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 Canada, Japan, and Italy. Of the 8,443 Sabres produced, 554 were F-86As.
The National Air and Space Museum's F-86A was assigned to the 4th Fighter Interceptor Group at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, in July 1949. It was shipped to Japan in December 1950 with other F-86s of the 4th Group, and flown in Korea. Most of its combat missions against Mig-15s were flown from Kimpo Air Base near Seoul. It is displayed in the markings of the 4th Fighter Wing, the first F-86 unit in Korea. These markings were in use before June 1952.
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