 6 x 12.7 mm (.50 cal) machineguns. Each gun carried 267 rounds of ammunition and had 1,100 rounds/min rate of fire.

The MiG-15 was armed with 2 x 23mm NR-23 guns and 1 x 37mm N-37 guns. The 23mm guns had 650 rounds/min rate of fire, and the N-37 had 400 rounds/min rate of fire. However the Russians were quite stingy with ammo and only equipped 80 rounds per gun on the 23mm, and 40 rounds on the 37mm.

From ammuntion comparison point of view, although the MiG-15 had bigger and more powerful guns, they were slower and only carried a total of 200 rounds. The F-86 carried about 1,600 rounds of .50 cal ammo.

On flight performance, here's a blurb from another web site:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avf861.html

On paper, the F-86A and the MiG-15 were well matched. The Sabre was somewhat underpowered and the MiG-15 could outclimb it. The Soviet aircraft also was more heavily armed, with two 23-millimeter and one 37-millimeter cannon. The MiG's cannon had a low rate of fire, but it only took a few hits from them to kill a Sabre, while the F-86 six 12.7-millimeter guns lacked hitting power (*). One Soviet MiG-15 pilot who fought in Korea described them contemptuously as "pea-shooters", and USAF pilots reported expending all their ammunition on a MiG, only to watch it fly away. Soviet pilots felt that their machine was more rugged, and believed that many of their aircraft that were credited as "kills" by the Americans actually returned to base and were able to fly again.

On the plus side, the F-86 was well built, and turned and rolled better than the MiG. Its radar gunsight was much superior to the MiG's eyeball gunsight, and if its guns were of relatively small caliber, they were accurate, well focused, and had a high rate of fire.

Sabre pilots also had excellent visibility, sitting high up in a prominent bubble canopy, while MiG pilots sat deeper in their machines. This did give the MiG pilots an advantage of greater protection in air combat, but at the cost of inferior visibility, compounded by the fact that parts of the MiG-15's canopy were prone to fogging.

The MiG-15 had a number of aerodynamic vices. When Chuck Yeager, who evaluated a captured MiG-15, later chatted with a Soviet MiG-bureau engineer during a visit to the USSR, the Soviet engineer was incredulous that Yeager had actually dived in the thing. Unlike the Sabre, the MiG-15 was prone to spins, and recovering from them was difficult.

The MiG's cockpit ergonomics were also inferior. In particular, Soviet pilots were unhappy that there was only one ejection lever. If they were wounded in one arm, they would have to reach across with the other to eject, which put them in a posture that made an ejection injury very possible.

Sabres performed better at low altitudes, MiGs at high. For this reason, fights tended to be brief, since the adversaries would quickly seek the ground where they had the most advantage. The Sabre had been designed primarily for the air superiority role, while the MiG-15 had been designed primarily as a high-altitude bomber destroyer. Each was very well suited to the mission for which it had been specifically designed.

The close balance between the F-86 and the MiG-15 meant that the critical factor in the air battle was pilot training and skill. While there were many skilled Soviet pilots, the Soviets were hampered by the decision to rotate entire units through combat, meaning each new unit had to learn the game all over again. The Americans were in general experienced, and rotated individuals into combat with the help of those that knew the game.


(*) Note: to address the firepower issue on the 12.7mm guns, USAF used armor-piercing incendiary ammo containing magnesium. This made the shots more powerful, but caused poor peformance at high altitude engagements.

===========

Since this IS a Chinese military forum, I'd also add that by the time the ROCAF was using them, they had a leg up on the PLAAF because by then the F-86's were armed with sidewinders.

But didn't the F-86 have a far better kill record? I thought it was 5 to one or something like that.

Originally Posted by Finn McCool

But didn't the F-86 have a far better kill record? I thought it was 5 to one or something like that.

During the Korean war, the experienced American pilots were flying against Chinese pilots who probably never flew in their entire life time before the Korean war. I'm serious, one of the guys from the Beijing aviation university told me stories of the Korean war. He basically said these guys went up with no strategies, just flew around, it was amazing that they shot down anyone.

The US military also quoted 2-3 million Chinese casualties. Obviously that wasn't true.

Originally Posted by Finn McCool

But didn't the F-86 have a far better kill record? I thought it was 5 to one or something like that.

I'd cite this post:
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums...ad.php?t=10204


I looked at the pages and pages of all aircraft shot down in the war. These were air force documents that gave date, location, pilot, tail number, aircraft, and cause of aircraft loss. Even when taking into account the 'unknown' F-86 losses, they still came out ahead.

Overall, the F-86 had a 4:1 kill ratio over MiG 15s. The commonly stated 10:1 kill ratio was by the inflated numbers. That number goes down when cross-referenced with the other countries documents. Of course it was not 4:1 when talking about soviet aircraft alone, but the soviets didn't have a 2:1 kill ratio.


You all seem to not really understand what a kill ratio is.

A kill ratio is ALL air-to-air kills over ALL air-to-air losses.

Aircraft lost to accidents, ground fire, or mechanical problems don't count. They never did and they never will. This goes for all countries.

That means if a MiG 21 shots down 2 helicopters and an F-5, but gets shot down by a Mirage, it has a 3:1 kill ratio.

If an F-86 is damaged in a dogfight, and is flying back to base, but get hit by ground fire later, and crashes, it was the ground fire that shot it down. The same goes if the situation was reversed with the MiG-15 getting shot down like that.

The often quoted 2:1 on this site for Soviet MiG-15 kills has an important point--its for total UN aircraft kills.

So, how does the 4:1 ratio for the F-86 in regard to MiG-15 kills, and the Soviet 2:1 kills for the MiG-15 work out?

They actually both make sense. The 4:1 kills for the F-86 only take into account MiG-15s. It has a slightly higher kill ratio, but since most of the aircraft the F-86 shot down were MiG-15s, it does not change all that much.

The Soviet 2:1 may very well be true too because they take ALL aircaft shot down into account. There is nothing wrong with that because that's still a true kill ratio.

If you get into only F-86 kills, the number goes down, and that's because there were other F-86s shooting them down. That will give much closer to a 1:1 kill ratio for MiG-15s in relation to the F-86s.

The 4:1 kill ratio takes into account both Chinese, NK, AND Russian MiG-15s. Its clear that the US didn't have a 4:1 ratio over the Soviet aircraft. All indications I've seen point to around a 1:1 ratio with the Soviet aircraft as well (perhaps a little lower). With the ratio between the Chinese and NK aircraft higher than 4:1 (maybe around 5-6:1) to ballance it out.

That kill ratio actually makes sense. The MiG-15 and F-86 were very evenly matched. This was before the day of the missile, so it was still WWII style fighting were the man in the cockpit made the largest difference.

The American pilots had a significant amount of training, and a large amount had a great deal of WWII experence with many of them being prior aces. The Soviets were in much the same boat. At the time, they also had good training and most of the Soviets flying also had WWII records. When you have evenly matched aircraft, with pretty much evenly matched pilots, using only guns, it makes sense that the kill ratios would be very close to 1:1. I would still give the soviets a slightly greater than 1:1 though because they could use China as a shield. If they were in trouble, they just had to fly a few seconds north over the river and land. The US fighters on the other hand had to fly hundreds of miles south to get back to their bases with the MiGs being able to follow them the whole way.


Its important in these cases not to look at just the 'surface' numbers. By doing a little bit of digging in actuall documents, you can get a much more clear picture of the situation.

The Australian-built Sabres had 2 30mm cannons - anyone knows how did those compare to the previous armament in terms of efficiency? AFAIK this variant of the Sabre didn't saw any action.

The Soviets are still using crude optical gunsights. In fact, Soviet gunsights are so bad that during WWII, Russian aces preferred flying American fighters like P-39 Airacobras and P-63 Kingcobras despite the inferior (much inferior) flight performance of these fighters compared to later model Russian fighters such as the Yak-3/9 and the La-5/7/9.

The F-86 on the other hand, was the first plane to feature a radar directed gunsight. The radar is located on the upper lip of the engine mouth, and contributed to that shape. It was only until the MiG-19 aka J-6, that the Russians finally used radar directed gunsights.

For comparison, the F-86A was armed with 6 x 12.7 mm (.50 cal) machineguns. Each gun carried 267 rounds of ammunition and had 1,100 rounds/min rate of fire.

If I am correct, the .50 Browning does only 800 rounds/minute.

Not all of the pilots were Chinese, at least some were Russian. There is no way China can train their pilots in that time. (I believe that MiG-15s didn't arrive until 1950.) Only the russians had any experience. I watched a show on I think the History Channel and some fmr. Russian pilots admitted they fought there. The MiG-Alley has to be feared for something.....

You Guys Didn't Read The Beginning! I Said The Pilots Had The Same Skill! All Variables Are The Same Except The Aircraft! I Said State Your Opinion!

This is an easier one, according to Boyd F-86 is superior because of the hydraulic flight control. F-86 all the way...

From what I have come to understand, alot of the F-86's abilities were brought up as a resposne to the attacks by MiG-15's and the inferiority on the P-80 Shooting Star against modern Soviet designs (which were bassed, as most know, on German Swept-Wing designs). However, as others have stated, the MiG 15 was more of an interceptor and piloted by relatively innept pilots (with some Soviet exceptions).

But like any military device, there were areas where one was superior to the other. The MiG 15 was generaly faster than the F-86 (depending on variant), but the F-86 was much more adept at turn and dive. So if the F-86 pilot wanted to run straight away, he would be a dead duck. But if he turned away, or dived away, he would have little worry. MiGs also preformed better at lower altitudes than an F-86, but their climb was limited.

Overall, in the multi-role sense, the F-86 was superior. But the MiG was a bit of a generation behind. Regardless, the MiG still played hell with the allies' less capable fighters.

Originally Posted by sze_j86

Disregard skill of the pilot, radar, rockets, and everything. Simply bullets and the plane.

I have to give this one to the MiG.

Think of it this way. Given all the advantages in experience, flight hours and training that the Americans had, they still had their hands full shooting-down inexperienced Chinese aviators flying the MiG.

Compare the kill-to-loss ratios from Korea, to similar kill-to-loss ratios in Iraq (where the Americans had the advantage of both training and better mounts). If the Sabre had been a truly superior fighter, the Americans should have clobbered the MiGs - more like 35:1 and not 4:1.

I think it was said before, somewhere, that a good majority of the pilots flying MiG's in Korea were Soviets. I would not be suprised if I was wrong here.

Well, I am going to throw a new twist into this.
The MIG 15s are just north of the China/Korean border. The US is flying its patrols to the northern Korean border. They only have about a 5 minutes loiter time before they must return becouse of fuel. This is not my senario, this is what the west said!
The west says there are only about 90 sabers available while putting the Mig-15 count at over 800. If the saber has a 4 to 1 kill ratio, the north should be able to overwehlm the saber with superior numbers. So what happend. Was the north to timid? Or was the saber more powerfull then we are to belive? Or maybe I pulled the wrong numbers out of my rear. ( These are western numbers). Or close to it.
Looks to me that the aircraft are close to equal and the north was just to timid? Looks like a big tactical mistake to me. Feel free to rip me up. Cheers!