MiG-17, MiG-19, MiG-21 Killers - Wings Over Vietnam / Documentary / WHD

bristling with fire power and speed American and North Vietnamese Airmen go head-to-head in the skies over Vietnam the war pitted Soviet made MiG's fast and nimble against America's newest fighter jet the f4 phantom airborne life-and-death standoffs would last only seconds as combatants furiously maneuvered for an opportunity to fire their little air-to-air missiles the intense battles that ensued to find the future of an entirely new era of air combat [Applause] [Music] by March of 1965 the war in Vietnam had reached a fever pitch thousands of men and aircraft were committed to the conflict eventually American warplanes were launched on around-the-clock sorties in an air campaign called the Rolling Thunder their goal was to crush the Communist Vietnamese insurgency known as the Vietcong American air crews aimed for the insurgents supply lines flowing from the north US military leaders also hoped that the campaign which serve as a warning to the North Vietnamese for American airmen the threat in the south and the north was radically different in South Vietnam American airplanes dominated the skies us planes and pilots handily survived even the most intense attacks from the Vietcong operating on the ground below however in North Vietnam air crews faced something far more formidable significant firepower and a well-trained enemy throughout the mid-1960s the North Vietnamese placed anti-aircraft artillery along the most common routes used by American planes and around the major target areas also they unveiled the first surface-to-air missiles soviet-built ese tubes the radar-controlled sa-2 could strike down US planes with a range of 60,000 feet and a speed of Mach 3 but perhaps the greatest challenge to u.s. airpower came from the north vietnamese air force trained and equipped by the Soviet Union and Red China [Music] they flew the relatively slow but agile soviet-built mig-17 and increasingly faster and more heavily armed mig-21s the more nimble airframes gave the North Vietnamese a distinct advantage over the Americans us crew whose flew the f-105 thunderchief against a MIG these fighter bombers were cumbersome and difficult to maneuver simply put the primary strike aircraft of the Rolling Thunder campaign could be easily outrun and ultimately shot down by the enemy once engaged the best way for American planes to survive the confrontations was to drop their ordnance and hit the deck but this wasn't an option for fighters engaged in a war instead it was time for the u.s. to unveil the latest weapon in its arsenal the f4 phantom the new fighter jet was expected to defeat the MiG's from long-range with little warning but that was only a partial solution too often American air crews would have to face the MiG's in close-range dogfights something for which they were extremely ill prepared I went through pilot training okay that took a year then I went through six months check out in the f4 okay and then I flew the f4 for about six more months and so then I got two years invested and I'm a fighter pilot and all of a sudden the Vietnam War starts getting up and they pull out some of these old books that guys had written back in the Korean War days in World War two and in there they're talking about maneuvers that I had no concept of barrel roll attacks high speed yo-yo low speed yo-yo vertical rolling scissor a scissor not only did I know not know what maneuver was I had never heard the term before and these were all fighter maneuvers that you use to get behind the guy to shoot him down initially in the US Navy the air-to-air combat mission was split between f4 crews and the pilots of the f8 crusader a single-seat fighter capable of operating from the shorter decks of older carriers eventually the Phantom's became the Navy's weapon of choice to counter the rising mig threat their lethality was due to the two types of missiles they carried the heat-seeking AI m9 Sidewinder or the radar homing AI m7 sparrow the capability of the missiles far surpassed anything in the Soviet inventory they gave the f4 the ability to kill precisely at great distances up to 12 miles however the missiles were not made to shoot down small nimble MiG's at close range they were constructed for what military designers believed would be the next war attitude back then in 64 and 65 was ain't gonna be that kind of war anymore it's gonna be against bombers straight and level shooting missiles and they can't escape these missiles they're too smart and too fast and can pull too many G's so we went to war in the f4 with no gun and radar missile and the Sidewinder missile design to shoot down bombers and they weren't all that great at that F fours were operated by a two-man crew the pilot and trigger man sat in front while the backseater used the radar to locate targets their lives were in each other's hands clear communication was a matter of survival the guy in the back gets it on the radar and he says okay we got a bogey 20 left 10 up 15 15 months okay that's where he was when this guy saw him thought about it and told you okay but everything is moving it's you know like six dimensional because it's not just you know and he's so for him to be effective he's gotta be telling you that just constantly but you can't so you're just getting data bits this verbal communication front to back was was tough very tough and slow once the f4 started closing in on the MiGs pilot and navigator had to determine the best moment to unleash their weapons the Sidewinder was designed to guide on the heat from jet exhaust and could only be launched from behind a MIG the radar guided sparrow should have provided crews with a long-range acquisition advantage but under US rules of engagement the crew had to visually identify the aircraft usually by making a close pass before they could activate the missiles outdated guidance system you had to wait four seconds before you get fire and to wait two seconds for the radar to settle this is an old analog radar set tubes so we had to wait two seconds for the radar to settle down and then another two seconds for the radar data to program the missile you fired at three and a half seconds and you had a stupid missile so what you'd hear was you're locked thousand one thousand two thousand three thousand five so we had to have that four second time that's an eternity when you're moving at supersonic speeds even after the pilot pulled the trigger there was another second and a half delay before the missile fire and the crew had to stay locked onto the MiG until the sparrow struck an extremely difficult and dangerous feat to achieve in combat North Vietnamese MiG's usually operated in well coordinated teams if an f4 crew managed to engage one they could count on the fact that others will be nearby ground-based radar operators controlled the MiG's they dictated virtually every maneuver the pilots made the tactic known as GCI or ground control intercept was a classic Soviet attack strategy that proved somewhat effective in Vietnam GCI controllers continuously relayed the exact position of US aircraft to big pilots allowing them makes plenty of time to set up ambushes or to avoid attack something made easier by the Phantoms two powerful engines they left notoriously large black smoke trails in the sky rolling thunders newest weapon was proving to be among its most vulnerable rolling thunder the air campaign launched against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong has been underway for almost two years at first President Lyndon Johnson would only allow us crews to attack a limited number of targets outside of North Vietnam's population centers but the strategy had been ineffective so military planners decided to send American planes protecting the airspace around Hanoi and Haiphong were the best and brightest that North Vietnamese had to offer they were flying the Soviet Union's latest aircraft the mig-21 a plane that was nearly twice as fast as the 17s superior in every way to the f-105 fighter bomber and able to outmaneuver both the f4 and f8 crusader also making it even more lethal than its mig predecessors the 21 could be armed with four eight all missiles the Soviet answer to the heat-seeking Sidewinder to make the best use of their new weapons make cruise developed a new tactic they remained hidden until the slower less able American planes were so low on fuel that they had no choice but to jettison their payload to make it out alive we didn't find them they found us they would usually come up and try to make sneak attacks on the strike force hoping to get them to jettison their bombs and not make it to the target and it would be sometimes a combination of MIG 17s and one or two MIG 21s the 17s would be used as a decoy to get the F fours and the 105 to forget about what they were supposed to be doing and try to go for the MIG 17s and once your attention was diverted to the 17s the mig-21s would come through and supersonic has to be past fire a couple of missiles and the way they go and by this time the mig-17 s have started run and so now the entire strike is disrupted that was their goal as the war continued on f4 crews became increasingly frustrated they knew how to maneuver in a dogfight but their missiles weren't right for the job none had a kill rate higher than 15% at close range they were extremely difficult to use and many simply failed to track properly or fire at all to be truly lethal the Phantom's needed a gun one squadron took matters into their own hands on the planes belly they mounted a 20 millimeter Gatling gun capable of firing a hundred rounds per second in May of 1967 for the first time ever the man of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing went into combat with bellies full of left within a couple of weeks the gun fighters as they came to be known had earned their first kills they down to mix in a single engagement ow the phantom force was lethal on two fronts long-range missiles still took down the greatest number of MiG's but close up the new gun pods were proven effective the Air Force put their improved weapon to good use [Music] the Phantom's were sent in to protect the bomb-laden f-105s as they made their way toward their targets in North Vietnam the heavy f-105s were no match for a MIG if an enemy plane showed up the f4 sprang into action if there weren't any MiG's in sight then the f-4s were expected to head into the target area and drop their ordnance just like the f-105s a job many crews didn't enjoy sometimes you might you might say we sort of hoped that the MiG's would come up so that we wouldn't have to row in on the target not that we felt that fighting the MiG's would be more fun than than putting the bombs on the target it is simply a matter of what the job was our job was to keep the MiG's off the 105 s because their job was to put the bombs on the target big difference once the bombs are away you cannot catch an F 105 on the way out those guys would do their job and then it was time for them to go home for us depending on who you were flying with you would put the bombs on the target see that the 105 s were out then turn around and go back to the plate and by that I mean you would go back and look for MiG's to see if any of them were following the strike force trying to get revenge kills or whatever you want to call it American planes were too often the victims of MIG hit and runs on the way in or out of the target area to counter this tactic the Americans developed a plan it would become one of the most famous ruses in the history of air combat on January 2nd dozens of planes from various squadrons and more than 30 phantoms from the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing or Wolfpack launched on operation bolo an offensive attack on North Vietnam the operation was conceived by the wolf pack's fiery new commander Colonel Robin olds old like many others became extremely frustrated u.s. political leaders prevented him from going after the MIG bases so that meant the only way to kill the enemy was in the air his idea was simple if the Phantom's could fool North Vietnamese radar operators into thinking that they were actually a flight of heavy fighter bombers they could trap the MiG's in an air battle before the pilots realized their mistake the wolf pack's phantoms mimicked every aspect of an F 105 or thud Strike Force they flew the same routes at the same altitudes air speeds and times as the thuds and even carried the same electronic jamming pods so that they would appear on radar just like a flight of 105 but the Phantom's were not carrying bombs they were each armed with eight air-to-air missiles initially the mission appeared to be a failure there was a heavy overcast and Colonel olds flight which was leading the force had already turned around over Fukien airfield suddenly a single MIG appeared on the radar directly beneath olds formation the crews immediately tried to engage but as they did an emergency call rang out from other u.s. planes that had just arrived over fukken a mig-21 had emerged from the clouds and was pursuing olds flight from the rear captain ralph wetterhahn one of the men responsible for planning the details of operation bolo was flying on Colonel olds wing the MiG's were climbing up through the clouds and trail and it wasn't just one name but there's four of them but they're not together they're spaced out so everybody starts looking around and some of us see the mig-21 at six o'clock and some of them see a mig-21 that's eight o'clock and as I come around I see a mig-21 at 10 o'clock and we all think we're looking at one mig-21 so old starts Wieland because he sees the one and he starts turning now I locked up to the one I see at 10 o'clock and olds just pulls right belly up to it and I'm confused I am really confused and then finally I look and I see the other MIG but we right away sandwiched ourselves between two for several seconds the radios were jammed with frantic transmissions olds maneuvered into position and fired a pair of sparrows at the MiG in front of him but the missiles failed to lock on he then let loose a pair of Sidewinders but they tracked toward the infrared heat of the clouds all the while wetterhahn anxiously tried to warn olds about the other MIG which was struggling to get into firing position but olds was not responding I pull off to the wing where holes can see me because I'm not going to shoot across his wing and pickle the radar missile and I feel it come off but I never see it and in that pickle a second one and this one I see and it comes out nice and it makes a nice little arc and then just starts tracking out it was such a release at that point to see that for the first time to an enemy airplane the thing that I had seen many times to our own airplane that I just shouted on the radio I gotta my god oh my god I mean you can you can hear that emotion there that even to this day will give me chills and make my hand shake and my knees shake cuz I know how that felt for that instant and know that that guy's not gonna kill me today but that only lasts for about a second and then the fight is back on because there's much much more going on I look behind and there's missile cons everywhere and they're freaking out and they're like skeletal fingers you know coming at you and if they touch it again but you don't know which ones are alive or not you just see the smoked ribs you can't see the missiles and some of them have been there a few seconds and some of them are fresh and you just you don't have time to stare at each one and figure out what's going on so you just ignore it all and keep turning and start looking for someone else to shoot at by now the North Vietnamese were well aware that they had been lured into a trap the Wolfpack systematically hunted down and killed six more mig-21s giving the Americans a much needed advantage in the skies over Vietnam in January of 1967 the men of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing turned the tide of the air campaign over Vietnam operation bolo resulted in the destruction of nearly half of the North Vietnamese mig-21s without a single American loss the men felt they had proved that the MiG's could be beaten at their own game and that the f4 was clearly superior to the Soviet mig-21 [Music] most attributed the success of bolo to the uncommon determination and leadership of kurtal olds a few days after bolo he initiated another successful ruse in which a pair of phantoms mimicking a weather reconnaissance flight downed two more make 21s the triumphs of u.s. fighter crews dealt a serious blow to the North Vietnamese for now the enemy was subdued [Music] after a short reprieve American planes resumed their bombing campaign at a greater tempo than ever before [Music] both the Air Force and the Navy began launching multiple missions virtually every day most of which contained upwards of a hundred aircraft [Music] increasingly vital targets such as steel mills power plants and the rail lines heading from Hanoi to China were repeatedly hammered several air bases were also opened to attack and in a major climax to the Rolling Thunder campaign President Johnson personally authorized strikes against the main MIG base at Fukien a massive three-day effort severely cratered air strips at the facility and damaged or destroyed at least 20 Meg's but as the intensity of operations increased so too did MIG opposition us fighter crews struggled to maintain air superiority larger assaults and new tactics took a toll on American strike forces in the end the North Vietnamese pilots still proved less effective than their US enemy MiG's downed at least 56 American planes while the Americans killed 118 of theirs the two to one kill ratio marked the poorest performance for us Airmen in any conflict on April 1st 1968 President Johnson halted bombing missions against North Vietnam above the 19th parallel by November all Rolling Thunder operations had ended [Music] while a debate ensued over how to improve the effectiveness of the u.s. fighter force the air war over North Vietnam was indefinitely suspended March 30th 1972 during a suspension of the air war over North Vietnam the Communists invaded the south a week later President Richard Nixon ordered us Airmen to return to the skies over the north under Operation Freedom Train a massive bombing campaign aimed at halting the flow of men and supplies pouring into South Vietnam by early May Nixon had expanded the campaign to include targets throughout the entire country under Operation linebacker North Vietnam used the long respite from air attacks to dramatically strengthen its military by 1972 the North Vietnamese Air Force had been equipped with a combination of nearly 250 MiG's 17s 19 and 20 ones the most lethal assaults continued to come from the pilots of the 21s who nearly perfected the strategy of sneaking up behind strike forces at low altitude accelerating to supersonic speeds firing their eight halls and rapidly diving away the tactic provided little time for fighter crews to prevent an attack their greatest hope was to keep the MiG's literally off their tails or his fighter pilots called it the six o'clock hour tactic to counter that was to do everything possible to clear six o'clock in a flight of four the two elements would cross each other we would do 90-degree right in 90-degree left turns 180 degree right 180 degree left turn so we were constantly maneuvering in the high threat area the long bombing halt also provided North Vietnam with plenty of time to better train its pilots many 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 but 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 you could tell right when you got into a fight with him exactly what type of pilot you hit you know if he stayed and was aggressive you had a problem he was one of the old guys and he was gonna stay in fight prep and do a good job at it if he looked like he was a new lieutenant and didn't know what he was doing and he was a new guy didn't understand the airplane had to live with him the Soviet system of GCI control which meant that flight lead for the fight was on the ground in the radar van controlling the flight you can't have a time delay between you talking to somebody and then watching the radar and then tell you what to do it's instantaneous he died the Navy and the Air Force took very different approaches to improving the effectiveness of their fighter forces during the bombing halt the Air Force largely focused on technical problems installing an internal gun on newer model phantoms developing improved airborne radar and working to solve missile problems that had plagued crews for years the Navy focused on training initiating a postgraduate course in fighter weapons tactics and doctrine that came to be known as Top Gun for three solid weeks Navy phantom crews flew simulated air combat missions at Miramar Naval Air Station in California against aircraft that closely resembled the MiG's only three days after President Nixon initiated operation linebacker it became clear that the training paid off [Music] on may 10th 1972 lieutenant Randy Cunningham and his REO or radio information officer lieutenant Willie Driscoll joined up with more than 35 aircraft heading to strike a key rail yard between Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong their mission was to suppress anti-aircraft threats with cluster bombs and then to protect the force against the threat of MiG's Cunningham and Driscoll reached the target area as planned but were initially unaware that at least twenty two MiG's had already launched and were preparing to intercept the force I had bombed a target area and as I pulled off the target I made a mistake but you don't do is look back at the target you look for MiG's and things looked over and I was making a comment to Willie look at this target we just hit and my wingman Brian grant called Duke make 17s at seven o'clock and we reversed just in time to see tracers from a mate coming really high speed at us Cunningham broke hard into the MiG forcing the pilot to overshoot quickly reversed back in behind him and fired a Sidewinder the missile tracked directly for the MIG blowing it to shreds the crew began searching for other aircraft but noticed that several at the MiGs had entered into a wagon wheel a defensive strategy used by the North Vietnamese to provide mutual protection from the rear the 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 but two of the Phantom's had slowed down and were furiously maneuvering inside the wheel Cunningham and Driscoll tried to help one of the f-4s which was piloted by their commander he was being pursued by at least two makes 17s and a 21 but each time they came around the turn all of the other mix began tracking them I made every excuse that I could think of in my own mind to get out there because in that kind of an environment you're not going to survive 99 times out of a hundred and I actually turned the airplane away and thought I'll die if I go in there and I actually got the airplane turned started going away and a thought came to me and said if I leave the XO is going to die and how do I live with his wife and his children know that I didn't at least try Cunningham and Driscoll turned back into the fight and began maneuvering in behind the mig on their commanders wing [Applause] they struggled for several seconds to get a clear shot fearing that a Sidewinder might guidon hot exhaust from the wrong plane suddenly an opportunity emerged and Cunningham fired the MIG exploded right beside his commander but the Phantom remained intact the other MiG's immediately disengaged and dov'è way toward Hanoi fearing that there could still be many more MiG's in the area Cunningham and Driscoll began heading back toward the fleet but their day was far from over as the crew flew out toward the coast a single MIG 17 appeared in the distance Cunningham pressed the aircraft head-on to prevent the pilot from turning in behind him suddenly the MiG's cannons lit up forcing him into a steep climb ordinarily North Vietnamese pilots disengaged once they lost a clear advantage but this was no ordinary pilot I 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 instead as I went a little vertical and showed him a nose position I came back over the top we 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 big driver and we arced over the top give him a flight path which is another mistake I made he shot broke out of the flight of his bullets put him right where I wanted him to it my six o'clock it's not what I wanted Cunningham unloaded his aircraft pulled up hard and kicked the rudder over the top positioning himself behind the MiG but the mig pilot responded executing virtually the same maneuver for several minutes the two planes dueled in a furious dogfight repeatedly trading advantage for disadvantage in what's known as a rolling scissors suddenly Cunningham recalled a similar engagement that an instructor pilot had put him through at Top Gun he pulled up hard into a climb again the mig pilots stayed with him but this time he did the unexpected executing a daring maneuver that was immortalized in the 1986 Hollywood thriller Top Gun just like in the movie he started his nose up a little bit coming in in a position like this well I chopped the throttle put the speed brakes and drop the flaps and he went out in front of me and I had done that in training at Top Gun work against the instructor pilot and it worked against him because he's sitting up here and that's where we shot him the mig attempted to escape straight down but it was too late Cunningham fired a single Sidewinder several seconds later he saw a brief flash and a trail of black smoke as the MIG flew into the ground Cunningham and Driscoll were drained but ecstatic they had clearly met one of North Vietnam most formidable pilots on the battlefield and had emerged victorious they had also become the first aces of the Vietnam War earning their third fourth and fifth kills during a single engagement incredibly though there was little time for either man to contemplate the significance of what had taken place as they headed back toward the coast an emergency broadcast warned that Samms had been launched from the city of Nam Dinh Cunningham looked toward the city just in time to see an sa-2 heading straight for him the missile detonated several feet from the f4 sending shrapnel into the planes underbelly Cunningham struggled to pull the plane into a climb and then managed to roll it some fifty miles out to the coast using only his rudder and afterburner shortly after reaching the gulf of tonkin there was an explosion in the rear of the aircraft within seconds the crew was forced to eject [Music] Cunningham'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 using 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 while the men were showered with praise for their incredible accomplishment ultimately both were simply thankful to have made it out alive I had helicopters come in under fire and you know rescue us out from that there'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 MiG's going through three different engagements disengaging getting hit with a surface-to-air missile roll in an airplane 50 miles finally the tail blows off you're in a spin you eject it's a pretty emotional time they have no concept of what some of our kids went through and many of them didn't come back [Music] as the air war over Vietnam heated up Navy fighter crews repeatedly demonstrated the value of top guns training achieving better than a 12 to one kill ratio against North Vietnamese MiG's while preventing the loss of all but one of their attack aircraft air force crews did not fare nearly as well in fact during June and July their kill ratio dropped to an astounding one to one many 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 but it was also clear that the concentration on technical issues rather than on tactics and training left many airforce crews woefully unprepared for the intensity of air combat in 1972 we were not allowed to train the way we were going to fight which was very unfortunate we were not allowed to practice dissimilar when 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 the first time I ever saw an unlike airplane and a manoeuvring situation was a mig-21 over Hanoi [Music] the air force also experienced considerable difficulty in pairing up and keeping fighter crews together during linebacker Navy crews were normally paired up in the same highly trained team for the duration of their crews air 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 many Air Force pilots fought hard to preserve crew integrity handpicking not only their back cedar but the other six men that normally flew in their flight of four it 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 Chuck the bellevue and i flew over a hundred sorties together chuck was the best of any of the back cedars at you darin i was very fortunate to be able to select him to fly with me he 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 several improvements in airforce equipment did pay off one of the greatest developments took place on board Disko the air force's ec120 ones that alerted air crews to the presence of MiG's new 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 these new eyes and ears gave US forces an unprecedented early warning system especially two MiG's coming in at low altitudes with this information fighter crews could get into position before being seen by the enemy a tactic which would soon pay off for captain Ritchie on July 8 1972 he was leading four phantoms on a mission to protect bombers on their way home flying his backseat that day as he had dozens of times before was captain Chuck de Bellevue as we headed towards Hanoi you could hear the Bennett calls first of a northeast in east and southeast of Hanoi then south and then disco the ec120 won the controller on there he calls out Paula which would like all sign your merged which men on his scope everybody's in the same little piece of the sky and that was nice except we didn't see anybody and got us real concern and for about two minutes there's eight guys with heads on swivels checking six looking around trying to see that make sure nobody's behind us finally we've I had a premonition or something like maybe Steve probably had the same one but at the same time that they were in front of us I looked up at eleven o'clock and just to the left of the nose of the war it was a black dot on a white cloud didn't belong there very shortly after that happened we were flying abreast going opposite direction for the mig-29 [Music] Richie and develop you were well aware that North Vietnamese pilots rarely ventured into combat alone the crew started a slicing maneuver as if they were going to turn in behind the first myth but then held it there sure enough a second Meg soon flashed by that had been setting up to fire on the men if they had turned in richie broke hard in behind the second mig and followed his lead they came into the fight behind the trailing guy got a radar lock on he was in a hard turn and the missile went for the synthoid of the radar unit which was right behind they can if you only think 21 worth it wings meat the fuselage well right behind that is where the Cinch water the radar energy was focused and that's where the missile cut it into just am accelerating when they got to him we unloaded because when one blew up the second nutmeg would never stay he'd always leave and our number four column says hey Steve he's on me Meg had come all full circle and is now chasing us we came back into the fight again locked onto the remaining MIG he was on the edge of the scope about three thousand feet four thousand feet away from us and we fired one missile and it cut him in two took a minute and 29 seconds from Tallyho the black fly speck on that white cloud until splash to within two months of his dramatic double kill captain Richie downed another mig-21 his fifth overall to become the first Air Force ace of the war captain 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 the achievements of both men received a great deal of attention they like so many American crews during Vietnam put man-machine and tactics to the test ultimately US forces shot down close to 200 mix despite their tremendous success they are just grateful to have survived imagine being in an arena where living or dying depended on winning or losing and you've win and you live it's it's pretty exciting of course it wouldn't have happened without the tremendous team and I've 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 Richie not be a fighter race I probably would not be alive well trained crews and ample weaponry weren't the only things that helped us Airmen succeed there was also a weakness that the Americans Abele exploited North Vietnamese pilots were not allowed to operate freely every maneuver was tightly controlled from the ground had they been better had they been allowed to be better we probably wouldn't have survived I think I could have taken a dozen of our best pilots to Hanoi flown the mig-21 against US forces and US forces would not have survived I believe I could have shot down an F for every day if I were flying the mig-21 because it was relatively simple for them to get into our rear quarter position supersonic fire they're a tall and dive away it's just that they weren't very good at it vast improvements in American fighter technology took shape in the years that followed the Vietnam War but the most significant advances took place in tactical training the Navy's top gun program continued to produce increasingly more competent fighter crews the Air Force eventually formed an aggressor squadron that specialized in Soviet tactics and initiated red flag a program that pitted the squadron against American and Allied airmen from around the world as veterans of the war returned home they left behind an invaluable legacy lessons from real world combat hopefully these lessons would not only lead American planes and pilots to victory but also save their lives in the end those who fought the war over Vietnam forever changed the nature of air combat [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: WAR - HISTORY - DOCUMENTARIES

Views: 1,438,208

Rating: 4.6819177 out of 5

Keywords: f4 phantom vs mig 21, wings over vietnam mig killers documentary, wings over vietnam mig killers, mig vs phantom, wings over vietnam, History of wars, world war, documentry, battleship, wwII warships, warships documentry, war history, documentry films, Battlefield, vietnam war, MIG vietnam, f4 phantom, vietnam documentry, war documentry, epic history tv, war, history, aircraft, fighter, mission, combat, planes, su-27, mig-21, jets

Id: 9WkjdZHkOIY

Length: 48min 23sec (2903 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2017