Where Are the REAL F-86 Sabres Now

Video from the channel Ghost Warbirds about North American F-86 Sabre, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 12:41. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about the fate of the F-86 Sabres after their service life: what happened to the roughly 9,800 examples built, including those made under licence in Canada, Australia, Japan and Italy.

North American began a straight-wing fighter for the Army Air Forces in 1944 and, after studying German research on swept wings, reworked the design with a 35° wing. The prototype flew on 1 October 1947 with George Welch; in September 1948 an F-86A broke the world speed record and the type entered service in 1949. From December 1950 it fought the MiG-15 over the Yalu, in what became known as MiG Alley. Forty American pilots became aces in the F-86, and the official tally of 792 MiGs for 78 Sabres has since been revised downward by later research based on Soviet and Chinese archives. The armistice was signed in July 1953.

Only a small portion of the Sabres saw combat. Many were handed over to allies in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia; more than two dozen countries flew the type, some into the 1970s. In the United States it was sidelined in the early 1960s and the Air National Guard retired it by the mid-1960s. Retired aircraft ended up at the Davis-Monthan aircraft boneyard, sold for scrap, converted into remote-controlled targets, or given as pedestal monuments, many of them weathered by the elements; some of those monuments are actually Canadian-built Sabres, naval Furies or replicas. Joseph McConnell, the war's top ace with 16 kills, died on 25 August 1954 testing an F-86H at Edwards. Today a few dozen still fly, and others are preserved in museums such as the National Museum of the United States Air Force, near Dayton.