List of Korean War Flying Aces - Controversy

Controversy

The status of many claimed aces in the Korean War is a subject of intense dispute owing to conflicting records from the two sides in the conflict. Records from the United Nations generally agree there were only 40 pilots to reach ace status during the Korean War, all of them from the United States. However, records from China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea conflict widely and accounts vary on how many aircraft on each side were lost and who is credited with the victories. Air victory claims, which are often controversial between two sides of a conflict, were particularly difficult to measure in Korea thanks to the difficulty recovering crashed aircraft and confirming losses, as well as poor records for the two sides which fought the bulk of their engagements in an area known as MiG Alley.

The number of aircraft lost during the war is in dispute among both the UN and the Soviet bloc nations. UN pilots claim 840 aircraft shot down during the course of the war, while Chinese, Soviet, and North Korean sources indicate only 600 aircraft lost among the three nations. Conversely, the Soviet Union sources claim to have shot down 800 UN aircraft, while US sources indicate only 100 were lost in combat. Overestimation of victories on both sides has been attributed to the stress and confusion of air combat situations during the war, as well as the tendency for pilots to deliberately exaggerate claims for career advancement. Claims from the Soviet-bloc nations were arguably more likely to be accurate because the majority of air-to-air action in the war occurred over Soviet airspace. However, historians suggest numbers in these nations were exaggerated further for propaganda purposes and in order to appease superiors. Soviet pilots, they claim, faced harsh penalties for perceived failure or ineffectiveness, making inaccurate or false claims of victories more common. Compounding the problem, both sides were utilizing jet engine-powered fighter aircraft on a large scale for the first time, and the high speeds of combat made visual identification of damaged and destroyed aircraft difficult. As a result, UN planners required multiple witnesses to confirm victories, hoping to glean the best intelligence possible. Soviet leaders kept relatively lax standards for confirming kills at the beginning of the war, leading to widespread over-claiming. Both sides made extensive use of gun cameras to better track effectiveness, but Soviet cameras were less effective, further contributing to over-claiming.

In total, the Soviet bloc nations claim to have destroyed a combined number of between 1,000 and 1,600 UN aircraft in air-to-air combat, the most common number in sources being 1,106 UN aircraft total, including 651 F-86 Sabres. The most authoritative numbers indicate 1,016 UN aircraft, including 595 Sabres. Chinese sources claim an additional 330 victories, including 211 Sabres. The most common number used is a total of 271 victories for China and North Korea. Other, more recent works claim 1,337 UN aircraft. During the entire course of the war, the UN force claims to have lost 1,466 aircraft to all causes, with 757 of them lost to enemy action. Of these only 139 were destroyed in air-to-air combat and 305 unknown or missing. Of these, only 78 Sabres were listed as lost in combat with 26 missing. Historians generally regard the UN numbers as the most accurate.

Tallying claims for the many Soviet pilots who claim to have achieved ace status is extremely difficult. The system of claims awards in the country is unclear and appears to have been highly inconsistent in the conflict. There is also no single list of victories for each pilot in the Soviet Union, with numbers instead drawn from after action reports and accounts from pilots and unit leaders. These complications, in addition to the intentional exaggeration of kills in order to please superiors, means that about 50 Soviet pilots claiming ace status have a total number of credits which far exceeds the number of aircraft the UN troops lost in the war's air battles. Realizing the chronic problem with false claims, Soviet leaders began to tighten the criteria for confirming victories in 1952. As a result, far fewer Soviet pilots were made aces in the second half of the war.