My brother was stationed on an ammunition supply ship during his time in the navy. One time he mentioned that “MiGs almost got them” one one occasion.
Likely? (I was just kid at the time, so it never occurred that it might not be true.)
Xema
April 29, 2003, 5:14pm
2
The MiG 17, MiG 19 and MiG 21 were all used in the war. So your brother’s story is certainly possible.
It seems as if the NV air force got a lot of help in the form of Soviet and North Korean pilots .
It seems as if most of the planes which scored air-to-air victories were MiG-21s, but there was also a smattering of MiG-17s and even a few Chinese MiG-19 knockoffs (J-6) which saw successful action.
This article gives a sense of the number and tactics involved, regarding Migs, in Vietnam:
http://www.acepilots.com/vietnam/viet_aces.html
While only two American pilots became aces in the Vietnam War - Randy “Duke” Cunningham (USN) and Steve Ritchie (USAF) - sixteen Vietnamese pilots earned that honor. Nguyen Van Coc is also the Top Ace of Vietnam War with 9 kills: 7 planes and 2 UAV (Un-manned Airborne Vehicle) Firebees. Among those seven US planes, six are confirmed by US records (see table below), and we should add to this figure a confirmed USAF loss (the F-102A flown by Wallace Wiggins (KIA) on February 3 1968), originally considered a probable by the VPAF. Even omitting UAV “drones,” his 7 confirmed kills qualified Coc as the Top Ace of the war, because no American pilot achieved more than 5.
Why did so many VPAF pilots score higher than their American adversaries? Mainly because of the numbers. In 1965 the VPAF had only 36 MiG-17s and a similar number of qualified pilots, which increased to 180 MiGs and 72 pilots by 1968. Those brave six dozen pilots confronted about 200 F-4s of the 8th, 35th and 366th TFW, about 140 Thunderchiefs of the 355th and 388th TFW, and about 100 USN aircraft (F-8s, A-4s and F-4s) which operated from the carriers on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin, plus scores of other support aircraft (EB-6Bs jamming, HH-53s rescuing downed pilots, Skyraiders covering them, etc).
Considering such odds, it is clear why some Vietnamese pilots scored more than the Americans; the VPAF pilots simply were busier than their US counterparts, and they “flew till they died.” They had no rotation home after 100 combat sorties because they were already home. American pilots generally finished a tour of duty and rotated home for training, command, or flight test assignments. Some requested for a second combat tour, but they were the exceptions.
What about the tactics of both sides? Because the USAF did not attack the main radar installations and command centers (it worried about killing Russian or Chinese advisers), the Vietnamese flew their interceptors with superb guidance from ground controllers, who positioned the MiGs in perfect ambush battle stations. The MIGs made fast and devastating attacks against US formations from several directions (usually the MiG-17s performed head-on attacks and the MiG-21s attacked from the rear). After shooting down a few American planes and forcing some of the F-105s to drop their bombs prematurely, the MiGs did not wait for retaliation, but disengaged rapidly. This “guerrilla warfare in the air” proved very successful.
Such tactics were sometimes helped by weird American practices. For example, in late 1966 the F-105 formations used to fly every day at the same time in the same flight paths and used the same callsigns over and over again. The North Vietnamese realized that and took the chance: in December 1966 the MiG-21 pilots of the 921st FR intercepted the “Thuds” before they met the escorting F-4s, downing 14 F-105s without any losses. That ended on January 2 1967 when Col. Robin Olds executed Operation “Bolo.”
[MiG-17F ‘#2047 ,’ in the VPAF Museum in Hanoi.
Nguyen Van Bay flew this plane when he damaged the destroyer USS Oklahoma City on April 19 1972.]
Check also the American side regarding American ace Richard “Steve” Ritchie:
http://www.acepilots.com/vietnam/ritchie.html
Other attacks (none by Migs?) to US military merchant shipping during the war:
http://www.usmm.org/vietnam.html
This Russian site has more info on attacks to American ships, but it does not sound impartial at all:
http://dzampini.boom.ru/Vietnam/GreenSnakes.htm
I also think your brother’s story is likely to be true.
…I seem to recall that the Vietcong themeselves (not the NVA) only made one air strike themselves…in three captured AT-37s, around the time of the fall of the south.
At the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, there is a B-52 bomber on display which shot down a Mig in Vietnam.
http://airwarvietnam.com/migkills.htm
If I recall correctly, the early NV successes in dogfighting were partly responsible for the formation of the Top Gun dog fighting school in the Navy and the Red Flag dogfighting school in the Air Force.
There is an article in the most recent issue of Flight Journal about a C-130 refueling plane that managed to evade and destroy a MiG 21 in Vietnam.
Great magazine, and they have a web site too:
Aviation History | History of Flight | Aviation History Articles, Warbirds, Bombers, Trainers, Pilots
[Nitpick]
The USS Oklahoma City was not a destroyer. It was a guided-missile cruiser, CLG-5.
My dad was the communications officer on the Oklahoma City in the 1960s. CLG-5 was the flagship of the 7th Fleet at the time, and traded those duties with USS Providence (CLG-6). Both ships were, IIRC, Boston -class light cruisers that were upgraded to fire surface-to-air missiles. Oklahoma City carried Talos missiles, while Boston carried Terrier missiles.
[/Nitpick]