contradict what you say these are Korean Air war vet who flew F-86's!

disturbed, well i found a page, take a look www.acepilots.com...
there some references, in that time the comunists 60-70 planes were lost (including chinese and korean)

1. Many Soviet medium and high-ranking officers wanted to gain favour with the Soviet dictator Josif Stalin (well known for killing or deporting Soviet generals who failed in accomplish his wishes), and one way to do so was to inflate the score of the MiG regiments in Korea.
2. The Soviet pilots earn 1,500 additional rubles for every air victory they were credited with. It is quite likely that there were many false claims, just for the money.
3. The gun camera images of the MiG-15 were of such poor quality, that the Russian guncamera analysts decided that if a US plane appeared in a pic, then they would credit a "kill," even when they did not notice shell strikes, smoke, or an ejection.

If we add to such factors the usual overclaiming -in good faith, but overclaiming in the end- of any war, then we can understand why the Soviet 64th IAK claimed the unbelievable figure of 1,106 UN aircraft destroyed in the Korean War. (532 of them in the "Honcho Period," when only 142 Allied aircraft were actually downed by the Soviet MiG-15 pilots). So, many of those scores must be seen with a lot of skepticism, e.g: Mikhail Ponomaryev was credited with 11 kills, but when we analyze the dates of his claims, only 2 matched with admitted US losses! And he is not the only one.