i know that the vitnamese ace pilots scored more aerila kills than their us counterparts robin olds 4 kills but what about colonel toon or tomb was he real or just an american ready room goship
AFAIK the Colonel Tomb/ Toom thing has largely been discredited, the closest is that "the" Colonel was actually several pilots flying seperately and taking credit as if they were one person... I think Mike Spick went through this in one of his books.
Col. Tomb did not exsist. Victorys in Nort Vietnamese AF were atributed to individual plane (like Israel). Most sources say Tomb to be realy Nguyen Van Bay. US forces constantly downplayed Vietnese victory claims and most of their lost planes were atributed to SAM's and flak. Some US losses fit to NVAF claims ( i only know about MiG-17) but in US sources are classified as losses to SAMs. I'll have to consult my souces. Series of good articles about MiG-17 service with NVAF were in publication Wings of fame.
well what ever the best vitnamese pilot scored double so high than the us ace for me it is an outstanding performance to score so high with mig-19 against phantoms and co. just look at the iraqis they had no ace they dont even achieved one aerial victory.
Not really that surprising. F-4 was designed as missile carrier, and limited by the ROE. The missiles it did have were phenomenally disappointing in the circumstances they were allowed to be used - close range, high g etc. The MiG-19 on the other hand had a thrust-to-weight ratio approaching unity which gave a tremendous acceleration, and could sustain manouevres without serious loss of airspeed. In a dogfight the MiG was in its element, the F-4 was a whale by comparison
It was a politiacl decision, and all wars are sunbject to politics, and like I said, the AAMs were nowhere near as succesful as they were promised to be. IIRC around 15-20% effective. The MiG-19 was a better dogfighter than the F-4. The majority of Phantoms (especially early on) had no guns at all, and 3 NR-30s will ruin anybody's day if they hit...
You can't really use Vietnam or Gulf War 1 as a good comparison of the two aircraft or pilots, they flew largely different missions, the Vietnamese interception, the US ground support and bombing missions. It should come as no surprise that US pilots flying ground support with no enemy aircraft in the area (For example) scored fewer kills than a NV pilot flying bomber interception missions against bomb heavy F105s, F111s and B-52s. Similarly you can't look at the airwar over Iraq and claim that shows that the NV pilots and aircraft were better. Different war, and the Iraqi airforce was largely taken out on the ground or moved to Iran. Plus the US pilots were rotated back to the states or other areas once their tours were up. The NV pilots fought throughout the war in a traget rich environment, the US pilots fought a year or two in 12 month tours in a relatively target sparse environment. To the impartial observer that the highest scorer of the conflict was a NV pilot should be no surprise in the slightest.
for sure i know but to me these few brave pilots are good pilots not just take the gulf war also in the falkland the argies scr...d the british fleet and even more if their bombs worked right but in the air they were outclassed by the britsh harriers what i want to tell you is that the vietnamese air force performed well with bad aircrafts while the argies and iraqis had much more sophisicated weapons systems in the air and faild
I wouldn't say the NV succeeded where the others failed, afterall the US was operating with fairly strict self imposed restrictions. The British in the Falklands and the Coalition in the Gulf did not. Plus when all's said and done the NV failed to stop the bombing attacks on the North.
Operation Rolling Thunder figures from "Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965-1972" AIM-7 (all models); 330 fired for 27 kills, 8% effectiveness AIM-4 Falcon; 54 fired for 5 kills, 9% effectiveness Guns: 248 attacks, scoring 34 kills, 14% effectiveness. AIM-9B Sidewinder; 187 fired for 29 kills, 15% effectiveness AIM-9D Sidewinder; 99 fired for 18 kills, 18% effectiveness These numbers don't tell the whole truth, as they don't account the weapon engaging envelop at all. But (purely imo) with proper weapons tactic training, the effectivity numbers might have even doubled.
Agreed, in fact the poor kill ratio was the main reason for the instigation of Top Gun - the US wanted the ratio back to what it had been Korea. But one reason for poor Sparrow statistics is the politically-inspired "visual identification" rule which went directly against the design criteria and ethos behind Sparrow, by the time a bogey was visually ID'd it was rapidly approaching Sparrow's minimum launch range, IIRC it was declared standard practice to launch two as rapidly as practicable given radar operating parameters. As I said before, there is no way that MiG 19 (or 17 for that matter) should be regarded as a bad aircraft in a dogfight scenario, especially vs the early F-4.
Vietnam is classic example of inferior force forcing the enemy to fight in conditions and tactics of its choosing. At the beggining NVAAF was small, poorly equiped (only MiG-17's), poorly trained force without developed tactics. For them the beggining was trial and error, but they learned fast. At the beggining some losses were coused by poor training and inexperiance. US forces thought that knocking out of NVAAF would be a push over and the underestimated capabilities of elderly MiG-17's. Vietnamese decided that only tactics that would be useful in theese circumstances is classic guerilla style, by suprising US planes on bombing missions and their escorts. Since most US planes were mostly ment to be missile carriers (F-102, F-104, F-4) their maneurability and gun armmament was not too good, they decided to force US planes in close dogfight, where more manourable gun armed MiG's would gain upper hand.
And of course the restrictions placed upon the USAF by the politicians (don't fly beyond point x, don't shoot until you are within 6 inches in case of a mistake, etc etc) did not really help.
