Cold War Yard Ornament
Earache
Registered Users Posts: 3,533 Major grins
Earache
Registered Users Posts: 3,533 Major grins
Comments
It took some fair-sized cojones to take that plane into combat. It had a habitually bad oxygen supply system for the pilots.... caused more than a few of them to auger in.
Take care,
Tom
It is a funny looking little plane... in-person it looked primitive and more like a carnival ride than a fighter aircraft.
The Mig 15 would never win a beauty contest, for sure. However, it was, indeed, a very formidable fighter. In the hands of a skilled pilot, the Mig was one tough adversary. It was ruling the skies during the Korean conflict until the U.S. could get its latest fighter....the F-86....into the battle.
Compared to the F-86, the Mig was somewhat less developed in some technical areas: inferior gun sights, less redundancy in critical flight systems, etc. It reflected the Russian approach to their aircraft of that period.....build them cheap and build a lot of them. But the Mig had some solid attributes. It had a slightly superior flight ceiling ( over 50,000 feet ) and could out climb the F-86. The F-86 was a little faster, could out dive the Mig, and was much more robustly built.
When the latest versions of the F-86 were introduced and were fitted with the infamous " moving tail " feature, the Mig was much less of a threat. I've seen these Migs fly. They are quite maneuverable ....but lacking in reliability and sophistication.
Tom
experiences is impressive, and when told by you, make interesting, enriching, captions for our images.
You should write a book sir!
Best,
Eric
Where was this displayed?
This display is located at an aviation museum in San Diego, adjacent to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
It's not real big, but it's well done and worth a visit if a person is in SD and likes such.
Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum
See it here: http://flyingleathernecks.org/
Here is the Grumman F9F Cougar. Navy and Marine Corps aviators (we in the Naval service call airplane jockeys "aviators" to differentiate them from "pilots" who are responsible for guiding ships into and out of ports) flew the earlier model F9F Panther (which looked almost like the Cougar) during the Korean Conflict and bagged MIG15's with the Panther. http://www.mofak.com/Royce%20Williams-Navy%20Pilot%20MIG%20Killer.htm
I have got to admit that if good looks were any indication of an airplane's effectiveness, the Panther/Cougar would certainly outshine the MIG-15.
The F4U Corsair was credited with a few MIG kills during that conflict. This one is a night fighter configured F4U-2. I don't know if the night fighter was even flown during the Korean war but, both the Marines and Navy flew the standard F4U Corsairs from carriers and land bases in the early days of the war.
See some more of the Flying Leatherneck Museum at: http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/Airplanes/FLYING-LEATHERNECK-AVIATION/i-mJR22Rg