For educational purposes
In March 1965, U.S. air strikes into North Vietnam began. In April, the first dogfights took place.
As the fighting grew into a major conflict, the air activity increased accordingly. At first the results were not encouraging for the U. S. Air Force.
The most common problem found could be summed up in the words insufficient training and experience in air-to-air combat.
But in 1972, when the "Top Gun" program improved the skills in aerial combat of USN Phantom pilots, and the F-4E appeared with a 20 mm built-in Vulcan cannon, could the US neutralize edge of the NVAF MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21.
In March 1965, U.S. air strikes into North Vietnam began. In April, the first dogfights took place.
As the fighting grew into a major conflict, the air activity increased accordingly. At first the results were not encouraging for the U. S. Air Force.
The most common problem found could be summed up in the words insufficient training and experience in air-to-air combat.
But in 1972, when the "Top Gun" program improved the skills in aerial combat of USN Phantom pilots, and the F-4E appeared with a 20 mm built-in Vulcan cannon, could the US neutralize edge of the NVAF MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Bristling with firepower and speed, American and North Vietnamese airmen go head-to-head in the skies over Vietnam.
00:21The war-pitted Soviet-made MiGs, fast and nimble, against America's newest fighter jet, the F-4 Phantom.
00:30Airborne life and death standoffs would last only seconds, as combatants furiously maneuvered for an opportunity to fire their lethal air-to-air missiles.
00:41The intense battles that ensued defined the future of an entirely new era of air combat.
00:48Now I'm about to jump in.
00:49I have to cut out this one.
00:50By March of 1965, the war in Vietnam had reached a fever pitch.
01:20Thousands of men and aircraft were committed to the conflict.
01:24Eventually, American warplanes were launched on around-the-clock sorties in an air campaign
01:30called Rolling Thunder.
01:34Their goal was to crush the communist Vietnamese insurgency known as the Viet Cong.
01:39American aircrews aimed for the insurgents' supply lines flowing from the north.
01:44U.S. military leaders also hoped that the campaign would serve as a warning to the North
01:48Vietnamese.
01:51For American airmen, the threat in the south and the north was radically different.
01:59In South Vietnam, American airplanes dominated the skies.
02:05U.S. planes and pilots handily survived even the most intense attacks from the Viet Cong operating
02:15on the ground below.
02:18However, in North Vietnam, aircrews faced something far more formidable, significant firepower
02:25and a well-trained enemy.
02:30Throughout the mid-1960s, the North Vietnamese placed anti-aircraft artillery along the most
02:36common routes used by American planes and around the major target areas.
02:41Also, they unveiled the first surface-to-air missiles, Soviet-built SA-2s.
02:51The radar-controlled SA-2 could strike down U.S. planes with a range of 60,000 feet and
02:57a speed of Mach 3.
03:02But perhaps the greatest challenge to U.S. air power came from the North Vietnamese Air
03:07Force, trained and equipped by the Soviet Union and Red China.
03:16They flew the relatively slow but agile Soviet-built MiG-17s and increasingly faster and more heavily
03:25armed MiG-21s.
03:27The more nimble airframes gave the North Vietnamese a distinct advantage over the Americans.
03:36U.S. crews flew the F-105 Thunder Chief.
03:41Just a MiG, these fighter-bombers were cumbersome and difficult to maneuver.
03:46Simply put, the primary strike aircraft of the Rolling Thunder campaign could be easily
03:52outrun and ultimately shot down by the enemy.
03:56Once engaged, the best way for American planes to survive the confrontations was to drop their
04:02ordnance and hit the deck.
04:04But this wasn't an option for fighters engaged in a war.
04:11Instead, it was time for the U.S. to unveil the latest weapon in its arsenal, the F-4 Phantom.
04:20The new fighter jet was expected to defeat the MiGs from long range with little warning.
04:26But that was only a partial solution.
04:31Too often, American air crews would have to face the MiGs in close-range dogfights, something
04:36for which they were extremely ill-prepared.
04:41I went through pilot training.
04:43Okay, that took a year.
04:44Then I went through six months' check-out in the F-4.
04:48Okay?
04:49And then I flew the F-4 for about six more months.
04:53And so then I got two years invested and I'm a fighter pilot.
04:57And all of a sudden the Vietnam War starts getting up and they pull out some of these
05:00old books that guys had written back in the Korean War days and World War II.
05:04And in there, they're talking about maneuvers that I had no concept of.
05:09Barrel roll attacks, high-speed yo-yo, low-speed yo-yo, vertical rolling scissor.
05:15Not only did I not know what the maneuver was, I had never heard the term before.
05:22And these were all fighter maneuvers that you use to get behind a guy to shoot him down.
05:27Initially, in the U.S. Navy, the air-to-air combat mission was split between F-4 crews and
05:35the pilots of the F-8 Crusader, a single-seat fighter capable of operating from the shorter
05:41decks of older carriers.
05:44Eventually, the Phantoms became the Navy's weapon of choice to counter the rising MiG
05:55threat.
05:59Their lethality was due to the two types of missiles they carried, the heat-seeking AIM-9
06:04Sidewinder or the radar-homing AIM-7 Sparrow.
06:10The capability of the missiles far surpassed anything in the Soviet inventory.
06:15They gave the F-4 the ability to kill precisely at great distances, up to 12 miles.
06:21However, the missiles were not made to shoot down small, nimble MiGs at close range.
06:29They were constructed for what military designers believed would be the next war.
06:33The attitude back then in 64 and 65 was, it ain't going to be that kind of war anymore.
06:39It's going to be against bombers straight and level shooting missiles, and they can't escape
06:43these missiles.
06:44They're too smart and too fast and can pull too many Gs.
06:48So, we went to war in the F-4 with no gun, and the radar missile and the Sidewinder missile
06:56designed to shoot down bombers.
06:58And they weren't all that great at that.
07:03F-4s were operated by a two-man crew.
07:07The pilot and trigger man sat in front, while the backseater used the radar to locate targets.
07:13Their lives were in each other's hands.
07:16Clear communication was a matter of survival.
07:20The guy in the back gets it on the radar, and he says, okay, we got a bogey, 20 left, 10
07:27up, 15, which is 15 miles.
07:30Okay, that's where he was when this guy saw him, thought about it, and told you.
07:36Okay, but everything is moving.
07:38It's, you know, like six-dimensional, because it's not just you moving, he's moving too.
07:44So for him to be effective, he's got to be telling you that just constantly.
07:47Well, you can't, so you're just getting data bits.
07:51This verbal communication, front to back, was tough, very tough, and slow.
08:01Once the F-4s started closing in on the MiGs, pilot and navigator had to determine the best
08:06moment to unleash their weapons.
08:11The Sidewinder was designed to guide on the heat from jet exhaust and could only be launched
08:17from behind a MiG.
08:21The radar-guided Sparrow should have provided crews with a long-range acquisition advantage.
08:30But under U.S. rules of engagement, the crew had to visually identify the aircraft, usually
08:37by making a close pass, before they could activate the missile's outdated guidance system.
08:46You had to wait four seconds before you could fire.
08:48You had to wait two seconds for the radar to settle.
08:50And this is an old analog radar set, tubes.
08:53So we had to wait two seconds for the radar to settle down, and then another two seconds
08:57for the radar data to program the missile.
09:00You fired it three and a half seconds, and you had a stupid missile.
09:03So what you'd hear was, you're locked, 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,005.
09:10So we had to have that four-second time, and that's an eternity when you're moving at supersonic speeds.
09:16Even after the pilot pulled the trigger, there was another second and a half delay before the missile fired,
09:24and the crew had to stay locked onto the MiG until the Sparrow struck,
09:28an extremely difficult and dangerous feat to achieve in combat.
09:33North Vietnamese MiGs usually operated in well-coordinated teams.
09:38If an F-4 crew managed to engage one, they could count on the fact that others were waiting nearby.
09:45Ground-based radar operators controlled the MiGs.
09:49They dictated virtually every maneuver the pilots made.
09:53The tactic, known as GCI, or Ground Control Intercept,
09:57was a classic Soviet attack strategy that proved somewhat effective in Vietnam.
10:03GCI controllers continuously relayed the exact position of U.S. aircraft to MiG pilots,
10:10allowing the MiGs plenty of time to set up ambushes or to avoid attack.
10:18Something made easier by the Phantom's two powerful engines,
10:22they left notoriously large black smoke trails in the sky.
10:26Rolling Thunder's newest weapon was proving to be among its most vulnerable.
10:41Rolling Thunder, the air campaign launched against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong,
10:47has been underway for almost two years.
10:53At first, President Lyndon Johnson would only allow U.S. crews to attack a limited number of targets
10:59outside of North Vietnam's population centers.
11:02But the strategy had been ineffective,
11:04so military planners decided to send American planes to the heart of North Vietnam.
11:09Protecting the airspace around Hanoi and Haiphong were the best and brightest the North Vietnamese had to offer.
11:21They were flying the Soviet Union's latest aircraft, the MiG-21,
11:26a plane that was nearly twice as fast as the 17s,
11:30superior in every way to the F-105 fighter-bomber,
11:34and able to outmaneuver both the F-4 and F-8 Crusader.
11:39Also making it even more lethal than its MiG predecessors,
11:44the 21 could be armed with four ATOL missiles,
11:48the Soviet answer to the heat-seeking Sidewinder.
11:51To make the best use of their new weapons, MiG crews developed a new tactic.
12:00They remained hidden.
12:05Until the slower, less able American planes were so low on fuel
12:10that they had no choice but to jettison their payload to make it out alive.
12:16We didn't find them, they found us.
12:21They would usually come up and try to make sneak attacks on the strike force,
12:28hoping to get them to jettison their bombs and not make it to the target.
12:33And it would be sometimes a combination of MiG-17s and one or two MiG-21s.
12:39The 17s would be used as a decoy to get the F-4s and the 105s
12:47to forget about what they were supposed to be doing
12:51and try to go for the MiG-17s.
12:54And once your attention was diverted to the 17s,
12:58the MiG-21s would come through on a supersonic high-speed pass,
13:02fire a couple of missiles, and away they go.
13:06And by this time the MiG-17s have started to run,
13:10and so now the entire strike is disrupted.
13:13That was their goal.
13:15As the war continued on, F-4 crews became increasingly frustrated.
13:21They knew how to maneuver in a dogfight,
13:24but their missiles weren't right for the job.
13:27None had a kill rate higher than 15%.
13:30At close range, they were extremely difficult to use,
13:34and many simply failed to track properly or fire at all.
13:41To be truly lethal, the Phantoms needed a gun.
13:44One squadron took matters into their own hands.
13:47On the plane's belly, they mounted a 20mm Gatling gun,
13:50capable of firing 100 rounds per second.
13:53In May of 1967, for the first time ever,
14:00the men of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing went into combat
14:04with bellies full of lead.
14:06Within a couple of weeks, the gunfighters, as they came to be known,
14:10had earned their first kills.
14:12They downed two MiGs in a single engagement.
14:24Now, the Phantom Force was lethal on two fronts.
14:28Long range missiles still took down the greatest number of MiGs.
14:32But close up, the new gun pods were proven effective.
14:37The Air Force put their improved weapon to good use.
14:42The Phantoms were sent in to protect the bomb-laden F-105s
14:47as they made their way toward their targets in North Vietnam.
14:53The heavy F-105s were no match for a MiG.
14:57If an enemy plane showed up, the F-4s sprang into action.
15:00If there weren't any MiGs in sight,
15:02then the F-4s were expected to head into the target area
15:05and drop their ordnance just like the F-105s,
15:07a job many crews didn't enjoy.
15:10Sometimes you might say we sort of hoped that the MiGs would come up
15:15so that we wouldn't have to roll in on the target.
15:18Not that we felt that fighting the MiGs would be more fun
15:23than putting the bombs on the target.
15:25It is simply a matter of what the job was.
15:28Our job was to keep the MiGs off the 105s
15:31because their job was to put the bombs on the target.
15:34Big difference, once the bombs are away,
15:37you cannot catch an F-105 on the way out.
15:40Those guys would do their job,
15:43and then it was time for them to go home.
15:46For us, depending on who you were flying with,
15:49you would put the bombs on the target,
15:52see that the 105s were out,
15:55and then turn around and go back to play.
15:58And by that, I mean you would go back and look for MiGs
16:02to see if any of them were following the strike force
16:05trying to get revenge kills or whatever you want to call it.
16:08American planes were too often the victims of MiG hit and runs
16:15on the way in or out of the target area.
16:19To counter this tactic, the Americans developed a plan.
16:23It would become one of the most famous ruses
16:26in the history of air combat.
16:29On January 2nd, dozens of planes from various squadrons
16:33and more than 30 Phantoms from the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing,
16:36or Wolfpack, launched on Operation Bolo,
16:40an offensive attack on North Vietnam.
16:44The operation was conceived by the Wolfpack's fiery new commander,
16:49Colonel Robin Olds.
16:51Olds, like many others, became extremely frustrated.
16:55U.S. political leaders prevented him from going after the MiG bases,
17:00so that meant the only way to kill the enemy was in the air.
17:05His idea was simple.
17:07If the Phantoms could fool North Vietnamese radar operators
17:10into thinking that they were actually a flight of heavy fighter bombers,
17:14they could trap the MiGs in an air battle before the pilots realized their mistake.
17:20The Wolfpack's Phantoms mimicked every aspect of an F-105 or THUD strike force.
17:25They flew the same routes at the same altitudes, air speeds, and times as the THUDs,
17:31and even carried the same electronic jamming pods so that they would appear on radar just like a flight of 105s.
17:37But the Phantoms were not carrying bombs.
17:41They were each armed with eight air-to-air missiles.
17:45Initially, the mission appeared to be a failure.
17:48There was a heavy overcast, and Colonel Olds' flight, which was leading the force,
17:53had already turned around over Fukien airfield.
17:56Suddenly, a single MiG appeared on the radar directly beneath Olds' formation.
18:01The crews immediately tried to engage, but as they did, an emergency call rang out from other U.S. planes
18:08that had just arrived over Fukien.
18:10A MiG-21 had emerged from the clouds and was pursuing Olds' flight from the rear.
18:18Captain Ralph Wetterhahn, one of the men responsible for planning the details of Operation Bolo,
18:23was flying on Colonel Olds' wing.
18:25The MiGs were climbing up through the clouds in trail.
18:32And it wasn't just one MiG, but there's four of them.
18:35But they're not together. They're spaced out.
18:37So everybody starts looking around.
18:40And some of us see the MiG-21 at 6 o'clock.
18:44And some of them see a MiG-21 that's 8 o'clock.
18:48And as I come around, I see a MiG-21 at 10 o'clock.
18:52And we all think we're looking at one MiG-21.
18:55So Olds starts wheeling because he sees the one.
18:59And he starts turning.
19:01And I lock up to the one I see at 10 o'clock.
19:04And Olds just pulls right belly up to it.
19:07And I'm confused. I am really confused.
19:10And then finally I look and I see the other MiG.
19:13But we right away sandwiched ourselves between two.
19:17For several seconds, the radios were jammed with frantic transmissions.
19:24Olds maneuvered into position and fired a pair of sparrows at the MiG in front of him.
19:29But the missiles failed to lock on.
19:32He then let loose a pair of sidewinders.
19:36But they tracked toward the infrared heat of the clouds.
19:40All the while, Wetterhahn anxiously tried to warn Olds about the other MiG,
19:46which was struggling to get into firing position.
19:49But Olds was not responding.
19:52I pull off to the wing where Olds can see me
19:55because I'm not going to shoot across his wing and pickle a radar missile.
19:59And I feel it come off, but I never see it.
20:02And then I pickle the second one.
20:04And this one I see and it comes out nice and makes a nice little arc
20:07and then just starts tracking out.
20:09Boom!
20:10It was such a release at that point
20:13to see that for the first time to an enemy airplane.
20:18The thing that I had seen many times to our own airplane
20:21that I just shouted on the radio.
20:24I got him, I got him, I got him.
20:26And you can hear that emotion there
20:28that even to this day will give me chills and make my hands shake
20:31and my knees shake because I know how that felt for that instant
20:35and know that that guy's not going to kill me today.
20:38But that only lasts for about a second.
20:40And then the fight is back on because there's much, much more going on.
20:43I look behind and there's missile cons everywhere.
20:46And they're streaking out and they're like skeletal fingers, you know, coming at you.
20:51And if they touch you, you're dead.
20:53But you don't know which ones are alive or not.
20:56You can just see the smoke trails.
20:57You can't see the missiles.
20:58And some of them have been there a few seconds and some of them are fresh.
21:01And you just, you don't have time to stare at each one
21:03and figure out what's going on.
21:04So you just ignore it all and keep turning
21:07and start looking for someone else to shoot at.
21:12By now, the North Vietnamese were well aware
21:15that they had been lured into a trap.
21:17The Wolfpack systematically hunted down and killed six more MiG-21s,
21:22giving the Americans a much needed advantage in the skies over Vietnam.
21:27In January of 1967, the men of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing turned the tide of the air campaign over Vietnam.
21:45Operation Bolo resulted in the destruction of nearly half of the North Vietnamese MiG-21s,
21:51without a single American loss.
21:54The men felt they had proved that the MiGs could be beaten at their own game,
21:58and that the F-4 was clearly superior to the Soviet MiG-21.
22:03Most attributed the success of Bolo to the uncommon determination and leadership of Colonel Olds.
22:18A few days after Bolo, he initiated another successful ruse in which a pair of Phantoms,
22:25mimicking a weather reconnaissance flight, downed two more MiG-21s.
22:30The triumphs of U.S. fighter crews dealt a serious blow to the North Vietnamese.
22:36For now, the enemy was subdued.
22:44After a short reprieve, American planes resumed their bombing campaign at a greater tempo than ever before.
22:51Both the Air Force and the Navy began launching multiple missions virtually every day,
23:03most of which contained upwards of a hundred aircraft.
23:09Increasingly, vital targets such as steel mills, power plants,
23:14and the rail lines heading from Hanoi to China were repeatedly hammered.
23:18Several air bases were also opened to attack.
23:23And in a major climax to the Rolling Thunder campaign,
23:27President Johnson personally authorized strikes against the main MiG base at Phuk-Yen.
23:33A massive three-day effort severely cratered airstrips at the facility
23:37and damaged or destroyed at least 20 MiGs.
23:40But as the intensity of operations increased, so too did MiG opposition.
23:52U.S. fighter crews struggled to maintain air superiority.
23:57Larger assaults and new tactics took a toll on American strike forces.
24:02In the end, the North Vietnamese pilots still proved less effective than their U.S. enemy.
24:10MiGs downed at least 56 American planes, while the Americans killed 118 of theirs.
24:17The two-to-one kill ratio marked the poorest performance for U.S. airmen in any conflict.
24:26On April 1, 1968, President Johnson halted bombing missions against North Vietnam above the 19th parallel.
24:36By November, all Rolling Thunder operations had ended.
24:39While a debate ensued over how to improve the effectiveness of the U.S. fighter force,
24:49the air war over North Vietnam was indefinitely suspended.
24:53March 30, 1972.
25:04During a suspension of the air war over North Vietnam, the Communists invaded the South.
25:10A week later, President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. airmen to return to the skies over the North under Operation Freedom Train,
25:17a massive bombing campaign aimed at halting the flow of men and supplies pouring into South Vietnam.
25:28By early May, Nixon had expanded the campaign to include targets throughout the entire country under Operation Kleinbacker.
25:40North Vietnam used the long respite from air attacks to dramatically strengthen its military.
25:45By 1972, the North Vietnamese Air Force had been equipped with a combination of nearly 250 MiG 17s, 19s, and 21s.
25:56The most lethal assaults continued to come from the pilots of the 21s,
26:01who nearly perfected the strategy of sneaking up behind strike forces at low altitude,
26:07accelerating to supersonic speeds, firing their atolls, and rapidly diving away.
26:15The tactic provided little time for fighter crews to prevent an attack.
26:20Their greatest hope was to keep the MiGs literally off their tails, or as fighter pilots called it, the 6 o'clock.
26:27Our tactic to counter that was to do everything possible to clear 6 o'clock.
26:33In a flight of four, the two elements would cross each other.
26:36We would do 90-degree right and 90-degree left turns, 180-degree right, 180-degree left turns,
26:42so we were constantly maneuvering in the high-threat area.
26:45The long bombing halt also provided North Vietnam with plenty of time to better train its pilots.
26:58Many of the airmen were new recruits who had been called upon to fill the ranks of squadrons depleted by heavy losses suffered during Rolling Thunder.
27:06But those that survived were able to hone their skills and learn to rely more on their combat experience than on restrictive guidance from ground controls.
27:17You could tell right when you got into a fight with them exactly what type of pilot you had.
27:23If he stayed and was aggressive, you had a problem.
27:26He was one of the old guys, and he was going to stay and fight and do a good job at it.
27:32If he looked like he was a new lieutenant and didn't know what he was doing, he was a new guy.
27:38Didn't understand the airplane, had to live within the Soviet system of GCI control,
27:43which meant the flight lead for the flight was on the ground in the radar van controlling the flight.
27:48You can't have a time delay between you talking to somebody and them watching the radar and then tell you what to do.
27:53It's instantaneous. He died.
27:58The Navy and the Air Force took very different approaches to improving the effectiveness of their fighter forces during the bombing halt.
28:06The Air Force largely focused on technical problems, installing an internal gun on newer model Phantoms,
28:14developing improved airborne radar, and working to solve missile problems that had plagued crews for years.
28:23The Navy focused on training, initiating a post-graduate course in fighter weapons, tactics, and doctrine that came to be known as Top Gun.
28:36For three solid weeks, Navy Phantom crews flew simulated air combat missions at Miramar Naval Air Station in California
28:43against aircraft that closely resembled the MiGs.
28:53Only three days after President Nixon initiated Operation Linebacker, it became clear that the training had paid off.
29:01On May 10, 1972, Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and his Rio, or Radio Information Officer, Lieutenant Willie Driscoll,
29:19joined up with more than 35 aircraft heading to strike a key rail yard between Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong.
29:27Their mission was to suppress anti-aircraft threats with cluster bombs, and then to protect the Force against the threat of MiGs.
29:34Cunningham and Driscoll reached the target area as planned, but were initially unaware that at least 22 MiGs had already launched, and were preparing to intercept the Force.
29:45I had bombed a target area, and as I pulled off the target, I made a mistake.
29:54What you don't do is look back at the target. You look for MiGs and things.
29:58Looked over, and I was making a comment to Willie, look at this target we just hit.
30:02And my wingman, Brian Grant, called Duke MiG-17s at 7 o'clock, and we reversed just in time to see tracers from a MiG coming really high speed at us.
30:12Cunningham broke hard into the MiG, forcing the pilot to overshoot, quickly reversed back in behind it, and fired a sidewinder.
30:24The missile tracked directly for the MiG, blowing it to shreds.
30:28The crew began searching for other aircraft, but noticed that several of the MiGs had entered into a wagon wheel, a defensive strategy used by the North Vietnamese to provide mutual protection from the rear.
30:44The tactic posed little threat to airmen, as long as they attacked directly from the side, took high speed shots as they passed through the circle, and didn't slow down.
30:56But two of the Phantoms had slowed down, and were furiously maneuvering inside the wheel.
31:06Cunningham and Driscoll tried to help one of the F-4s, which was piloted by their commander.
31:11He was being pursued by at least two MiG-17s and a 21. But each time they came around the turn, all of the other MiGs began tracking them.
31:24I made every excuse that I could think of in my own mind to get out of there, because in that kind of an environment, you're not going to survive 99 times out of 100.
31:37And I actually turned the airplane away and thought, I'll die if I go in there.
31:42And I actually got the airplane turned, started going away, and a thought came to me and said, if I leave, the XO's going to die.
31:50And how do I live with his wife and his children know that I didn't at least try?
31:58Cunningham and Driscoll turned back into the fight, and began maneuvering in behind the MiG on their commander's wing.
32:04They struggled for several seconds to get a clear shot, fearing that a Sidewinder might guide on hot exhaust from the wrong plane.
32:15Suddenly, an opportunity emerged, and Cunningham fired.
32:20The MiG exploded right beside his commander, but the Phantom remained intact.
32:25The other MiGs immediately disengaged and dove away toward Hanoi.
32:36Fearing that there could still be many more MiGs in the area, Cunningham and Driscoll began heading back toward the fleet.
32:44But their day was far from over.
32:47As the crew flew out toward the coast, a single MiG-17 appeared in the distance.
32:53Cunningham pressed the aircraft head-on to prevent the pilot from turning in behind him.
32:59Suddenly, the MiG's cannons lit up, forcing him into a steep climb.
33:05Ordinarily, North Vietnamese pilots disengaged once they lost a clear advantage.
33:12But this was no ordinary pilot.
33:14I fully expected this MiG, when I pulled up and was going to turn into him like this, to just run and unload and go to Hanoi, and I was going to have to come back and chase him.
33:27Instead, as I went a little vertical and showed him the nose position, I came back over the top.
33:33We were in the pure vertical, and I looked back and saw a little set of goggles, a little white scarf, and could see canopy to canopy going pure vertical with him slightly below me, the MiG driver.
33:43And we arced over the top, gave him a flight path, which is another mistake I made.
33:49He shot, broke out of the flight of his bullets, put him right where I wanted him to at my six o'clock.
33:54That's not where I wanted him.
33:55Cunningham unloaded his aircraft, pulled up hard, and kicked the rudder over the top, positioning himself behind the MiG.
34:06But the MiG pilot responded, executing virtually the same maneuver.
34:13For several minutes, the two planes dueled in a furious dogfight, repeatedly trading advantage for disadvantage in what's known as a rolling scissors.
34:22Suddenly, Cunningham recalled a similar engagement that an instructor pilot had put him through at Top Gun.
34:31He pulled up hard, into a climb.
34:35Again, the MiG pilot stayed with him.
34:38But this time, he did the unexpected, executing a daring maneuver that was immortalized in the 1986 Hollywood thriller, Top Gun.
34:47Just like in the movie, he started his nose up a little bit, coming into a position like this.
34:53Well, I chopped the throttle, put the speed brakes, and dropped the flaps, and he went out in front of me.
34:58And I had done that in training at Top Gun.
35:00It worked against the instructor pilot, and it worked against him, because he's sitting up here, and that's where we shot him.
35:06We shot him.
35:08The MiG attempted to escape straight down, but it was too late.
35:13Cunningham fired a single sidewinder.
35:16Several seconds later, he saw a brief flash and a trail of black smoke, as the MiG flew into the ground.
35:23Cunningham and Driscoll were drained, but ecstatic.
35:29They had clearly met one of North Vietnam's most formidable pilots on the battlefield, and had emerged victorious.
35:37They had also become the first aces of the Vietnam War, earning their third, fourth, and fifth kills during a single engagement.
35:45Incredibly, though, there was little time for either man to contemplate the significance of what had taken place.
35:53As they headed back toward the coast, an emergency broadcast warned that SAMS had been launched from the city of Nam Din.
36:01Cunningham looked toward the city, just in time to see an SA-2 heading straight for him.
36:07The missile detonated several feet from the F-4, sending shrapnel into the plane's underbelly.
36:12Cunningham struggled to pull the plane into a climb, and then managed to roll it some 50 miles out to the coast, using only his rudder and afterburner.
36:27Shortly after reaching the Gulf of Tonkin, there was an explosion in the rear of the aircraft.
36:33Within seconds, the crew was forced to eject.
36:36Cunningham's back was injured during ejection, but ultimately, both men were pulled to safety in a daring joint recovery effort by Navy and Air Force personnel.
36:50Using their wits and weapons to the fullest, Cunningham and Driscoll, like so many others before them, had survived the thrill and the terror of air-to-air combat.
37:02While the men were showered with praise for their incredible accomplishment, ultimately, both were simply thankful to have made it out alive.
37:15I had helicopters come in under fire and, you know, rescue us out from that.
37:26There's a long story, even in that rescue, so you can imagine pulling off a target, bombing a target, pulling off, getting jumped by 22 MiGs, going through three different engagements, disengaging, getting hit with a surface-to-air missile, rolling an airplane 50 miles.
37:41Finally, the tail blows off, you're in a spin, you eject.
37:46It's a pretty emotional time.
37:48They have no concept of what some of our kids went through.
37:54And many of them didn't come back.
38:00As the air war over Vietnam heated up, Navy fighter crews repeatedly demonstrated the value of Top Gun's training, achieving better than a 12-to-1 kill ratio against North Vietnamese MiGs, while preventing the loss of all but one.
38:18of their attack aircraft.
38:34Air Force crews did not fare nearly as well.
38:37In fact, during June and July, their kill ratio dropped to an astounding one-to-one.
38:44Many factors contributed to the dismal statistics, including the ability of the North Vietnamese to detect Air Force assaults much sooner than those launched by the Navy.
38:56But it was also clear that the concentration on technical issues rather than on tactics and training left many Air Force crews woefully unprepared for the intensity of air combat in 1972.
39:11We were not allowed to train the way we were going to fight, which was very unfortunate.
39:24We were not allowed to practice dissimilar.
39:28When I came back for my second tour in 1972, I was as prepared as someone could possibly be, and yet I had never faced an unlike airplane in a maneuvering situation.
39:39The first time I ever saw an unlike airplane in a maneuvering situation was a MiG-21 over Hanoi.
39:49The Air Force also experienced considerable difficulty in pairing up and keeping fighter crews together during linebacker.
40:00Navy crews were normally paired up in the same highly trained team for the duration of their cruise.
40:09Air Force pairings were often changed daily as new airmen arrived to replace those who were on temporary duty or who had fulfilled their 100 mission tour requirement.
40:19Many Air Force pilots fought hard to preserve crew integrity, handpicking not only their backseater, but the other six men that normally flew in their flight of four.
40:32It was a definite advantage to have two people under those conditions, both highly trained and to be able to fly as a team all the time.
40:45Chuck de Bellevue and I flew over 100 sorties together. Chuck was the best of any of the backseaters at Udarn.
40:50I was very fortunate to be able to select him to fly with me. We got to the point that we didn't have to say a lot to each other in the cockpit. I knew what Chuck needed. He knew exactly what I needed.
41:00Several improvements in Air Force equipment did pay off.
41:07One of the greatest developments took place onboard DISCO, the Air Force's EC-121s that alerted air crews to the presence of MiGs.
41:18New radars were installed on DISCO and on Red Crown, a Navy radar control ship that allowed air crews to see exactly what enemy ground controllers saw.
41:33These new eyes and ears gave U.S. forces an unprecedented early warning system, especially to MiGs coming in at low altitudes.
41:43With this information, fighter crews could get into position before being seen by the enemy.
41:52A tactic which would soon pay off for Captain Ritchie. On July 8th, 1972, he was leading four Phantoms on a mission to protect bombers on their way home.
42:04Flying his backseat that day, as he had dozens of times before, was Captain Chuck de Bellevue.
42:12As we headed towards Hanoi, you could hear the bandit calls. First it went northeast, then east, then southeast of Hanoi, then south.
42:20And then DISCO, the EC-121, the controller on there, he calls out, Paula, which was our call sign, you're merged.
42:28Which meant on his scope, everybody's in the same little piece of the sky.
42:31And that was nice, except we didn't see anybody. It got us real concerned.
42:37And for about two minutes, there's eight guys with heads on swivels, checking six, looking around, trying to make sure nobody's behind us.
42:45Finally, I had a premonition or something, I don't know, Steve probably had the same one.
42:50About the same time that they were in front of us, I looked up at 11 o'clock, and just to the left of the nose of the F-4,
42:56there was a black dot and a white cloud. It didn't belong there.
43:01And very shortly after that happened, we were lined abreast going opposite directions with the MiG-21.
43:11Richie and de Bellevue were well aware that North Vietnamese pilots rarely ventured into combat alone.
43:17The crew started a slicing maneuver, as if they were going to turn in behind the first MiG, but then held it there.
43:25Sure enough, a second MiG soon flashed by that had been setting up to fire on the men if they had turned in.
43:32Richie broke hard in behind the second MiG and followed his lead.
43:38We came into the fight behind the trailing guy, got a radar lock on.
43:43He was in a hard turn, and the missile went for the centroid of the radar energy, which was right behind the canopy on the MiG-21 where the wings meet the fuselage.
43:52Well, right behind that is where the centroid of the radar energy was focused, and that's where the missile cut it into.
43:58It was still accelerating when it got to him.
44:00We unloaded because when one blew up, the second MiG would never stay. He'd always leave.
44:10And our number four called up and said, hey, Steve, he's on me.
44:15The MiG had come all full circle and was now chasing us.
44:18We came back into the fight, again locked onto the remaining MiG.
44:23He was on the edge of the scope, about 3,000 feet, 4,000 feet away from us.
44:29And we fired one missile, and it cut him in two.
44:33It took a minute and 29 seconds from tally-ho with the black fly speck on that white cloud until splash two.
44:50Within two months of his dramatic double kill, Captain Ritchie downed another MiG-21, his fifth overall, to become the first Air Force ace of the war.
45:00Captain de Bellevue, the guy in back on four of those missions, ultimately earned two more kills with another pilot to become America's highest-scoring ace in Vietnam.
45:13The achievements of both men received a great deal of attention.
45:18They, like so many American crews during Vietnam, put man, machine, and tactics to the test.
45:25Ultimately, U.S. forces shot down close to 200 MiGs.
45:28Despite their tremendous success, they are just grateful to have survived.
45:34Imagine being in an arena where living or dying depended on winning or losing.
45:39And you win and you live.
45:42It's pretty exciting.
45:44Of course, it wouldn't have happened without the tremendous team.
45:48And I have said to audiences all around the world that if it had not been for the thousands and thousands of young people doing their job day in and day out in a very professional and dedicated manner, not only would Steve Ritchie not be a fighter ace, I probably would not be alive.
46:06Well-trained crews and ample weaponry weren't the only things that helped U.S. airmen succeed.
46:17There was also a weakness that the Americans ably exploited.
46:21North Vietnamese pilots were not allowed to operate freely.
46:26Every maneuver was tightly controlled from the ground.
46:30Had they been better, had they been allowed to be better, we probably wouldn't have survived.
46:37I think I could have taken a dozen of our best pilots to Hanoi, flown the MiG-21 against U.S. forces and U.S. forces would not have survived.
46:46I believe I could have shot down an F-4 every day if I were flying the MiG-21.
46:51Because it was relatively simple for them to get into our rear quarter position, supersonic, fire their atoll and dive away.
46:59It's just that they weren't very good at it.
47:03Vast improvements in American fighter technology took shape in the years that followed the Vietnam War.
47:10But the most significant advances took place in tactical training.
47:15The Navy's top gun program continued to produce increasingly more competent fighter crews.
47:20The Air Force eventually formed an aggressor squadron that specialized in Soviet tactics.
47:27And initiated Red Flag, a program that pitted the squadron against American and Allied airmen from around the world.
47:34As veterans of the war returned home, they left behind an invaluable legacy.
47:40Lessons from real-world combat.
47:42Hopefully these lessons would not only lead American planes and pilots to victory, but also save their lives.
47:51In the end, those who fought the war over Vietnam forever changed the nature of air combat.
48:12Lessons from real-world combat.
48:13Lessons from real-world combat.
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