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00:00Bristling with firepower and speed, American and North Vietnamese airmen go head-to-head in the
00:08skies over Vietnam. The war pitted Soviet-made MiGs, fast and nimble, against America's newest
00:17fighter jet, the F-4 Phantom. Airborne life-and-death standoffs would last only seconds
00:25as combatants furiously maneuvered for an opportunity to fire their lethal air-to-air
00:30missiles. The intense battles that ensued defined the future of an entirely new era of air combat.
00:55By March of 1965, the war in Vietnam had reached a fever pitch. Thousands of men and aircraft
01:12were committed to the conflict. Eventually, American warplanes were launched on around-the-clock
01:18sorties in an air campaign called Rolling Thunder. Their goal was to crush the communist
01:25Vietnamese insurgency known as the Viet Cong. American air crews aimed for the insurgents'
01:31supply lines flowing from the north. U.S. military leaders also hoped that the campaign
01:36would serve as a warning to the North Vietnamese. For American airmen, the threat in the south
01:44and the north was radically different. In South Vietnam, American airplanes dominated the skies.
01:59U.S. planes and pilots handily survived even the most intense attacks from the Viet Cong operating on
02:05the ground below. However, in North Vietnam, air crews faced something far more formidable.
02:14Significant firepower and a well-trained enemy.
02:20Throughout the mid-1960s, the North Vietnamese placed anti-aircraft artillery along the most common
02:26routes used by American planes and around the major target areas.
02:30U.S. planes. Also, they unveiled the first surface-to-air missiles, Soviet-built SA-2s.
02:41The radar-controlled SA-2 could strike down U.S. planes with a range of 60,000 feet and a speed of Mach 3.
02:51But perhaps the greatest challenge to U.S. air power came from the North Vietnamese Air Force,
02:58trained and equipped by the Soviet Union and Red China.
03:06They flew the relatively slow but agile Soviet-built MiG-17s, and increasingly faster and more heavily
03:14armed MiG-21s. The more nimble airframes gave the North Vietnamese a distinct advantage over the
03:24Americans. U.S. crews flew the F-105 Thunder Chief. Against a MiG, these fighter bombers were
03:33cumbersome and difficult to maneuver. Simply put, the primary strike aircraft of the Rolling Thunder
03:40campaign could be easily outrun and ultimately shot down by the enemy. Once engaged, the best way for
03:48American planes to survive the confrontations was to drop their ordnance and hit the deck. But this
03:54wasn't an option for fighters engaged in a war.
03:57Instead, it was time for the U.S. to unveil the latest weapon in its arsenal, the F-4 Phantom. The new
04:10fighter jet was expected to defeat the MiGs from long range with little warning. But that was only a partial solution.
04:18Too often, American air crews would have to face the MiGs in close range dogfights, something for which
04:27they were extremely ill-prepared.
04:28I went through pilot training. Okay, that took a year. Then I went through six months checkout in the F-4.
04:38Okay, and then I flew the F-4 for about six more months.
04:43And so then I got two years invested and I'm a fighter pilot. And all of a sudden the Vietnam War
04:48starts getting up and they pull out some of these old books that guys had written back in the Korean
04:52War days and World War II. And in there, they're talking about maneuvers that I had no concept of.
04:58Barrel roll attacks, high-speed yo-yo, low-speed yo-yo, vertical rolling scissor, a scissor.
05:05Not only did I not know what the maneuver was, I had never heard the term before.
05:12And these were all fighter maneuvers that you used to get behind a guy to shoot him down.
05:18Initially, in the U.S. Navy, the air-to-air combat mission was split between F-4 crews
05:25and the pilots of the F-8 Crusader, a single-seat fighter capable of operating from the shorter decks
05:32of older carriers.
05:33Eventually, the Phantoms became the Navy's weapon of choice to counter the rising MiG threat.
05:48Their lethality was due to the two types of missiles they carried,
05:52the heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder or the radar-homing AIM-7 Sparrow.
05:57The capability of the missiles far surpassed anything in the Soviet inventory.
06:04They gave the F-4 the ability to kill precisely at great distances, up to 12 miles.
06:10However, the missiles were not made to shoot down small, nimble MiGs at close range.
06:19They were constructed for what military designers believed would be the next war.
06:24The attitude back then in 64 and 65 was, it ain't going to be that kind of war anymore.
06:29It's going to be against bombers straight and level shooting missiles.
06:32And they can't escape these missiles.
06:34They're too smart and too fast and can pull too many Gs.
06:39So we went to war in the F-4 with no gun and the radar missile and the Sidewinder missile
06:46designed to shoot down bombers.
06:49And they weren't all that great at that.
06:51F-4s were operated by a two-man crew.
06:56The pilot and trigger man sat in front,
06:59while the backseater used the radar to locate targets.
07:03Their lives were in each other's hands.
07:05Clear communication was a matter of survival.
07:10The guy in the back gets it on the radar and he says,
07:14okay, we got a bogey, 20 left, 10 up, 15, which is 15 miles.
07:20Okay, that's where he was when this guy saw him, thought about it and told you.
07:25Okay, but everything is moving.
07:27It's, you know, like six dimensional because it's not just you moving.
07:31He's moving too.
07:33So for him to be effective, he's got to be telling you that just constantly.
07:37Well, you can't.
07:38So you're just getting data bits.
07:41This verbal communication front to back was tough, very tough and slow.
07:50Once the F-4s started closing in on the MiGs,
07:54pilot and navigator had to determine the best moment to unleash their weapons.
07:58The Sidewinder was designed to guide on the heat from jet exhaust and could only be launched from behind a MiG.
08:11The radar-guided Sparrow should have provided crews with a long-range acquisition advantage.
08:17But under U.S. rules of engagement, the crew had to visually identify the aircraft,
08:26usually by making a close pass, before they could activate the missile's outdated guidance system.
08:32You had to wait four seconds before you could fire.
08:38You had to wait two seconds for the radar to settle.
08:40And this is an old analog radar set, tubes.
08:43So we had to wait two seconds for the radar to settle down,
08:46and then another two seconds for the radar data to program the missile.
08:50You fired at three and a half seconds, and you had a stupid missile.
08:53So what you'd hear was, you're locked, 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,005.
08:59So we had to have that four-second time, and that's an eternity when you're moving at supersonic speeds.
09:07Even after the pilot pulled the trigger, there was another second and a half delay before the missile fired,
09:14and the crew had to stay locked onto the MiG until the Sparrow struck,
09:18an extremely difficult and dangerous feat to achieve in combat.
09:23North Vietnamese MiGs usually operated in well-coordinated teams.
09:28If an F-4 crew managed to engage one, they could count on the fact that others were waiting nearby.
09:36Ground-based radar operators controlled the MiGs.
09:40They dictated virtually every maneuver the pilots made.
09:43The tactic, known as GCI, or Ground Control Intercept,
09:48was a classic Soviet attack strategy that proved somewhat effective in Vietnam.
09:52GCI controllers continuously relayed the exact position of US aircraft to MiG pilots,
10:00allowing the MiGs plenty of time to set up ambushes or to avoid attack.
10:05Something made easier by the Phantom's two powerful engines,
10:12they left notoriously large black smoke trails in the sky.
10:17Rolling Thunder's newest weapon was proving to be among its most vulnerable.
10:21Rolling Thunder, the air campaign launched against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong,
10:37has been underway for almost two years.
10:40Rolling Thunder, the U.S. troops.
10:43At first, President Lyndon Johnson would only allow US crews to attack a limited number of targets
10:49outside of North Vietnam's population centers.
10:52But the strategy had been ineffective,
10:55so military planners decided to send American planes to the heart of North Vietnam.
10:59They were flying the Soviet Union's latest aircraft, the MiG-21, a plane that was nearly twice as fast as the 17s,
11:20superior in every way to the F-105 fighter-bomber, and able to outmaneuver both the F-4 and F-8 Crusader.
11:29Also making it even more lethal than its MiG predecessors,
11:34the 21 could be armed with four ATOL missiles, the Soviet answer to the heat-seeking Sidewinder.
11:44To make the best use of their new weapons, MiG crews developed a new tactic. They remained hidden.
11:52Until the slower, less able American planes were so low on fuel that they had no choice but to
12:02jettison their payload to make it out alive.
12:05We didn't find them, they found us. They would usually come up and try to make sneak attacks
12:17on the strike force, hoping to get them to jettison their bombs and not make it to the target. And it
12:24would be sometimes a combination of MiG-17s and one or two MiG-21s. The 17s would be used
12:33as a decoy to get the F-4s and the 105s to forget about what they were supposed to be doing
12:41and try to go for the MiG-17s. And once your attention was diverted to the 17s, the MiG-21s
12:50would come through on a supersonic high-speed pass, fire a couple of missiles and away they go.
12:55And by this time, the MiG-17s have started to run. And so now the entire strike is disrupted. That was their goal.
13:06As the war continued on, F-4 crews became increasingly frustrated. They knew how to
13:12maneuver in a dogfight, but their missiles weren't right for the job. None had a kill rate higher than
13:2015%. At close range, they were extremely difficult to use and many simply failed to track properly or fire at all.
13:32To be truly lethal, the Phantoms needed a gun. One squadron took matters into their own hands.
13:37On the plane's belly, they mounted a 20-millimeter Gatling gun capable of firing 100 rounds per second.
13:43In May of 1967, for the first time ever, the men of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing went into combat
13:55with bellies full of lead. Within a couple of weeks, the gunfighters, as they came to be known,
14:00had earned their first kills. They downed two MiGs in a single engagement.
14:11Now, the Phantom Force was lethal on two fronts. Long-range missiles still took down the greatest
14:20number of MiGs. But close up, the new gun pods were proven effective.
14:26The Air Force put their improved weapon to good use.
14:34The Phantoms were sent in to protect the bomb-laden F-105s,
14:38as they made their way toward their targets in North Vietnam.
14:44The heavy F-105s were no match for a MiG. If an enemy plane showed up, the F-4s sprang into action.
14:50If there weren't any MiGs in sight, then the F-4s were expected to head into the target area
14:55and drop their ordnance just like the F-105s, a job many crews didn't enjoy.
15:01Sometimes you might say we sort of hoped that the MiGs would come up so that we wouldn't have to roll
15:07in on the target. Not that we felt that fighting the MiGs would be more fun than putting the bombs
15:15on the target. It is simply a matter of what the job was. Our job was to keep the MiGs off the F-105s,
15:22because their job was to put the bombs on the target. Big difference, once the bombs are away,
15:28you cannot catch an F-105 on the way out. Those guys would do their job and then it was time for
15:35them to go home. For us, depending on who you were flying with, you would put the bombs on the target,
15:42see that the 105s were out and then turn around and go back to play. And by that, I mean you would
15:51go back and look for MiGs to see if any of them were following the strike force trying to get revenge
15:56kills or whatever you want to call it.
15:59American planes were too often the victims of MiG hit and runs on the way in or out of the target area.
16:09To counter this tactic, the Americans developed a plan. It would become one of the most famous
16:15ruses in the history of air combat. On January 2nd, dozens of planes from various squadrons and more
16:23than 30 Phantoms from the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, or Wolfpack, launched on Operation Bolo,
16:30an offensive attack on North Vietnam. The operation was conceived by the Wolfpack's fiery new commander,
16:39Colonel Robin Olds. Olds, like many others, became extremely frustrated. U.S. political leaders
16:47prevented him from going after the MiG bases, so that meant the only way to kill the enemy
16:53was in the air. His idea was simple. If the Phantoms could fool North Vietnamese radar operators
17:01into thinking that they were actually a flight of heavy fighter bombers, they could trap the MiGs in
17:06an air battle before the pilots realized their mistake. The Wolfpack's Phantoms mimicked every aspect
17:12of an F-105 or thud strike force. They flew the same routes at the same altitudes, air speeds, and times as
17:20the thuds, and even carried the same electronic jamming pods so that they would appear on radar
17:26just like a flight of 105s. But the Phantoms were not carrying bombs. They were each armed with eight
17:33air-to-air missiles. Initially, the mission appeared to be a failure. There was a heavy overcast, and
17:41Colonel Olds' flight, which was leading the force, had already turned around over Fukian airfield.
17:46Suddenly, a single MiG appeared on the radar directly beneath Olds' formation. The crews
17:52immediately tried to engage, but as they did, an emergency call rang out from other U.S. planes
17:58that had just arrived over Fukian. A MiG-21 had emerged from the clouds and was pursuing Olds' flight
18:05from the rear. Captain Ralph Wetterhahn, one of the men responsible for planning the details of
18:12Operation Bolo, was flying on Colonel Olds' wing. The MiGs were climbing up through the clouds in trail.
18:22And it wasn't just one MiG, but there's four of them. But they're not together. They're spaced out.
18:27So everybody starts looking around. And some of us see the MiG-21 at six o'clock,
18:33and 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.
18:42And we all think we're looking at one MiG-21. So Olds starts wheeling because he sees the one,
18:50and he starts turning. Now I lock up to the one I see at 10 o'clock, and Olds just pulls right belly up
18:57to it. And I'm confused. I am really confused. And then finally I look and I see the other MiG.
19:04But we right away sandwiched ourselves between two.
19:10For several seconds, the radios were jammed with frantic transmissions.
19:15Olds maneuvered into position and fired a pair of sparrows at the MiG in front of him.
19:20But the missiles failed to lock on.
19:21He then let loose a pair of sidewinders. But they tracked toward the infrared heat of the clouds.
19:32All the while, Wedderhan anxiously tried to warn Olds about the other MiG,
19:36which was struggling to get into firing position. But Olds was not responding.
19:43I pull off to the wing where Olds can see me because I'm not going to shoot
19:46across his wing and pickle a radar missile. And I feel it come off, but I never see it.
19:52And then I pickle the second one. And this one I see and it comes out nice and makes a nice little
19:57arc and then just starts tracking out. Boom! It was such a release at that point
20:04to see that for the first time to an enemy airplane. The thing that I had seen many times to our own
20:11airplane that I just shouted on the radio. I got him, I got him, I got him. And you can hear that
20:17emotion there that even to this day will give me chills and make my hands shake and my knees shake.
20:22Because I know how that felt for that instant and know that that guy's not going to kill me today.
20:28But that only lasts for about a second. And then the fight is back on because there's much,
20:32much more going on. I look behind and there's missile cons everywhere. And they're streaking out
20:38and they're like skeletal fingers, you know, coming at you. And if they touch you, you're dead.
20:44But you don't know which ones are alive or not. You can just see the smoke trails. You can't see the
20:48missiles. And some of them have been there a few seconds and some of them are fresh. And you just,
20:51you don't have time to stare at each one and figure out what's going on. So you just ignore it all and
20:56keep turning and start looking for someone else to shoot at. By now, the North Vietnamese were well
21:04aware that they had been lured into a trap. The wolf pack systematically hunted down and killed six more
21:10MiG-21s, giving the Americans a much needed advantage in the skies over Vietnam.
21:24In January of 1967, the men of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing turned the tide of the air campaign over Vietnam.
21:31Operation Bolo resulted in the destruction of nearly half of the North Vietnamese MiG-21s without a single
21:42American loss. The men felt they had proved that the MiGs could be beaten at their own game and that
21:49the F-4 was clearly superior to the Soviet MiG-21.
22:01Most attributed the success of Bolo to the uncommon determination and leadership of Colonel Olds.
22:09A few days after Bolo, he initiated another successful ruse in which a pair of Phantoms,
22:16mimicking a weather reconnaissance flight, downed two more MiG-21s. The triumphs of U.S. fighter
22:23crews dealt a serious blow to the North Vietnamese. For now, the enemy was subdued.
22:34After a short reprieve, American planes resumed their bombing campaign at a greater tempo than ever before.
22:46Both the Air Force and the Navy began launching multiple missions virtually every day,
22:53most of which contained upwards of a hundred aircraft.
22:59Increasingly, vital targets such as steel mills, power plants, and the rail lines heading from Hanoi to
23:06China were repeatedly hammered. Several air bases were also opened to attack, and in a major climax to the
23:15Rolling Thunder campaign, President Johnson personally authorized strikes against the main MiG base at Fuggen.
23:23A massive three-day effort severely cratered airstrips at the facility and damaged or destroyed at least 20 MiGs.
23:30But as the intensity of operations increased, so too did MiG opposition.
23:43U.S. fighter crews struggled to maintain air superiority. Larger assaults and new tactics took a toll on American strike forces.
23:52In the end, the North Vietnamese pilots still proved less effective than their U.S. enemy.
24:00MiGs downed at least 56 American planes, while the Americans killed 118 of theirs.
24:07The two-to-one kill ratio marked the poorest performance for U.S. airmen in any conflict.
24:17On April 1, 1968, President Johnson halted bombing missions against North Vietnam above the 19th parallel.
24:26By November, all Rolling Thunder operations had ended.
24:29While a debate ensued over how to improve the effectiveness of the U.S. fighter force,
24:39the air war over North Vietnam was indefinitely suspended.
24:50March 30, 1972. During a suspension of the air war over North Vietnam, the Communists invaded the South.
25:00A week later, President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. airmen to return to the skies over the North
25:05under Operation Freedom Train, a massive bombing campaign aimed at halting the flow of men and supplies
25:12pouring into South Vietnam.
25:18By early May, Nixon had expanded the campaign to include targets throughout the entire country
25:25under Operation Linebacker.
25:30North Vietnam used the long respite from air attacks to dramatically strengthen its military.
25:36By 1972, the North Vietnamese Air Force had been equipped with a combination of nearly 250 MiG 17s,
25:4419s and 21s. The most lethal assaults continued to come from the pilots of the 21s,
25:51who nearly perfected the strategy of sneaking up behind strike forces at low altitude,
25:57accelerating to supersonic speeds, firing their atolls, and rapidly diving away.
26:02The tactic provided little time for fighter crews to prevent an attack.
26:10Their greatest hope was to keep the MiGs literally off their tails, or as fighter pilots called it,
26:16the 6 o'clock.
26:17Our tactic to counter that was to do everything possible to clear 6 o'clock.
26:23In a flight of four, the two elements would cross each other. We would do 90 degree right and 90
26:28degree left turns, 180 degree right, 180 degree left turns, so we were constantly maneuvering
26:34in the high-threat area.
26:42The long bombing halt also provided North Vietnam with plenty of time to better train its pilots.
26:49Many of the airmen were new recruits who had been called upon to fill the ranks of squadrons
26:53depleted by heavy losses suffered during Rolling Thunder. But those that survived were able to hone
27:00their skills and learn to rely more on their combat experience than on restrictive guidance from
27:06ground controls.
27:08You could tell right when you got into a fight with them exactly what type of pilot you had. You
27:13know, if he stayed and was aggressive, you had a problem. He was one of the old guys and he was
27:19going to stay and fight and do a good job at it. If he looked like he was a new lieutenant and didn't
27:25know what he was doing, he was a new guy. Didn't understand the airplane, had to live with
27:30within the Soviet system of GCI control, which meant the flight lead for the flight was on the
27:34ground in the radar van controlling the flight. You can't have a time delay between you talking to
27:41somebody and them watching the radar and then tell you what to do. It's instantaneous. He died.
27:48The Navy and the Air Force took very different approaches to improving the effectiveness of their
27:54fighter forces during the bombing halt. The Air Force largely focused on technical problems,
28:01installing an internal gun on newer model Phantoms, developing improved airborne radar,
28:06and working to solve missile problems that had plagued crews for years.
28:14The Navy focused on training, initiating a postgraduate course in fighter weapons, tactics,
28:21and doctrine that came to be known as Top Gun. For three solid weeks, Navy Phantom crews flew simulated air
28:30combat missions at Miramar Naval Air Station in California against aircraft that closely resembled the MiGs.
28:43Only three days after President Nixon initiated Operation Linebacker,
28:48it 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,
29:09joined up with more than 35 aircraft heading to strike a key rail yard between Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong.
29:16The mission was to suppress anti-aircraft threats with cluster bombs and then to protect the force
29:23against the threat of MiGs. Cunningham and Driscoll reached the target area as planned,
29:29but were initially unaware that at least 22 MiGs had already launched and were preparing to intercept the force.
29:35I had bombed a target area, and as I pulled off the target, I made a mistake. What you don't do is look
29:45back at the target. You look for MiGs and things. Looked over, and I was making a comment to Willie,
29:50look at this target we just hit. And my wingman, Brian Grant, called Duke MiG-17s at 7 o'clock,
29:56and we reversed just in time to see tracers from a MiG coming really high speed at us.
30:05Cunningham broke hard into the MiG, forcing the pilot to overshoot,
30:09quickly reversed back in behind him, and fired a sidewinder.
30:12The missile tracked directly for the MiG, blowing it to shreds.
30:22The crew began searching for other aircraft, but noticed that several of the MiGs had entered into
30:28a wagon wheel, a defensive strategy used by the North Vietnamese to provide mutual protection from
30:34the rear. The tactic posed little threat to airmen, as long as they attacked directly from the side,
30:41took high speed shots as they passed through the circle, and didn't slow down.
30:48But two of the Phantoms had slowed down, and were furiously maneuvering inside the wheel.
30:56Cunningham and Driscoll tried to help one of the F-4s, which was piloted by their commander.
31:04He was being pursued by at least two MiG-17s and a 21. But each time they came around the turn,
31:12all of the other MiGs began tracking them.
31:19I made every excuse that I could think of in my own mind to get out of there, because
31:23in that kind of an environment, you're not going to survive 99 times out of 100. And I actually turned
31:28the airplane away and thought, I'll die if I go in there. And I actually got the airplane turned,
31:34started going away. And a thought came to me and said, if I leave, the XO is going to die. And how
31:41do I live with his wife and his children know that I didn't at least try?
31:48Cunningham and Driscoll turned back into the fight and began maneuvering in behind the MiG on their
31:54commander's wing. They struggled for several seconds to get a clear shot, fearing that a
32:00sidewinder might guide on hot exhaust from the wrong plane. Suddenly, an opportunity emerged,
32:08and Cunningham fired. The MiG exploded right beside his commander, but the Phantom remained intact.
32:16The other MiGs immediately disengaged and dove away toward Hanoi.
32:26Fearing that there could still be many more MiGs in the area, Cunningham and Driscoll began heading
32:32back toward the fleet. But their day was far from over. As the crew flew out toward the coast,
32:40a single MiG 17 appeared in the distance. Cunningham pressed the aircraft head on to prevent the
32:47pilot from turning in behind him. Suddenly, the MiGs cannons lit up, forcing him into a steep climb.
32:56Ordinarily, North Vietnamese pilots disengaged once they lost a clear advantage.
33:02But this was no ordinary pilot.
33:08I fully expected this MiG, when I pulled up and was going to turn into him like this,
33:13to just run and unload and go to Hanoi, and I was going to have to come back and chase him.
33:18Instead, as I went a little vertical and showed him the nose position, I came back over the top. We were
33:23in the pure vertical, and I looked back and saw a little set of goggles, a little white scarf, and could
33:29see canopy to canopy going pure vertical with him slightly below me, the MiG driver. And we arced
33:35over the top, gave him a flight path, which is another mistake I made. He shot, broke out of the
33:41flight of his bullets, put him right where I wanted him to at my six o'clock. That's not where I wanted him.
33:48Cunningham unloaded his aircraft, pulled up hard, and kicked the rudder over the top, positioning
33:54himself behind the MiG. But the MiG pilot responded, executing virtually the same maneuver.
34:03For several minutes, the two planes dueled in a furious dogfight, repeatedly trading advantage
34:09for disadvantage in what's known as a rolling scissors. Suddenly, Cunningham recalled a similar
34:17engagement that an instructor pilot had put him through at Top Gun. He pulled up hard into a climb.
34:25Again, the MiG pilot stayed with him. But this time, he did the unexpected, executing a daring
34:32maneuver that was immortalized in the 1986 Hollywood thriller, Top Gun.
34:38Just like in the movie, he started his nose up a little bit, coming into a position like this. Well,
34:43I chopped the throttle, put the speed brakes, and dropped the flaps, and he went out in front of me.
34:48And I had done that in training at Top Gun. It worked against the instructor pilot,
34:52and it worked against him, because he's sitting up here, and that's where we shot him.
34:58The MiG attempted to escape straight down, but it was too late. Cunningham fired a single sidewinder.
35:06Several seconds later, he saw a brief flash and a trail of black smoke as the MiG flew into the ground.
35:13Cunningham and Driscoll were drained, but ecstatic. They had clearly met one of North Vietnam's most
35:22formidable pilots on the battlefield, and had emerged victorious. They had also become the first
35:28aces of the Vietnam War, earning their third, fourth, and fifth kills during a single engagement.
35:35Incredibly, though, there was little time for either man to contemplate the significance of what had taken place.
35:44As they headed back toward the coast, an emergency broadcast warned that SAMS had been launched from
35:49the city of Nam Din. Cunningham looked toward the city, just in time to see an SA-2 heading straight for him.
35:56The missile detonated several feet from the F-4, sending shrapnel into the plane's underbelly.
36:03Cunningham struggled to pull the plane into a climb, and then managed to roll it some 50 miles
36:09out to the coast using only his rudder and afterburner.
36:18Shortly after reaching the Gulf of Tonkin, there was an explosion in the rear of the aircraft.
36:23Within seconds, the crew was forced to eject.
36:26Cunningham's back was injured during ejection, but ultimately, both men were pulled to safety
36:36in a daring joint recovery effort by Navy and Air Force personnel.
36:42Using their wits and weapons to the fullest, Cunningham and Driscoll, like so many others before
36:48them had survived the thrill and the terror of air-to-air combat.
36:57While the men were showered with praise for their incredible accomplishment,
37:01ultimately, both were simply thankful to have made it out alive.
37:10I had helicopters come in under fire and, you know, rescue us out from that.
37:17There's a long story, even in that rescue. So you can imagine pulling off a target,
37:21bombing a target, pulling off, getting jumped by 22 MiGs, going through three different engagements,
37:27disengaging, getting hit with a surface-to-air missile, rolling an airplane 50 miles.
37:32Finally, the tail blows off. You're in a spin. You eject.
37:36It's a pretty emotional time. They have no concept of what some of our kids went through.
37:43And many of them didn't come back.
37:50As the air war over Vietnam heated up, Navy fighter crews repeatedly demonstrated the value of
38:10Top Gun's training, achieving better than a 12-to-1 kill ratio against North Vietnamese MiGs,
38:17while preventing the loss of all but one of their attack aircraft.
38:24Air Force crews did not fare nearly as well.
38:28In fact, during June and July, their kill ratio dropped to an astounding one-to-one.
38:34Many factors contributed to the dismal statistics, including the ability of the North Vietnamese to
38:42detect Air Force assaults much sooner than those launched by the Navy.
38:47But it was also clear that the concentration on technical issues, rather than on tactics and training,
38:55left many Air Force crews woefully unprepared for the intensity of air combat in 1972.
39:02We were not allowed to train the way we were going to fight, which was very unfortunate.
39:14We were not allowed to practice dissimilar.
39:18When I came back for my second tour in 1972, I was as prepared as someone could possibly be,
39:25and yet I had never faced an unlike airplane in a maneuvering situation.
39:30The first time I ever saw an unlike airplane in a maneuvering situation was a MiG-21 over Hanoi.
39:35The Air Force also experienced considerable difficulty in pairing up and keeping fighter
39:44crews together during linebacker.
39:51Navy crews were normally paired up in the same highly trained team for the duration of their cruise.
39:59Air Force pairings were often changed daily,
40:02as new airmen arrived to replace those who were on temporary duty or who had fulfilled their 100
40:08mission tour requirement.
40:12Many Air Force pilots fought hard to preserve crew integrity, handpicking not only their backseater,
40:19but the other six men that normally flew in their flight of four.
40:26It was a definite advantage to have two people under those conditions,
40:30both highly trained, and to be able to fly as a team all the time.
40:34Chuck de Bellevue and I flew over a hundred sorties together.
40:38Chuck was the best of any of the backseaters at Udarn.
40:41I was very fortunate to be able to select him to fly with me.
40:44We got to the point that we didn't have to say a lot to each other in the cockpit.
40:48I knew what Chuck needed. He knew exactly what I needed.
40:53Several improvements in Air Force equipment did pay off.
40:57One of the greatest developments took place on board DISCO, the Air Force's EC-121s,
41:05that alerted air crews to the presence of MiGs.
41:09New radars were installed on DISCO and on Red Crown, a Navy radar control ship,
41:15that allowed air crews to see exactly what enemy ground controllers saw.
41:19These new eyes and ears gave U.S. forces an unprecedented early warning system,
41:29especially to MiGs coming in at low altitudes.
41:34With this information, fighter crews could get into position before being seen by the enemy.
41:39A tactic which would soon pay off for Captain Ritchie.
41:46On July 8th, 1972, he was leading four Phantoms on a mission to protect bombers on their way home.
41:56Flying his backseat that day, as he had dozens of times before, was Captain Chuck de Bellevue.
42:02As we headed towards Hanoi, you could hear the bandit calls.
42:06First it went northeast, then east, then southeast of Hanoi, then south.
42:10And then DISCO, the EC-121, the controller on there, he calls out,
42:16Paula, which was our call sign, you're merged.
42:18Which meant on his scope, everybody's in the same little piece of the sky.
42:23And that was nice, except we didn't see anybody.
42:26It got us real concerned.
42:27And for about two minutes, there was eight guys with heads on swivels,
42:32checking six, looking around, trying to make sure nobody's behind us.
42:36Finally, I had a premonition or something, I don't know, Steve probably had the same one,
42:40about the same time that they were in front of us.
42:42I looked up at 11 o'clock, and just to the left of the nose of the F-4,
42:47there was a black dot on a white cloud.
42:50Didn't belong there.
42:52And very shortly after that happened,
42:54we were lined abreast going opposite directions with the MiG-21.
43:01Richie and de Bellevue were well aware that North Vietnamese pilots
43:05rarely ventured into combat alone.
43:08The crew started a slicing maneuver, as if they were going to turn in behind the first MiG,
43:13but then held it there.
43:16Sure enough, a second MiG soon flashed by that had been setting up to fire on the men
43:20if they had turned in.
43:21Richie broke hard in behind the second MiG and followed his lead.
43:29We came into the fight behind the trailing guy, got a radar lock on.
43:34He was in a hard turn, and the missile went for the centroid of the radar energy,
43:38which was right behind the canopy on the MiG-21 where the wings meet the fuselage.
43:42Well, right behind that is where the centroid of the radar energy was focused,
43:46and that's where the missile cut it into.
43:48It was still accelerating when it got to him.
43:55We unloaded because when one blew up, the second MiG would never stay.
44:00He'd always leave.
44:01And our number four called up and said,
44:04hey, Steve, he's on me.
44:05And the MiG had come all full circle and was now chasing us.
44:09We came back into the fight, again locked onto the remaining MiG.
44:14He was on the edge of the scope, about 3,000 feet, 4,000 feet away from us.
44:20And we fired one missile, and it cut him in two.
44:22It took a minute and 29 seconds from tally-ho with the black fly speck on that white cloud until splash two.
44:39Within two months of his dramatic double kill, Captain Ritchie downed another MiG-21,
44:45his fifth overall, to become the first Air Force ace of the war.
44:52Captain de Bellevue, the guy in back on four of those missions,
44:56ultimately earned two more kills with another pilot to become America's highest scoring ace in Vietnam.
45:02The achievements of both men received a great deal of attention.
45:08They, like so many American crews during Vietnam, put man, machine, and tactics to the test.
45:14Ultimately, U.S. forces shot down close to 200 MiGs.
45:19Despite their tremendous success, they are just grateful to have survived.
45:25Imagine being in an arena where living or dying depended on winning or losing.
45:29And you win and you live.
45:33It's pretty exciting.
45:35Of course, it wouldn't have happened without the tremendous team.
45:40And I have said to audiences all around the world that if it had not been for the thousands
45:45and thousands of young people doing their job day in and day out in a very professional and
45:50dedicated manner, not only would Steve Ritchie not be a fighter ace, I probably would not be alive.
46:00Well-trained crews and ample weaponry weren't the only things that helped U.S. airmen succeed.
46:08There was also a weakness that the Americans ably exploited.
46:12North Vietnamese pilots were not allowed to operate freely.
46:16Every maneuver was tightly controlled from the ground.
46:19Had they been better, had they been allowed to be better, we probably wouldn't have survived.
46:28I think I could have taken a dozen of our best pilots to Hanoi, flown the MiG-21 against U.S. forces,
46:34and U.S. forces would not have survived.
46:36I believe I could have shot down an F-4 every day if I were flying a MiG-21.
46:41Because it was relatively simple for them to get into our rear quarter position,
46:46supersonic, fire their atoll, and dive away. It's just that they weren't very good at it.
46:54Vast improvements in American fighter technology took shape in the years that followed the Vietnam War.
46:59But the most significant advances took place in tactical training.
47:05The Navy's top gun program continued to produce increasingly more competent fighter crews.
47:11The Air Force eventually formed an aggressor squadron that specialized in Soviet tactics,
47:17and initiated Red Flag, a program that pitted the squadron against American and Allied airmen from
47:23around the world. As veterans of the war returned home, they left behind an invaluable legacy,
47:30lessons from real-world combat. Hopefully these lessons would not only lead American planes and
47:37pilots to victory, but also save their lives. In the end, those who fought the war over Vietnam
47:45forever changed the nature of air combat.
47:53In the end, those who fought the war over Vietnam mostades inì°¸ics were held as another