The F-86 Sabre, the first and most numerous jet fighter of the Spanish Air Force

On October 1, 1947, two years after the end of World War II, a memorable aircraft made its first flight.

Ascua: the story of the first official aerobatic patrol of the Spanish Air Force
The F-86H Saber fighter of the US Air Force National Museum showing its entire interior

The North American F-86 Sabre was a single-engine jet fighter with the nose intake, like many fighters of its time. 9,860 units were built. Spain received 270 F-86Fs between 1955 and 1958, making it the Spanish Air Force's first and most numerous jet fighter, as well as its first jet aerobatic aircraft with the famous Patrulla Ascua. This Saturday, Fly By Wire Aviation published a video showing color images of the Spanish F-86Fs:

The Sabre became famous in the Korean War (1950-1953), where it faced off against Soviet-made MiG-15 jet fighters. It should be noted that the F-86 was not designed to be supersonic, but it was the first fighter with which Spanish pilots occasionally broke the sound barrier, probably in dive flights.

The F-86 was armed with six 12.7 mm (.50 in) M-3 Browning machine guns mounted on either side of the aircraft's nose, three on each side. It also had four underwing slings capable of carrying external fuel tanks, bombs, rocket launchers, and short-range air-to-air missiles AIM-9B Sidewinder.

Initially, the Spanish F-86s were structured into six fighter wings that had different colored stripes on the nose of their aircraft: Fighter Wing No. 1 (Manises, Valencia, blue), Fighter Wing No. 2 (Zaragoza, black), Fighter Wing No. 4 (Palma de Mallorca, green), Fighter Wing No. 5 (Morón, orange) and Fighter Wing No. 6 (Torrejón, white).

The Spanish F-86s were already obsolete by the early 1970s, when their replacements began to arrive in Spain: the French Dassault Mirage III (1970, 30 fighters) and the American McDonnell Douglas F-4C Phantom II (1971, 40 fighters in total). The F-86 left the Spanish Air Force on December 7, 1972, with the C.5-70 making its last flight. This aircraft is preserved today at the Zaragoza Air Base as a memorial. All remaining aircraft were decommissioned in 1973.

Two F-86s are on display at the Madrid Air Museum: C.5-58 102-4, displayed in Hangar 5 and preserved with the emblems of Squadron 102 of Torrejón, and C.5-175 1-175, in the exterior area F, next to Hangar 3, preserved with the colors of the Patrulla Ascua. In Spain, F-86s are also on display in other places as monuments: at the Basic Air Academy (ABA) in León, in Palos de la Frontera (Huelva) and in the Parque del Oeste in Valencia. Furthermore, in Bayonne (Pontevedra) there is a monument with the wing of an F-86, in the roundabout of the parish of Sabarís that bears the name of Air General José Santos Peralba, a native of there and one of the pioneers of jet aviation in Spain.

---

Main photo: Elentir.