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fighters

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Flash

Flash

SEVAL/ECMO
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The Russians flying with the North Koreans has been well documented since the end of the Cold War. A couple of the guys became aces with more kills than the highest scoring USAF F-86 pilots, some claiming over 20 kills. This is according to the Russians who did not have as rigorous kill confirmation procedures as the UN forces.

As for Russians flying in Vietnam, that is a pretty doubtful prospect. I have not heard of any Russians claiming kills from Vietnam, and they love to tell stories like that. If anyone is interested on a very detailed look at air combat in Vietnam I highly recommend the book Clashes published by the Naval Institute Press. It is written by a retired USAF COL and F-4 pilot. At the very end of the book he addresses the subject of Russian pilots in VN and discounts it.

As and interesting side note, Russians flew Mig-21's out of Egypt during the War of Attrition from 1967-1970. The got their asses handed to them during one particular battle with the Israeli's. In the end what matters most is the pilot, not the plane.
 
V

vegita1220

User
To clarify the "Naval" F-86 issue:
The FJ-1 Fury by North American was the first operation USN jet fighter sqdn. It was the PREDECESSOR to the F-86. It was straight wing.
The FJ-2/4 Fury was swept wing. It was based off the F-86 itself.
There ya go.

As for what Flash said...I kinda have to agree. When you read all the Russian books by ex-military guys who are spouting what should be classified info, you'd think one guy would go and boast about nailing US fighters. But why were some of you saying the most experienced Iraqis got put in MiG-25's? Seems to me you'd give them something a bit more modern and capable of dogfighting.
 
petescheu

petescheu

Registered User
I've read most of the posts on the original topic, and it seems like only one or two people have really hit the nail on the head... who cares if the SU-27/33/35 can do flips in the sky with their thrust vectoring (there's actually a pretty amazing video of that if you've never seen it) or turn on a dime or whatever else... They can do all that crap they want, but they still aren't going to get away from an AMRAAM missile or two that was shot from 30 miles away or whatever the real range of those things is. They can do all the turns they want- fact is that in a real head to head war when the F-22s and supers are cleared in hot, we'll blow them outa the sky before they even get close enough to try and turn on us. Couple of stories on this one... not sure what they were flying during the Bosnia deal (ie the bad guys, whoever they were over there) but one of my instructors who was flying Prowlers over there said that whenever they would launch a fighter (I think they were flying Mig-29s, not sure) in the air, they'd be shot down before they got their gear up b/c the F-15's would have them painted the second they started rolling out. Second one is that I've talked to an Air Force instructor who worked with some of the F-22 trail stuff; he said they did missions where they would pair one or two F-22s against large numbers of F-16s (ie over 15)... said that they never got a hit even though they got a few shots off, and that most of the time they would be shot down before they even knew they were painted. So as far as I'm concerned, they Russians can design aerodynamic marvels all they want and sell it to whoever they want... they'll look real cool doing a flip when they get blown to pieces from someone they never even knew was there.
 
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