The North American F-86 Sabre is one of the iconic aircraft of the early jet age.
Utterly forgotten in the decades since the Korean War was a reverse-engineered version, the Sukhoi Soviet Sabre.
How the Soviets managed to achieve this all started when a pilot suffered engine failure over Mig Alley and was forced to bail out.
His abandoned F-86 Sabre managed to glide just far enough to crash-land in that tip of the USSR bordering North Korea.
This would lead to the pilot, one Maj. Duke Wayne being known ever since in Air Force circles as "Wrong-Way" Wayne.
The crashed fighter was discovered by third-rate inner border troops who busied themselves going through Maj."Wrong-Way" Wayne's luggage which by some miracle survived.
They were amazed by what they found.
But what delighted them the most was the jeans.
Oops, wrong (Green) jeans.
These were quickly spirited away before the crash site could be secured by the KGB.
While it was obvious the aircraft was far too damaged to be re-built to flying condition, it was hoped another one could be reverse-engineered from the pieces which were delivered to the Sukhoi design bureau in the Burostan oblast.
Meanwhile, utterly unaware of the popularity of jeans in the west
the wives of the interior border troops started the ball rolling on the soviet blue jeans craze by doing a little reverse-engineering of their own and eventually this would be a thorn in the side of the Soviet State.
The powers that be in the USSR attempted to counter the blue jeans craze.
No matter how potent the propaganda, it never quite worked.
Funny, that Sukhoi Soviet Sabre never quite worked either.
While it did indeed fly, it was never able to perform up to the level of an authentic F-86.
Whether this was due to the difference between the English and Metric measuring systems or the inability of the Soviet aircraft industry to build to demanding western tolerances, we may never know.
The Sukhoi Soviet Sabre was unfortunately lost in a ground-handling accident six months after it first flew, and with so little documentary evidence left behind, to this day many doubt it ever existed at all.
Brian da Basher
