Australian Archives: Combat evaluation of Meteor VIII, MIG-15, F86A, F86E in Korea

[HoHun]

Hi everyone,

Eagledad over on https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/which-was-better-f-86-or-mig-15.30775/#post-1632936 posted a copy of the following document:

NAA: J63, 28/21/AIR
Series number: J63
Control symbol: 28/21/AIR
Barcode: 1877583
Number of pages: 62
Title: Combat evaluation of Meteor VIII, MIG-15 versus F86A in Korea and MIG-15 versus F86E in Korea
[in the Korean theatre]

Since there's some stuff in there I haven't seen in this form before, here some excerpts I thought were interesting ... mainly concerning armament and sights:





I thought it was interesting that the F-86E's battery of 6 x 12.7 mm machine guns was considered "short-range" armament. It does match what "Boots" Blesse wrote in his "No Guts, No Glory", though: http://www.simhq.com/_air/PDF/NGNG.pdf



"No Guts No Glory" was a bit of the Fighter Pilots' Bible for quite a while as far as I can tell - I've seen a historic training manual used by the Luftwaffe which was basically a slightly extended version of "No Guts No Glory" with practical tipps and flight training exercises thrown in. So, quite worth having a look at that, in addition to the reports from the National Australian Archives.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Dynoman]

Copy of No Guts No Glory by 'Boots' Blesse

 

[HoHun]

Hi again,

Eagledad over on https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/which-was-better-f-86-or-mig-15.30775/#post-1632936 posted a copy of the following document:

Here's a combat evaluation of the Gloster Meteor VIII:



Considering that the earlier Meteor variants were quite limited by their maximum permissible Mach number (0.72 for the Meteor III, 0.80 for the Meteor IV), I was a bit surprised to read that the otherwise much improved Meteor VIII still was restricted to Mach 0.82 - hardly better than the Meteor IV. It seems that the earlier Meteors' poor roll rate still was an issue with the Meteor VIII, too.

(I have to admit that the only Mach limit figure I have for the Lockheed F-80 is for the P-80A, which was limited to Mach 0.80 too. If you have data for later versions, I'd love to see that!)

The F-86E in clean configuration with no external stores according to the type's manual has no fixed Mach limit, though it seems that with increasing speed strong rolling tendencies are to be expected. Speed is not be be increased to a magnitude where these tendencies become "excessive", but from a quick look at the manual, it's not clear to me if that speed is the same on all aircraft of the type, or if it's variable between individual aircraft.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[HoHun]

Hi again,

Eagledad over on https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/which-was-better-f-86-or-mig-15.30775/#post-1632936 posted a copy of the following document:

Here's an contemporary overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the MiG-15 compared to the F-86E, based purely on what the USAF had observed in combat at the time:



The tabular comparison is quite an informative and useful format, and it's interesting to note that the USAF concluded that the F-86E doesn't even enjoy a "moderate advantage" in any of the listed characteristics, and the only "limited advantage" it held was a better diving ability when it came to dive speeds of Mach 0.95 or faster.

The MiG-15 on the other hand held "definite" and "moderate" advantages in steady and zoom climbs as well as in the (related) characteristic of acceleration, especially at 40000 ft and more. Ceiling is also listed as a "moderate" advantage ... I'm not sure why this was not listed as a "definite" advantage, as the accompanying report shows it had quite an impact in actual operations.

While there's no table comparing the MiG-15 to the earlier F-86A, there's a brief discussion of how these two types compare in another report that's part of the same file:





Regards,

Henning (HoHun)





Regards,

Henning (HoHun)