Here is my version of the North American F-86A Sabre of the United States Air Force, for the P47D slot in EAW. The machine represented is flown by Lt Col Bruce Hinton. On December 17, 1950, victorious Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Group downed a MiG-15 over the Yalu River during the Korean War. This was the first encounter between the Russian built swept wing jet fighter and the newly arrived American F-86s. 

This is a brand new skin by me, the 3dz is by Woolfman. The cockpit and wingview are by Mosi, from his TA183, modified by me for the F86. The cockpit panel is by Claudio Wilches.

When your lined up on the runway at the start of a mission, select the outside view and watch the canopy close!



About the F86A:

The F-86 Sabre joined the ranks of the great fighter aircraft during combat operations high above the Yalu River area of Korea. Although the enemy MiG-15s could not be pursued across the Chinese border, the American Sabre pilots established a victory ratio of more than ten to one.

In the fall of 1944 the Army Air Forces ordered three prototypes of a modified North American FJ-1 Fury, a jet fighter being developed for the Navy. It was designated the XP-86. The design progressed through the mock-up stage, but by the summer of 1945 it was apparent that the fighter's top speed would be well below the 600 mph called for in the specification. Fortunately, a great deal of captured German aerodynamic data became available to the North American designers with the surrender of Germany in May 1945. These data indicated that a swept wing delayed the compressibility effects encountered at high subsonic speeds. Swept winged aircraft could be controlled at a considerably higher Mach number (percentage of the speed of sound) than a straight winged aircraft of the same general configuration. The swept wing, however, introduced low-speed stability problems. After scale model wind tunnel tests, the designers selected a wing that was swept back at an angle of 35 degrees, and added automatic leading edge slats to solve the stability problem.

The first XP-86 flew on October 1, 1947, powered by an Allison J35-C-3, a 3,750 lb. thrust engine. In April 1948, the XP-86 exceeded Mach 1 (the speed of sound) in a shallow dive. On December 28, 1947, the Air Force ordered 221 P86As to be powered by the 4,850 lb. thrust General Electric J47-GE-1 engine. In June 1948, a month after the first P-86A flight, its designation was changed to F-86A.

On September 15, 1948, an F-86A set a world speed record of 671 mph. In addition to its high performance, the F-86A had excellent handling characteristics and was well liked by its pilots. The Sabre was armed with six .50-caliber M3 machine guns mounted in the nose. The Mark 18 manual-ranging computing gun sight was replaced in later models with the A-1CM, which used radar ranging.

In December 1950, the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, one of the first of the Air Force's Sabre units, arrived in Seoul to fight the Russian-built sweptwing MiG-15s, which had appeared in Korea in November. On December 17, in the first known combat between sweptwing fighters, Lt. Col. Bruce H. Hinton shot down a MiG-15s. By the end of the Korean War, the Sabres had destroyed almost 800 MiG-15s with the loss of fewer than eighty F-86s.

The F-86 progressed through several improved versions-the F-86E, F, H, D. and K models. The changes, in most cases, included improved armament, more powerful engines, and control-system modifications. The F-86D, however, was an all-weather interceptor with a radar nose, and was armed with rockets instead of machine guns. The F-86K was a D-model with 20-mm machine guns replacing the rockets. In addition to those produced in California and Ohio, F-86s were built under license in Australia, Canada, Japan, and Italy. Of the 8,443 Sabres produced, 554 were F-86As.


Richard "Gramps" Kaminski
27 September 2002
Endeavour2000@hotmail.com
 







