Guy Alcala wrote in message ...
Mike Marron wrote:

snip

Captain Joseph M. '
Mac' McConnell is buried in a spot of honor in the Victorville
Cemetery. his sixteen jet-vs-jet victories have not been surpassed
to this day.

Incorrect if you include foreign pilots. The IAF's number one ace, Giora
Even, is credited with 17. There are excerpts from his diary for each of
his kills on the IAF's own web page at

http://www.iaf.org.il

(I'm having some difficulty connecting to the english version at the
moment -- I hope they haven't removed it). And some of the Russian pilots
that flew in Korea are credited with more (N. Sutyagin is listed as 23
IIRR, as is Evgenii Pepelyaev in some sources), but the Soviet claim
system includes group kills and is also more liberal than contemporary
western kill criteria, judging by the research conducted by historians
with access to both side's records from Korea.

ISTR that the Russians also claimed to have shot down something like
seven F-94's during a single engagement, at a location
(Shenyang/Mukden) that would have taxed the Starfighters range, and
supposedly on a date in July 1951 that preceded their entry into the
theater of operations! And BTW, the guy making this rather amazing
claim was Comrade Pepelyaev!

Brooks


Guy