Colonel Toon and the Vietnam War (Mig-15 Fighter Pilot in the NVAF)..

[Starguard]

I can barely remember once reading about a certain North Vietnamese Fighter Pilot who was only known as Colonel Toon that was supposed to have been one of if not the best Fighter Pilot the NVAf had. I believe that he piloted a very small plane called the Mig-15 that somewhat proved itself to be a very formadable ariel weapon . This guy was supposed to have had so many American kills that he was reason the U.S. started the TOP GUN fighter School. I don’t know much about this guy, but for reasons of mere curiosity, I am trying to gather as much information about him as possible. Has anyone in here ever heard of (or know anything about) this guy?

[Brutus]

From my recollection:

A) Col. ‘Tomb’ was his nickname.

B) He had 13 confirmed air-air kills.

C) He generally flew a Mig-17 ‘Fresco’, not a Mig-15 ‘Faggot’.

D) Most of his kills were S.Vietnamese aircraft.

E) He may be part of the reason we started Top Gun, but is certainly not the only one. We needed to teach our pilots to be more than ‘button pushers’, and to regain some dogfighting experience. There was a strong belief that air-air missles had eliminated the need for dogfighting capability, which Vietnam put an end to.

There is some more info about him in one of the Time-Life books I have. I don’t remember which one, though I do remember the above about him.

[ElvisL1ves]

Just a legend, says this page about NV fighter aces

Readers familiar with American military aviation may have heard of the legendary Vietnamese ace, Col. Toon (or Col. Tomb). Why is he not listed here? Because, he was precisely that, “legendary.” No Col. Toon ever flew for the VPAF; he was a figment of the American fighter pilots’ imagination and ready room chatter. (In fairness to the Americans, “Col. Toon” may have been shorthand for any good Vietnamese pilot, like any solo nighttime nuisance bomber in WW2 was called “Washing Machine Charlie.”)

Other sites even specifically claim he had 13 kills in MiG-17’s.

But then, Randy Cunningham, later a congressman, claims that a pilot he shot down “was later identified” as Toon. How he knows that is left unsaid.

[Ale]

@ElvisL1ves

Randy Cunningham, later a congressman, claims that a pilot he shot down “was later identified” as Toon. How he knows that is left unsaid.

He wrote down the license plate, doh!

Somewhere in my “files” I´ve got an article about that dogfight, complete with a step by step description of each maneouvre performed by both pilots before the MiG was shot down. Apparently the NV pilot tried to break away from Cunningham because he was running out of fuel. By the way, Cunningham didn´t make it to the carrier, after that engagment his plane was hit by a SAM and he and his radar operator had to bail out near the coast and where picked up by a helicopter.

If you want I can look for the article tomorrow.

[Starguard]

@Brutus

From my recollection:

A) Col. ‘Tomb’ was his nickname.

B) He had 13 confirmed air-air kills.

C) He generally flew a Mig-17 ‘Fresco’, not a Mig-15 ‘Faggot’.

D) Most of his kills were S.Vietnamese aircraft.

E) He may be part of the reason we started Top Gun, but is certainly not the only one. We needed to teach our pilots to be more than ‘button pushers’, and to regain some dogfighting experience. There was a strong belief that air-air missles had eliminated the need for dogfighting capability, which Vietnam put an end to.

There is some more info about him in one of the Time-Life books I have. I don’t remember which one, though I do remember the above about him.

Thanks for the info. My memory was really sploched with this and I really needed these corrective facts to set my mind at ease

  Thank you my friend

[ElvisL1ves]

@Ale

Somewhere in my “files” I´ve got an article about that dogfight, complete with a step by step description of each maneouvre performed by both pilots before the MiG was shot down.

I’m familiar with it, too, partly from that segment that keeps showing up on the Discovery Channel including an interview with Cunningham, and described here too. Oops, looks like another finding that “Toon” didn’t exist.

Several Western accounts have stated, that the pilot of the third MiG-17 shot down by Randy Cunningham and Willie Driscoll on May 10 was Colonel Tomb or Toon, said to have been the top-scoring North Vietnamese fighter ace. The source of this information is said to be so sensitive that it cannot be revealed after seventeen years. (If all of the stories about the colonel are to be believed, he was in action three times on May 10, flying a different type of MiG on each!)

Despite an intensive search of Vietnamese open literature the authors have found no reference that can be linked to a Colonel Tomb or Toon, however. Accounts of exploits of famous pilots were often published and it is unlikely in the extreme that so successful a North Vietnamese pilot would not have received public recognition. (By May 1972 all the MiGs sent into action over North Vietnam were flown by North Vietnamese pilots.)…

…The authors believe there was no Colonel Tomb or Toon, and no North Vietnamese pilot achieved thirteen victories. Probably Tomb or Toon was a nickname given to a Vietnamese pilot often heard by U.S. radio monitors, whose real name was not known. The real name of the pilot of the third MiG-17 shot down by Cunningham and Driscoll remains a mystery.

(different paragraph follows)
There were very few pilots in the VPAF and they knew each other very well either from their training courses abroad or from joint service in VPAF regiments. Both Nguyen Van Coc and Pham Tuan (decorated VPAF pilots) denied, in separate interviews, that they knew or had ever heard of “Colonel Tomb”.

There is no official record of a Colonel Tomb in VPAF files, and, if he really had 13 victories, the VPAF propaganda machine would certainly have used him.

• In 1972 there were no active pilots with rank of Colonel in the VPAF.
• No North Vietnamese pilot had 13 aerial civtories as reported by western experts.
• The name Tomb does not exist in the Vietnamese language, nor are there any similar sounding names."
• According to Toperczer, the “top-scoring” would be Nguyen Van Coc, with nine claimed kills, followed by Nguyen Hong Nhi and Mai Van Cuong, with 8 each.

Ah, well, Cunningham must have shot *somebody * down that day, and he wouldn’t be the first pilot ever to sweeten a story upon the retelling.

[Gaudere]

[Moderator Hat ON]

I think this will do better in General Questions.

[Moderator Hat OFF]