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00:00Vietnam, a deadly dogfight rages high above the jungle.
00:09All hell's breaking loose.
00:11Where is it?
00:12It's on his face!
00:13It's on his face!
00:14It's assholes and elbows in the cockpit.
00:16Break right.
00:17It's just absolutely terrifying.
00:21The US Air Force is getting hammered by an enemy that fights by its own rules.
00:26If we let this war get out of hand, we're going to have World War III.
00:29America needs a hero.
00:33Someone willing to break every rule in the book to crush the enemy.
00:38This guy Robin Holmes is the real thing.
00:41A battle-hardened pilot with the right stuff.
00:44A maverick who dreams up the most audacious airborne mission of the Vietnam War.
00:50It's suicide.
00:53It's suicide.
01:15July 1966.
01:17Copy that, Airman.
01:18Copy that.
01:19Bring Mike to go.
01:25The conflict in Vietnam is exploding into full-blown war.
01:31Despite its vastly superior Air Force,
01:33American bombers are being shot out of the sky by the North Vietnamese,
01:37outsmarting US pilots with their hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
01:44Casualties are high.
01:46Morale is low.
01:50Ralph Wetterhahn, a 24-year-old lieutenant from New York,
01:53finds himself thrown into the chaos and terror of the war in the skies over Vietnam.
02:02In August of 1966, I landed at Ubon Air Base in Thailand.
02:08It's hot and steamy in the summer there.
02:11You check in, the food is strange, the water tastes awful,
02:15the mosquitoes drive you nuts.
02:17There's a lot of things going on and people are getting killed.
02:23In July alone, dozens of US pilots are shot down.
02:28The wing was in a state of turmoil like you wouldn't believe.
02:32We were losing pilots on a daily basis.
02:35The aircraft were in terrible condition mechanically and the missions were brutal.
02:41So that's what we're faced with at the end of August and into September of 1966,
02:47at which point in comes this Colonel Robin Olds.
03:06Colonel Robin Olds is an old-school hero.
03:11Charismatic, revered, fearless.
03:14He was an All-American football star out of West Point.
03:17He was married to a movie star, Ella Raines,
03:20and he had these Clark Gable good looks.
03:23It was like a movie actor.
03:28Olds leaves a comfortable job and goes to work.
03:33Olds leaves a comfortable job as a commander in England
03:36for the blood and sweat of the front line.
03:40He was on the list to become a general, a one-star general,
03:43and he knew one-star generals don't get to fly.
03:46They just keep them at desks, they keep them in administrative positions,
03:49and they're not allowed to fly.
03:51And he thought, hell no, that's not going to be me, I want to fly.
03:54Robin Olds was not designed to sit behind a desk.
03:57Number one, he was too big, and number two, he couldn't fly the damn desk.
04:03His mission, to figure out why so many pilots are dying
04:07and help a demoralized and beaten-down Eighth Wing return to supremacy.
04:12When Olds comes in to take command of the Eighth, he's 44 years old.
04:17He's got more than a decade, almost two decades on some of his airmen.
04:25I don't believe I knew anything about it, or had ever heard of Robin Olds.
04:30J.B. Stone, a young pilot from Mississippi, is stationed in Thailand.
04:35Nobody knew it was coming.
04:43He's really pissed, he said, what kind of outfit is this?
04:49Olds knows if he's going to resurrect this broken fighter wing,
04:53he's got to earn his pilot's respect.
04:56And here he shows up at our doorstep to take over the wing.
05:00And I'm your new CO.
05:03And we're all sitting back just saying, you'll be just like the other ones,
05:07you'll fly two missions and we'll never see you again.
05:11He said, I don't know what you guys are doing over here.
05:14I don't know what you've been doing.
05:16But I'm going to find out.
05:19I'm going to fly Green 16.
05:22Green 16 is just a junior ranking brown bar second lieutenant
05:27that's hanging on for dear life.
05:30And he waved that finger around the room and said,
05:35and at the end of that time, I'm going to be better than all of you.
05:41Yeah, we'll see.
05:44And I didn't mean to say it out loud, but somehow it snuck out.
05:50He just drilled holes in my head with those eyes.
05:56And I'm sitting there saying, I wish I hadn't have said that, you know.
06:01And finally just a little crack of a smile broke.
06:09What's your name, son?
06:13Captain Jonestone, sir.
06:19Green 16 starts 0300 tomorrow.
06:22The last time Robin Olds flew into battle, it was in a World War II prop plane.
06:28Now he takes a crash course in flying the U.S. Air Force's most modern flying machine,
06:33the F-4 Phantom.
06:35Colonel Olds certainly didn't keep his distance from the guys.
06:39Everett Raspberry, a pilot in his 30s from Georgia, remembers his new boss well.
06:45I think he led by example.
06:47If he couldn't do it, he wasn't going to ask anybody else to do it.
06:51Two or three weeks, he's out front on the pointy end leading.
06:59And he was doing better than anybody in that room.
07:04Soon after landing in Thailand, Olds is leading his men,
07:08escorting bombing missions over North Vietnam.
07:11He needs to find out what's going wrong firsthand.
07:15He's taking chances. He's leading these missions.
07:17We hadn't seen that. We hadn't seen that.
07:19This guy, Robin Olds, was the real thing.
07:23Olds is the real thing because flying is in his DNA.
07:27My dad's mother died when he was four years old.
07:30And he was basically raised by his father,
07:33who was a brilliant pilot in World War I.
07:36So he grew up surrounded by fighter pilots of his dad's era.
07:41Eddie Rickenbacker, Elliot White Springs,
07:44Tewi Spots, the greats of World War I.
07:48There just was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to be a fighter pilot.
07:53In 1943, Olds graduates from West Point.
08:00And joins the fight against Hitler in Europe.
08:03Aged 22, he joins an exclusive club.
08:08Robin became the first ace of his group in England.
08:13His total at the end of the war was 12 aerial kills.
08:2221 years later, now in the cockpit of a supersonic jet fighter,
08:26Robin Olds is about to lead his men in the gutsiest aerial mission of the Vietnam War.
08:40Veteran pilot Robin Olds has been sent to Vietnam
08:43to light a fire under the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing.
08:47Their main job, to protect high-speed Thunder Chief bombers known as Thuds,
08:51who were getting slaughtered by the North Vietnamese Air Force
08:54who exploit small weaknesses in American tactics with devastating results.
08:59The U.S. loses 43 aircraft in July of 66.
09:03This is an astronomical amount.
09:07And the toll it takes on the pilots is considerable.
09:14It's definitely...
09:18Excuse me.
09:20It's a big impact.
09:22Everybody goes to the club and gets shit-faced.
09:27Talk about the guy.
09:32And then you got to go back tomorrow.
09:37You start questioning the numbers.
09:39Am I going to survive all this?
09:42Losing about one a day.
09:44Do the math, you know.
09:46You're not going to make it unless something changes.
09:48In part, the high casualty rates are due to an escalation in the air war,
09:53all part of Operation Rolling Thunder.
09:56Operation Rolling Thunder is the codename for the missions over North Vietnam.
10:03It involves heavy bombing of the transportation facilities,
10:08bridges, railroads, oil storage.
10:11The objective, to destroy the supply chain that supports Viet Cong fighters in the South
10:16and force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table.
10:21We're going to hit them and we're going to hit them and we're going to hit them
10:24and eventually they're going to say,
10:26Uncle, we give up.
10:29Instead of crying, Uncle, the North Vietnamese fight back.
10:33The North Vietnamese were a very formidable enemy for the United States.
10:37They used tactics that exploit American weaknesses.
10:41One major weakness is the predictability of American bombing raids.
10:46Typical bombing runs would have 20 to 30 F-105s and about the same number of F-4s.
10:53There'd be four F-105s and then four F-4s, etc., all the way back.
11:00They would hit target areas in the morning and then would do it again in the afternoon.
11:04That was one of the other problems.
11:06The Vietnamese could set their watches by what we were doing.
11:12They certainly had the advantage because they were getting specific control
11:16from the ground radar flight controllers about where the American airplanes are.
11:22The North Vietnamese air force strategy is simple, hit and run.
11:27They were like a pack of wolves.
11:29They were like a pack of wolves.
11:32They would circle, waiting for the strike force to come over or come close.
11:37Shotgun, this is Red Cram, they got your seven.
11:40This is amazing.
11:42Then they would send one or two nukes into that mass of airplanes, launch a missile,
11:47and hopefully hit one of them.
11:49Shotgun, we need you closing. We've lost your plane.
11:52The thud was very fast, but when you put a lot of bombs on it, it wouldn't maneuver.
11:57So against a MiG-21 or a MiG-17, there was no contest. The MiGs were going to win.
12:04So the pilot is forced to jettison his bomb load.
12:07This is as good as gold for the North Vietnamese,
12:10because what you've done is you've forced the Americans to abandon their mission.
12:15Red Cram, it's closing from behind.
12:19When Olds and his F-4s show up, the MiGs vanish rather than risk their precious planes in a dogfight.
12:28Drop it off, we're heading inbound.
12:36The obvious solution for Olds is to destroy airfields in North Vietnam, but his hands are firmly tied.
12:44We were not allowed to bomb airfields, shipping, and Haiphong Harbor,
12:49because if we hit the Soviets and the Chinese, both of whom are supporting the North Vietnamese,
12:54we're going to have World War III.
12:58So this is a catch-22 situation for Olds and his airmen.
13:02You see your enemy there, and you cannot destroy him.
13:05They're fighting this with one hand tied behind their back.
13:08This is incredibly frustrating. They're getting shot at, and there's nothing they can do.
13:16They have no idea what we're going through up here. A bunch of bureaucracy.
13:20The war was run in Washington, 10,000 or 12,000 miles away.
13:27And that was a sticking point with the fighter pilots.
13:31What do they know? Let us just go do what we want to do.
13:37LBJ is quoted as saying, they don't bomb an outhouse without my approval.
13:43Strict rules of engagement put Olds and his men in a dangerous bind.
13:47The World War II double ace needs to think outside the box.
13:51He has no idea J.B. Stone and a small band of fellow pilots are doing exactly the same.
13:59There are a lot of things you could do that weren't getting done.
14:04I found out we got reconnaissance delivered every day that just kind of sat around.
14:11It was a lot of valuable information.
14:13And you could go find it if you took the time.
14:16We'd go down there every day and just sit and smoke cigarettes and study the intelligence
14:21and read what the other flights had done.
14:24We called ourselves the bibs, boys in the back shop.
14:30It's not long before their commanding officer finds them.
14:36He was wandering around one day and he walks in.
14:40He was wandering around one day and he walks in.
14:47What are you doing here?
14:49Well, we're trying to put ourselves ahead of the game, so when we go up there...
14:52He says, we have to do something about these MiGs.
14:55It's totally unacceptable, our losses.
14:58I shared that, and the loud mouth that I'd found myself to be at times,
15:04I said, I think I have an idea.
15:09Captain, this is Red Crown, we got your seven.
15:12Roger, Red Crown, hold on, get him off my ass.
15:15Hang in there, buddy.
15:17Whenever the MiG pilots attack the thud bombers, they retreat as soon as the F-4s fly to the rescue.
15:22We lost them.
15:24They tried to avoid the F-4s, and the reason being is because we could turn with them,
15:29and we could shoot them down.
15:31They didn't hang around and dogfight, because they knew they would lose that.
15:35Stone wants to turn the predictability of the bombing raids from a dangerous disadvantage to their advantage.
15:43His audacious idea, a 20th century Trojan horse.
15:49F-4 Phantoms masquerade as thud bombers, lure the MiGs into open skies, and take them down in a dogfight.
15:57Intrigued, Robin Olds handpicks a team to flesh out the plan.
16:02Wetterhau, come on in.
16:04He calls me in to his office, and he says, I picked you for a number of reasons,
16:10but I want you to go down the hall, there's a little office, and you're going to find some of your buddies in there,
16:15and you're going to go ahead and plan a mission.
16:18Get your ass down there.
16:20Yes, sir.
16:21Olds dubs the top secret mission Operation Bolo.
16:30Wetterhau, what are you doing here?
16:32Olds sent me down.
16:34What are you guys up to?
16:36It's called Bolo.
16:39I couldn't believe this, you know, two lieutenants, a captain, and a major.
16:43We're nothing, and we're going to plan this thing?
16:45And it's a big deal.
16:47It's not just going to shoot down a few airplanes.
16:50This is going to wipe out the North Vietnamese Air Force if we pull it off.
16:55That was huge, you know, to think that someone would entrust you with that.
17:00Challenge number one, trick the North Vietnamese into thinking F-4 Phantoms are F-105 Thud Bombers.
17:07The F-105 Thud Bombers, they're the F-105 Thud Bombers.
17:10Challenge number two, trick the North Vietnamese into thinking F-4 Phantoms are F-105 Thud Bombers.
17:15The F-105s coming out of Thailand are going to be flying at a specific altitude on specific routes.
17:20They're going to be refueling in the air at a specific point, and there's very little variation, if any, on these flights.
17:27Olds and his airmen play off of this.
17:30They're coming in at the same altitude.
17:32We tried to mimic exactly the way that the 105s would work.
17:35Even the radio transmissions, they had a certain lingo that they used, and we would use it.
17:41Clean them up, green them up, start the music.
17:44You've got to say, green them up, instead of set them up hot.
17:47Because in a 105, when you arm the bombs, you push some buttons and things go green.
17:53The Thud also carries a jamming device, or ECM pod.
17:58Its purpose is to block the radar of enemy surface-to-air missiles.
18:01We had to have those pods to make the deception work.
18:06It would make a wide blur on the radar, ground control, or screen.
18:11He can't see the individual target in this band.
18:15So they were hoping that when they see this big blob of interference heading that way, that this is one of the 5s.
18:23It was all kept simple, and that was the beauty of it, and that's what we put together in that little room with Olds.
18:31Tweaking it every now and then.
18:34If the bait-and-switch works, it will change the course of the air war in Vietnam.
18:39It's a huge roll of the dice.
18:42The F-4s have one big disadvantage when face-to-face with one of the Cold War's deadliest fighters.
18:49It's panic time. You know, someone's going to get killed here pretty quick.
18:53Ubon Air Base, Thailand.
18:57Through the fall of 1966, Robin Olds and a small group of pilots hone their top-secret plan to wipe out the North Vietnamese Air Force.
19:07Why will the MiGs engage the F-4s?
19:10It won't be easy.
19:12Trained in Russia, the men flying the MiGs are top pilots.
19:15Not only that, the Americans face a blistering North Vietnamese ground-to-air attack from Russian and Chinese-made missiles.
19:27North Vietnam is divided into route packages from 1 to 6.
19:31The higher the number, the bigger the risk.
19:34The easy packs are 1, 2, and 3.
19:38Number 6 is Hanoi.
19:40You're supposed to get 10 missions in there to learn how to keep alive.
19:44But we lost so many pilots and nobody got 10.
19:48You get 6, 7, sometimes 3 before you're headed for Hanoi.
19:55You never got comfortable in going to pack 6.
19:59It was always the butterflies.
20:02Because you never knew what was going to happen.
20:05That area around Hanoi was the most heavily defended area in the world.
20:11It had the deadly combination of everything from rice farmers with rifles and slingshots
20:17all the way up to radar-guided triple-A surface-to-air missiles.
20:25It was a very dangerous area.
20:27All the way up to radar-guided triple-A surface-to-air missiles.
20:35We assumed those guys were going to lose somebody, minimum one.
20:41So we asked Olds, you know, which flight are we going to be in?
20:45And he said, I ain't telling you till it's time.
20:48It's Olds' way of making sure his pilots show neither fear nor favor
20:52while planning an operation that may be their last.
20:57He left and Stone turned to us and said,
21:00I'll never forget this, he said, we've got to plan it like you're going to ride that train.
21:06When you plan a mission and you know you're going to fly that mission,
21:10you approach it with a whole different attitude.
21:14You're very careful. How many can we afford to put in there
21:17if we're going to lose somebody on each flight?
21:19How many airplanes did the North Vietnamese put up?
21:21How are we going to get all the airplanes off the runway?
21:24So that's the kind of detail we went into on every single flight that we did.
21:29And it was a huge undertaking.
21:32Despite its awesome firepower,
21:34the F-4 Phantom is outclassed by the nimble MiG in close combat.
21:38The F-4 Phantom was an airplane pushed into a wall.
21:42For which it was not designed.
21:44Over the late 50s into the early 1960s,
21:46it was viewed that combat was not going to be dogfighting
21:50as it had been in previous wars.
21:52The idea was fly fast, fly high, carry missiles.
21:57A standard load for the Phantoms were four radar-guided missiles,
22:01four heat-seeking missiles,
22:03and we usually carried seven 1,000-pound bombs.
22:07Beautiful load.
22:09It would carry everything, and it would do everything.
22:12I thought it was the war machine.
22:15The Phantom has one major design flaw.
22:18The biggest weakness of the F-4 was no gun.
22:21They knew that the closer they got in with us,
22:24the more we were hampered from shooting them down.
22:28Radar missiles and heat-seeking missiles
22:30were not designed against maneuvering targets.
22:33You need to be able to get in close,
22:35you need the medium, and you need the long range.
22:37If you have the gun, the Sidewinder, and the Sparrow,
22:39you've got all three.
22:41But without that gun, you're really hurting.
22:43When we got inside 3,000 feet,
22:45we can't fire anything that's going to hit him.
22:47We're so close that when we fire the Sidewinder,
22:49it'll go past him before the missile unlocks,
22:51and it'll miss him.
22:53Not only are the MiGs better suited to dogfighting,
22:56Colonel Olds knows the F-4 fighter has yet another disadvantage.
23:00You can spot an F-4 about 15 miles away.
23:03F-4s made a heavy black contrail just from the exhaust.
23:07The 105s did not.
23:09That was a big concern of mine,
23:11that our ruse is going to be destroyed
23:14as soon as some MiG pilot gets airborne
23:17and sees the smoke trail.
23:20And they can just curl around behind
23:22and stuff a missile up one of our tails
23:24and be on their way.
23:27Faced with a long list of weaknesses,
23:30Olds needs to find faults in the MiGs he can exploit.
23:33The MiG-21, we see, has very short legs,
23:36not much fuel load,
23:38so they can only fight for a short time,
23:41and then they had to go back and land.
23:43How long can they fly?
23:45Well, the MiG-17 has about 45 minutes of fuel.
23:49The MiG-21 has about another 10 minutes or so,
23:52so a little over an hour is all they can stay airborne.
23:55The MiG's short legs offer Olds a chance.
23:58If we cover their airfields for an hour after they take off,
24:01they got no place to land.
24:03The plan is get them airborne, do not let them land,
24:07stay with them till we shot them down,
24:10or they run out of fuel.
24:12So they stagger the flights that are going in
24:15in 5-minute intervals.
24:17So we'll have 7 in total coming down.
24:19So that is one F-4 flight that's having to refuel,
24:22another flight's coming in, and then another flight.
24:25Masquerading as thud bombers,
24:27the Phantoms will launch from Ubon
24:29in 7 groups of 4 fighters each.
24:32With luck, the MiGs will scramble
24:34and fly into the deadly trap.
24:37If they attempt to escape towards China,
24:40they'll be boxed in by a second force flying from the east,
24:44led by World War II and Korean veteran Robert Tenge.
24:48We're on the east wing,
24:50out of Da Nang going up the coast.
24:52If the MiGs are making a run for it,
24:54of course, we're going to close it off
24:56by coming in from the east
24:58and then shoot them down like pigeons.
25:01On paper, the top-secret plan looks good.
25:04Now it's up to Olds to pitch the deal
25:07and bring Operation Bolo to life.
25:09What I thought was this ain't ever going to happen.
25:12It's too good.
25:14It's too good, they'll never approve it.
25:18Olds travels to Saigon and heads straight to the top.
25:22Robin Olds goes to General Momar,
25:244-star general, ace from World War II,
25:26and says, I want to take out the North Vietnamese Air Force,
25:30and this is how I want to do it.
25:32Robin Olds was the key.
25:34He had that charisma, you know,
25:36that movie star kind of thing, and he did it so well.
25:41So he comes back from Saigon.
25:44Ellis gave us the green light.
25:52The mission is on, it's on for New Year's Day, 1st of January.
25:57As 1966 comes to a close,
26:00Olds calls a surprise briefing to unveil Operation Bolo.
26:05Bolo is a classic bait-and-switch mission.
26:09They're thinking, you've got to be shitting me.
26:13We're going to fly into the most heavily defended area in the world
26:18and make them think that we're thugs.
26:21What is that all about?
26:24That's suicide.
26:26We're going to commit seven flights.
26:29Finally, Olds reveals their assignments,
26:32each flight with its own unique call sign.
26:36The F-4s out of Ubon were all going to be automobiles.
26:40Olds, Rambler, Ford, Vespa.
26:43If it was an animal like bear, raccoon,
26:46then you knew it was one of the Da Nang guys.
26:48So all you had to do was listen, and you knew what was going on.
26:52You knew what was going on.
26:54I'm going to lead the first assignment.
26:56Olds, for obvious reasons.
26:58Leading the entire operation is Commander Robin Olds,
27:01his wingman Ralph Wetterheim.
27:04My role as number two is to look for MiGs,
27:08and when I see them, point them out to Olds
27:10so that he can shoot them,
27:12and if he can't shoot them, then I shoot them.
27:14Vice Commander Chappy James leads the second flight,
27:17codenamed Ford.
27:19Every time he sees a MiG,
27:21Everett Raspberry will be his wingman.
27:23I was there to protect Chappy James.
27:26All right, gentlemen, this is your time to shine.
27:29You will be in a battle...
27:31All three of the flights, Olds, Ford, Rambler,
27:35were to end up over Phuc Yen,
27:37which is the main MiG base just north of Hanoi.
27:41The briefing room buzzes with excitement.
27:44It was unreal, like, holy moly,
27:47this is something so totally different.
27:50So totally neat.
27:52And, you know, you're just itching to go do this.
27:55We're going to go fight against airplanes for a change
27:58instead of, you know, getting shot at.
28:01Zero Hour is set for 1,300 hours on January 1, 1967.
28:07It's New Year's Eve, and the parties have been canceled,
28:10and we all have our assignments, and we're waiting,
28:13and around, I don't know, 8 o'clock that night,
28:16word comes the mission's scrubbed.
28:20Because the weather's not cooperating.
28:23Weather is the key ingredient to this whole mission.
28:26If we're going to shoot down airplanes, we've got to see them.
28:29If they're down beneath the cloud deck,
28:31we're not going to be able to pull it off.
28:34The mission is reset for the following day, January 2.
28:39Olds uses the break in action
28:41to let his troops blow off some steam.
28:44Robin Olds says, okay, we're going to party.
28:47I want to see every one of you back here tomorrow night.
28:51So we started partying.
29:04Robin Olds is poised to execute a daring and risky mission.
29:08If the plan works, it'll decimate the North Vietnamese Air Force.
29:13So far, the weather hasn't cooperated.
29:16But with the thunderstorms now gone, Operation Bolo is on.
29:22He's got that Clark Gable good-look kind of thing.
29:25He's not just sitting down behind a desk and issuing orders.
29:28He's going to be with us. He's going to lead us there.
29:31It just impresses you. It really is a motivating thing.
29:35Confidence is critical.
29:37None of Olds' pilots have ever tangled in a dogfight.
29:41Olds himself hasn't been in combat since World War II, 21 years ago.
29:46This is the most exciting mission I've encountered.
29:49We're going to do what we were trained to do, shoot down airplanes.
29:53And everybody is on top of the world.
30:02Everybody's ready, and we show up.
30:05January 2, 1967.
30:09Fangs hanging out, dripping blood.
30:22We strap in.
30:24Each click is one more closer step to getting going.
30:28The lap belt goes on. You hook up the G-suit.
30:32You get the engine started.
30:35You're real busy checking the systems for the missiles,
30:39and you're just focused on what you've got to do in the next few minutes
30:44to make that takeoff time.
30:46All four airplanes pull up and stop at what's called the arming area
30:50at the end of the runway, and you bring both hands up and keep them visible.
30:54Once the maintenance guy knows you're not going to pickle a bomb,
30:57he runs underneath there.
30:59Every missile has a safety pin, a red flag on it.
31:02He pulls those out, and he gives you the thumbs-up.
31:07We're the first to go.
31:09I'm sitting there right behind Robin Olds, taxing down.
31:17And then Olds releases brakes, and I see these two big plumes of fire
31:21coming out of the tailpipes.
31:26The heat plumes are coming up off the runway, and he lifts off.
31:33And then it's your turn.
31:35You push the power up.
31:37You feel that surge in the back of your back,
31:40and the two afterburners light, and you're going.
31:46All those going.
31:48It's really going to happen.
31:50And we're all thinking,
31:52unbelievable, unbelievable.
32:02300 miles to the east of Olds,
32:04another wing of Phantoms takes to the air, led by Colonel Tangi.
32:08They'll cut off the MiGs' escape route into China.
32:11If they did try to make a run, they'd be running into us on the east side.
32:16Mimicking the thuds, Olds refuels at the same altitude and location
32:21before entering enemy territory.
32:24The tankers are all up in northern Laos for us.
32:27The Da Nang people are hitting tankers in the South China Sea.
32:33After 90 minutes, Olds' flight reaches Hanoi and its main airfields.
32:38The skies are empty.
32:40The MiGs he's expecting, nowhere to be seen.
32:44Where the hell are we?
32:47We should be up by now.
32:52Just dead silence, scary dead silence.
32:56This is insane, what we're doing.
32:59Do the North Vietnamese know it's a setup?
33:01Are they about to spring a trap of their own?
33:04This is a one-time shot.
33:06If they do this and the North Vietnamese don't take the bait,
33:11they'll probably never take the bait again.
33:13All they can do is circle, burning valuable fuel and wait.
33:18We turn over Phuc Yen and we start back north.
33:21We're thinking, man, this is going to be interesting to see what happens now,
33:26because now we're spending a lot of time above here.
33:28That gives the guys on the ground time to start figuring out what they want to do.
33:32As he rolls out towards Hanoi again,
33:35that's when the first MiG pops up out of the clouds.
33:41We got one!
33:43And here comes a silver airplane with that MiG-21 Delta on it.
33:48It's the first time I've seen another human being up close
33:53who's up there to kill you.
33:55And you're up there to kill them.
33:57And it's a moment I will never, ever forget.
34:00More MiG fighters burst through the clouds.
34:03The Vietnamese have taken the bait.
34:06Hey, it's me! I got a MiG-10!
34:08I'm going for him!
34:12Robin Holt puts his nose right at the one that I'm looking at.
34:18He's firing sidewinders in a tight turn,
34:21and there's no way those missiles can make the turn.
34:24It's a miss!
34:27Another MiG moves in behind old.
34:30Hey, it's me! Got a MiG on me!
34:32He's trapped.
34:34It's on your six! It's on your six!
34:36It's panic time.
34:38He's in the worst position, sandwiched between two MiGs,
34:41and things are going to hell in a handbasket.
34:43What the hell do you do?
34:45Someone's going to get killed here pretty quick.
34:47I had to make a decision.
34:49It's up to Wetterheim, his wingman, to protect his leader.
34:53I fire the first missile, and I feel it come off,
34:56but I never see it. It just fell away, I guess.
34:58So I squeeze a second time.
35:02The missile comes off. It appears just like textbook.
35:06I watch it all the way in,
35:08and the MiG, it flew for another instant,
35:11and I thought it missed him for a second.
35:14Then the missile merges with the MiG,
35:16and there's this huge explosion,
35:18and they start tumbling.
35:20Way to go, Wetterheim!
35:23One MiG down, Olds turns his attention to the other.
35:27He then pulls up in his steep turn,
35:30right up into the sun.
35:36He rolls out of that thing in this gigantic barrel maneuver
35:41and winds up down here behind another MiG.
35:43It's been over 20 years since his last dogfight,
35:46but Robin Olds doesn't miss a beat.
35:49It was a knife fight.
35:51Close in, hard turning, maneuvering, mano a mano.
36:03I did it!
36:05The MiGs had to be surprised when they got up there
36:08to find that it was F-4s that they were jumping on.
36:11Instead of 105s.
36:13And, of course, it was too late then.
36:15As the dogfight rages on,
36:17the next wave of fighters, codenamed Ford, arrives.
36:25Everett Raspberry sees his flight leader chased by a MiG.
36:28No response, we just kept on going.
36:33I thought maybe he didn't recognize his callsign.
36:38I don't know what was going on up there,
36:41I got this guy.
36:43I got between him and the MiG.
36:46When he saw me do that, he rolled left.
36:49So I rolled right into him.
36:53We came canopy to canopy.
36:56I could see his oxygen mask.
36:59All of aerial combat is about getting the other guy
37:02to overshoot or go past you,
37:05so I just sat there hoping that he would make a mistake.
37:11I went into a barrel roll.
37:14He reversed his turn,
37:16and that was the last mistake he made.
37:19I got the missile growling and squeezed trigger.
37:24It went just like a bullet.
37:27Blew him all to pieces.
37:29Olds and his pilots have kicked a hornet's nest.
37:33The North Vietnamese unleash everything they've got.
37:41We got one.
37:42American fighter pilots have sprung a deadly trap,
37:46suckering North Vietnamese MiGs into a ferocious dogfight.
38:00J.B. Stone in flight group codenamed Rambler joins the action.
38:06I look down and I see two MiGs come up through the undercast,
38:10just poof, poof, like that, close formation.
38:14Without thinking, I banked a little bit to the left
38:18to get the nose going down.
38:20I pulled the trigger for the first sparrow.
38:23It just fell away.
38:25So I squeezed two more times.
38:28The second missile guided right to that MiG and blew up.
38:33Stone has no time to celebrate his kill.
38:36All hell's breaking loose.
38:41Where'd he come from?
38:42All of a sudden, all of the MiGs they could get airborne were airborne.
38:46They're everywhere.
38:49Second one at 2 o'clock.
38:50It's assholes and elbows in the cockpit, and everybody's screaming.
38:55I hear, F-4, I don't know your call sign, break right.
38:59It's a MiG on your ass.
39:02And there's a MiG-21.
39:04He's belly up to me.
39:06I see his red gear doors.
39:08He is shooting at me with his 30-millimeter cannon.
39:12It's shooting tracer bullets so they can see where they're aiming,
39:16but the tracers are this big around.
39:19They are bigger than bats.
39:21They are this big around.
39:23They are bigger than basketballs.
39:25And that's all over my canopy.
39:27They're going across the top.
39:29It seemed like they were going through my canopy into my cockpit.
39:35And I thought I was hit.
39:38Oh, shit.
39:40But it wasn't.
39:41It was just the basketballs going across the canopy.
39:44So what I do, I break into him to destroy his tracking device.
39:49I'm in this tight turn, and we're going 560 knots,
39:53maxed out the G-meter, and I get out here in reverse,
39:58and there's no MiG.
40:00He's gone.
40:05Wising up to the trap, the North Vietnamese order a swift retreat.
40:13The call came back from the Vietnamese controllers and said,
40:16Get in the clouds.
40:18And that's what they did.
40:22That's fighter pilot talk for let's get the hell out of here.
40:25Low on fuel, all the Phantoms head for home.
40:29The dogfight is over in a matter of minutes.
40:33By the time Olds lands at Ubon in Thailand,
40:36word of the mission's historic success has already reached the ground crews.
40:40We come in and three of us do the victory rolls.
40:44Everybody was out there, and the crowds were there.
40:46When we were taxiing in, I stood up in the seat.
40:50Gave it one of those.
40:53Olds and his fighter wing have downed seven planes,
40:56almost half the MiG-21s in the North Vietnamese Air Force,
41:00leaving the enemy in disarray for months.
41:04It couldn't have been better.
41:06We didn't lose anybody, and we kicked some good butt up there that day.
41:11Did everything go as you'd expected it to go during the flight?
41:14No, we missed a few.
41:16It went beautifully, yes.
41:17I'm just terribly, terribly pleased.
41:19Captain, this was your first MiG battle.
41:22How did it feel?
41:23It was great.
41:25We had outstanding results, which we had planned for and hoped for.
41:30Just a great feeling that it came off the way it did.
41:33It was valuable far beyond just shooting down half the MiG-21 fleet of North Vietnam.
41:40It was a shot in the arm in the spirit of all the fighter pilots in Southeast Asia.
41:45And America has a hero in the man who made it all happen, Colonel Robin Olds.
41:51As a commander, Robin Olds was the best.
41:54Best I've known or heard tell of.
41:58He had everything that it took.
42:00Conviction, knowledge, and the courage to stand up and be counted.
42:07Rather than returning to the safety of his desk job,
42:11Olds chooses to stay in the air.
42:16At the time, it was supposed to be a 100-mission tour.
42:20When you got 100, you'd be sent home.
42:22And he didn't want to be sent home.
42:25So he would go into the operations room at night
42:27and start erasing his missions off the board
42:29so they were always around number 86 or number 87.
42:32He's a World War II ace.
42:34He's got all the medals he needs.
42:37What's he got to prove? Nothing.
42:39That's the beauty of him.
42:41He went.
42:48Finally, Olds' time in Vietnam is up.
42:51He is a hero of the first rank.
42:53He has just completed his final mission.
42:55And now, he is coming home.
42:58My father told me that the proudest moment of his life
43:00was when his men carried him on their shoulders
43:03after his final mission,
43:05which was number 152.
43:08The man of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing,
43:10Colonel Robin Olds, was a rather special man.
43:13A wing commander who did more than any of his pilots
43:16and usually did it better.
43:18He was a man of honor.
43:20He was a man of honor.
43:22He was a man of honor.
43:24He did more than any of his pilots
43:26and usually did it better.
43:28He did not get his fifth MiG,
43:30which would have made him officially an ace,
43:32but to the men who flew with him,
43:34he already is an ace.
43:36He returns to America and his family.
43:39My father left Vietnam in late September of 1967,
43:43came back to Washington, D.C.,
43:45and was immediately hauled into President Johnson's office.
43:50President Johnson sat him down and said,
43:52Colonel, tell me how you think this war is going.
43:55And my father said,
43:56Sir, with all due respect to you as my commander-in-chief,
43:59get us the hell out of this goddamn war.
44:02And President Johnson then said,
44:04Well, son, how do you expect me to do that?
44:07And my dad said,
44:08It's simple, sir. Just win it.
44:12Olds was someone to constantly challenge authority,
44:15and he was not afraid of speaking his mind.
44:18He did so.
44:19The growing of the mustache
44:21when he was in Vietnam,
44:23it was a violation of regs, but it worked.
44:27It was a morale booster.
44:29His pilots identified this.
44:30If their CO is willing to flout regulations like that,
44:34then he must care.
44:37Robin was a maverick, without a doubt.
44:40He's sort of the renegade leader that got the job done,
44:43but he never really totally obeyed the rules.
44:45He was always pushing at the rules.
44:48Pilots loved my dad.
44:50I still love my dad.
44:51It seems to me that his reputation is growing,
44:54and I love how he is inspiring people now around the world.
44:58Pilots write to me from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from Korea,
45:02wherever they're stationed, and their squadron rooms,
45:05they have pictures of Robin Olds up now.
45:08Robin Olds was an enigma.
45:11He was the bravest man I ever encountered.
45:13He was one of a kind.
45:14He was a movie star in real life,
45:17and he proved it again and again.
45:19It wasn't just for two hours on the celluloid.
45:22That was Robin Olds.
45:49♪♪