Estaciones de Batalla - F 86, El Primer Jet de Cobate de USA

Video from the channel DANIEL 10:18 about North American F-86 Sabre, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 44:54. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

Episode of the series "Battle Stations," dubbed into Spanish, devoted to the North American F-86 Sabre, the first American fighter with swept wings. It combines archive footage with color dramatizations and veteran testimony to follow the aircraft from its design to its role in the Korean War, where it faced the MiG-15.

The episode opens with the piston fighters of the end of the Second World War and the arrival of the jet engine, which Germany brought into combat with the Messerschmitt Me 262. North American Aviation, the maker of the Mustang, drew on German data on swept wings. By August 1947 it already had the XP-86 prototype. On the first flight, George Welch had trouble lowering the nose gear and, following radio advice from another test pilot, Hoover, landed on the main wheels. Now designated F-86, the aircraft entered service with the United States Air Force in 1949. The second part places the aircraft in Korea: the invasion of the south in June 1950, China's entry into the war, and the appearance of the MiG-15, which endangered the B-29s. In response, the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing was urgently deployed. The episode explains "MiG Alley," the ban on crossing the Yalu into China, and the covert presence of Soviet pilots.

The Sabre had 35-degree swept wings, a nose air intake and six .50-caliber Browning M3 machine guns. Its pilots wore anti-g suits and patrolled at about 12,000 meters, with barely 20 minutes of combat time due to the distance from their bases. Bruce Hinton was the first Sabre pilot to shoot down a MiG-15. The episode also covers Bud Mahurin being shot down on 13 May 1952, after which he spent 16 months as a prisoner, Ralph Parr's 10 kills in seven weeks, and McConnell's 16 MiGs, the war's top ace. From April 1953, F-86Fs also acted as fighter-bombers. According to the US Air Force, the Sabre achieved a kill ratio of about ten to one, a figure the Russians dispute.