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Kill ratio of about 8:1
The XF-86 made its first test flight on October 1, 1947. The first production model, the F-86A, was test flown in May 1948 and the Air Force received the Sabre jet on August 16, 1948. In September 1948, the F-86A set a world record of 670.9 miles per hour.
As a day fighter, the F-86A (and later F-86Es and F-86Fs) saw service in Korea as the primary opponent of the Russian-built MiG-15. By the end of hostilities, F-86 pilots had shot down 792 MiGs, with a kill ratio of about 8:1.
More than 5,500 F-86 day fighters were built in the US and Canada. Air forces of 20 other nations, including West Germany, Japan, Spain, Great Britain and Australia, also operated the Sabre.
Soviets steal an F-86 Sabre
As told by John Fredrickson in the book North American Aviation In the Jet Age, The California Years 1945-1997, Ralph Wetterhahn tells a fascinating story in the Spring 2007 edition of North American Aviation bulletin (NAAR Bulletin, pp, 10-12). It was widely known that many of the Korean War MiG-15s were piloted by Russians, but only with the demise of the Soviet Empire did the veil of secrecy fall away.
After wartime face-to-face meetings with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Gen. “Hap” Arnold himself considered Stalin better informed and more astute on American airpower than some of Arnold’s own generals.
Stalin was shocked by the performance of the F-86 Sabre and ordered that one be captured. After months of frustration, an opportunity arose on Oct. 6, 1951.
The F-86A flown by 2Lt. Bill N. Garret took hits from a MiG-15 in the engine and ejection seat. Garret headed for a ditching in the Yellow Sea but was attacked by a second MiG-15 flown by Capt. Konstantin Sheberstov of the Russian air force. Garret was forced down on a mudflat and rescued by an SA-16 amphibious aircraft but enemy soldiers seized the F-86.
Attempting to destroy the prize, American aircraft attacked the hulk from overhead, but it soon disappeared under a rising tide. Soviets hired five hundred Chinese to salvage the mired aircraft. They labored the next day under protection of cloud cover to detach the wings. The enemy recovery team loaded the pieces onto trucks. The trucks traveled by night and hid in tunnels during the day.
The captured Sabre, serial number 49-1319, arrived at the Air Force Research Flight Test Institute at Zhukovsky, 22 miles southeast of Moscow, in October 1951.
Warning system to counter the Sabre gunsight
The MiG-15 had a manual gunsight system designed in 1939. The Soviets were most fascinated with the F-86 gunsight. The Sperry APG-30 radar gunsight had a range of about 3,000 feet and was able to measure the range and compute the lead time required even when the target was maneuvering.
A warning system was developed to counter the American gunsight. A sensor, similar to an automobile police radar detector was installed in the tail of each MiG-15. The sensor was wired into the headset circuitry to deliver a warning tone to the communist pilot. The system was simple, cheap, and generally effective.
Stalin considered cloning the F-86, but his impending death combined with the Soviet air force expectation that the next enhancement, the MiG-17, would outperform both the MiG-15 and the F-86. Meanwhile, the parade of Allied aircraft parts gleaned from other Korean crash sites continued to flow to suburban Moscow for engineering evaluation.
North American Aviation In the Jet Age, The California Years 1945-1997 is published by Schiffer Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo credit: U.S. Air Force, Joec03 via Wikipedia and unknown
