Ideal USAF air superiority fighter for the Vietnam War.

[MadRat]

Actually the Vietnamese were in defensive positions, therefore the US showing parity is actually gaining immense superiority. Defenders should win disproportionately as logistics are in their favor by a large margin.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Actually the Vietnamese were in defensive positions, therefore the US showing parity is actually gaining immense superiority. Defenders should win disproportionately as logistics are in their favor by a large margin.

This is a really weird way to phrase "we didn't lose as hard as the numbers suggested we should've" tbf. Nobody keeps score. North Vietnam was so good at defending that it literally never had to the fight the U.S. Army's tank divisions inside its own country. Defenders who win without firing a shot against invaders' own armies are the best defenders of all at the end of the day.

Bombing the enemy is pointless if you don't invade. I'd have thought Goering taught the world this but the USAF missed that memo.

Sounds like you don't care about true Air Superiority.

What, pray tell, is the actual air threat of the VPAF? A few An-2s with hand grenades and an RPD on the back?

The Vietnam War air threat was so non-existent that "air superiority" was meaningless. The Vietnamese were running defensive, a position no air force should be in, literally the entire war. In that case, literally any aircraft can work for air superiority, probably including F-86s, if the USAF had simply trained its pilots good. It didn't. The Navy did. What was lacking was a ground invasion and the capacity to permanently occupy the North, and the U.S. did not have this ability, otherwise it would have done so.

The best air superiority fighter is either an F-104G, which was in production at the time, or the F-4B which was actually adopted.

Neither are genuinely better than the other, what the F-104G lacks in human factors and growth potentials it gains in production numbers, and what the F-4B lacks in cheapness and ready availability of parts it gains in being able to soldier on for 30+ more years in main combat roles.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I forgot about the F5, so we have a real cross section of fighter types from the brand new to the relatively old and the straight line speedsters to the highly agile. Yet none of these aircraft were able to get great results in the environment of Rolling Thunder. IIUC this was indicative of the USAF culture of the time rather than the aircraft they were flying. I've read that from 1960 the USAF put a big focus in flying safety after a horrific, HORRIFIC 50s in terms of plane crashes and aircrew deaths. Apparently the crash rate reduced but at least in part due to a reduction in dangerous training like close air to air combat flying which develops skills.

Exactly. But even the USN F-4 pilots weren't all that hot at fighting against fighters. Only the USN Crusader pilots were good dogfighters, due to guns+sidewinders as armaments and seen in that order.

 

[Rule of cool]

I recall reading something about the disbanding of FAGU (fleet air gunnery unit?) in about 1960 having something to do with the Navy's problems. However the Navy and AF appear to have different approaches to the issue, for example the Navy started introducing the Aim9d in 1965; 3 years before the USAFs 9e. The USAF relied more on the Sparrow and on technology like combat tree IFF(?) and improved EC121s as opposed the the Navy's focus on pilot ACM training.

 

[BlackBat242]

I forgot about the F5, so we have a real cross section of fighter types from the brand new to the relatively old and the straight line speedsters to the highly agile. Yet none of these aircraft were able to get great results in the environment of Rolling Thunder. IIUC this was indicative of the USAF culture of the time rather than the aircraft they were flying. I've read that from 1960 the USAF put a big focus in flying safety after a horrific, HORRIFIC 50s in terms of plane crashes and aircrew deaths. Apparently the crash rate reduced but at least in part due to a reduction in dangerous training like close air to air combat flying which develops skills.

There was also a change that saw military aircraft communicating with civilian air traffic centers after a series of fighter jet vs airliner midair crashes near airports.

 

[BlackBat242]

This is a really weird way to phrase "we didn't lose as hard as the numbers suggested we should've" tbf. Nobody keeps score. North Vietnam was so good at defending that it literally never had to the fight the U.S. Army's tank divisions inside its own country. Defenders who win without firing a shot against invaders' own armies are the best defenders of all at the end of the day.

Nice gross distortion of history - the US had decided before they sent a single soldier to SOUTH Vietnam that we were NOT going to invade NORTH Vietnam at all!
So there never were going to be tanks or any other US military ground force invading - just air strikes to reduce the NV capability to support the Viet Cong in SV - and to try to keep NV forces from invading SV.

Bombing the enemy is pointless if you don't invade. I'd have thought Goering taught the world this but the USAF missed that memo.

You do have a point here.
Without sending troops all we did was temporarily degrade NV's economic and military strength. However, since this (however misguided) was exactly the SOLE reason for the bombing, you could say " Mission Accomplished".

What, pray tell, is the actual air threat of the VPAF? A few An-2s with hand grenades and an RPD on the back?

The Vietnam War air threat was so non-existent that "air superiority" was meaningless. The Vietnamese were running defensive, a position no air force should be in, literally the entire war. In that case, literally any aircraft can work for air superiority, probably including F-86s, if the USAF had simply trained its pilots good. It didn't. The Navy did.

So the VPAF didn't have bunches of MiG-17s, MiG-19s, and MiG-21s? Then what were those aircraft attacking ours?

What was lacking was a ground invasion and the capacity to permanently occupy the North, and the U.S. did not have this ability, otherwise it would have done so.

You know this is utterly false... we DID have a LOT of military forces that were never sent anywhere near southeast Asia - simply because we never had any intention of invading NV!

Had we wanted to invade and subjugate NV it would have been done - bloodily for both sides, but we would have definitely succeeded.

As we declared all along, we were there solely to support SV's attempts to preserve their nation in the face of attacks by the NV-supported VC, and to prevent NV from invading.

And we also did some meddling in Laos and Cambodia that wasn't really part of the Vietnam effort, but none of that was intended to conquer either nation.

 

[Rule of cool]

There was also a change that saw military aircraft communicating with civilian air traffic centers after a series of fighter jet vs airliner midair crashes near airports.

I've read that pilots were taking stupid risks in unstructured 'training flights' that resembled a bunch of hot rodders doing burnouts in a carpark, resulting in engine flamouts, unrecoverable spins and stalls and the like.

 

[nintender-dorfin]

Sorry Archibald, but I would think the J79 would be too big and heavy for the F-5/F-20 design in general.....Which might bring us back to a N-102 Fang derivative, incorporating the learnt and built lessons of the F-5.....?

Regards
Pioneer

You're 100% right, if the idea is based on the F-5 as is.

I think you'd need a scaled-up derivative, making sure to incorporate an adequate radar while they're at it.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

You're 100% right, if the idea is based on the F-5 as is.

I think you'd need a scaled-up derivative, making sure to incorporate an adequate radar while they're at it.

Aren't you kind of going down the same path that led to the YF-17, but with one engine instead of two?

 

[_Del_]

They would be facing Korean War era fighters for the most part. MiG17s. This is basically applying Boyd's Fighter Mafia thinking at about the time he was developing the idea: Yes, you have the expensive highly capable planes (F4s for Vietnam), but those don't give you the mass numbers you need. So you pull some relatively capable aircraft out of the Boneyard, like FJ-4s.

Once MiG19s and -21s start being the major threat, then we can put more advanced aircraft in play.

I'm all for seeing Furies in the air longer, but I don't really see the need. As noted earlier in the thread, losses were mainly from getting jumped unaware.

Even the much-maligned (unfairly, imo) Thud had 27.5 kills against the earlier MiGs. Mostly gun kills. More kills than F-8's while being used as a strike aircraft. If they needed a gun-fighter to duel MiG-17's, Starfighters or maybe F-8's seem more than adequate to the task. Both are already equipped for Sidewinders. USAF operating Crusaders and Slufs would make things interesting even if they'd hate the idea.

 

[archipeppe]

Had we wanted to invade and subjugate NV it would have been done - bloodily for both sides, but we would have definitely succeeded.

This is definitely the point.

The U.S. commitment into the Vietnam war was more political rather than "simply" military.
U.S. Admnistrations (Johnson before and Nixon after) never ment to invade NV even if the American military apparatus had all the means to accomplish the task in matter of months, not years.

@Kat Tsun You have a real short-sighted vision of U.S. military power worldwide during the 60's.
U.S. employed only a fraction of its own military power to deal with NV and VC, only because the original commitment was to defend SV as much as possible.

A large scale invasion of NV was possible even if not desiderable due to all the possible reactions coming from both USSR and Communist China.

 

[CV12Hornet]

I'm all for seeing Furies in the air longer, but I don't really see the need. As noted earlier in the thread, losses were mainly from getting jumped unaware.

Even the much-maligned (unfairly, imo) Thud had 27.5 kills against the earlier MiGs. Mostly gun kills. More kills than F-8's while being used as a strike aircraft. If they needed a gun-fighter to duel MiG-17's, Starfighters or maybe F-8's seem more than adequate to the task. Both are already equipped for Sidewinders. USAF operating Crusaders and Slufs would make things interesting even if they'd hate the idea.

The Thud's kills come with the caveat that, AFAIK, they were mostly down to the Vietnamese pilots making the poor life choice to make head-on attacks right into the gun. They weren't exactly engaging in ACM to get those kills.

 

[Rule of cool]

I've had an out of the box thought.

The USAF, seeing it's weapons as defective with no short term solution in sight, buys a batch of Red Tops from Britain and does the work to slave them to the deployed F-4D radar. So instead of 4 useless Falcons it gets a pair of big, long-range, wide-envelope IR AAMs. whose seekers are directed by the F-4Ds radar.

 

[_Del_]

The Thud's kills come with the caveat that, AFAIK, they were mostly down to the Vietnamese pilots making the poor life choice to make head-on attacks right into the gun. They weren't exactly engaging in ACM to get those kills.

Mostly from guys jumping unaware MiG-17's on the way home or from pressing the attack after they were jumped themselves. I'm not saying it was an exceptional dog fighter, but it was exceptionally fast at any altitude and had both excellent control authority and stability at high speed, also had a very healthy thrust-to-weight ratio for the time and a high rate of roll. It could largely choose to accept or avoid contact on it's terms -- IF you know the bad guy is out there.

Defensively, if they were jumped they'd fight vertical with yo-yo's or rolling scissor until the MiG's lost energy, then they could accelerate out of dodge and head home or reengage if the situation allowed. MiG-17's couldn't keep up in a straightline or match the acceleration, and at high speed got the shudders and shakes which is bad for a gun platform with no missiles. Same principles applied when the Thuds were hunting (very common and very discouraged, particularly early). In a single slashing attack on MiG's, there was no chance for the MiG to really engage. If the -105's pressed an encounter, they could turn to the scissors to get them out of trouble as soon as the situation started to go south.

Later the MiG-21 showed up which was much more capable, and the Thud did considerably poorer (no kills). Then it was hug the deck and head home.

My point isn't that the Thud was an excellent dogfighter or air-superiority; it wasn't. The point was that they didn't need a fictional excellent dog fighter early. They only needed to go where the MiG's were (up North mostly), and most of the USAF and USN fighters were capable of holding their own against a MiG-17. Even the big nuclear strike bomber, Lead Sled.

What they needed was early warning up North, and an absence of rules of engagement that discouraged shooting down MiG's as a political problem, and forbade bombing airfields. Aggressive fighter sweeps with 104's or Crusaders shepherded by F-4's to be eyes and BVR, would have made quick work of the early MiG's (though it may have been escalatory. It escalated anyway, as it turns out, as real wars usually do).

When policy discourages downing MiG's except after being attacked, and prohibits bombing airfields, SAM sites, etc, makes "sanctuaries" in Hanoi, Haiphong, and the Chinese border offlimits, well, ... They aren't stupid. They, too, are going to pick their spots to their advantage.

 

[Rule of cool]

I'd argue that engaging at a structural disadvantage is no excuse for the worlds premier air force. After all while the USAF was sticking its head into the beehive, it outnumbered the NthV virtually every time.

The USAF had the resources to engage with difficult RoE and still win if it identified the problem and reacted to it correctly, even without changing platforms.

 

[_Del_]

The USAF had the resources to engage with difficult RoE and still win if it identified the problem and reacted to it correctly, even without changing platforms.

Targets had to be airborne, wheels up, clearly identified, and "showing hostile intent".

They still had a positive kills ratio despite that. They weren't getting much better results with any airframe under those conditions.

 

[Rule of cool]

They weren't getting much better results with any airframe under those conditions.

I don't think so either.

The USAF did push for technology improvements like better radars on their EC121s but to really make gains in time for Rolling Thunder they need to implement the recommendations of the Ault and Red Baron reports years before they even happen.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The USAF did push for technology improvements like better radars on their EC121s

And which did lead to the E3 Sentry, but I'm wondering about a quick update to the EC121s with either the AN/APS-82 radar of the E-1B or the AN/APS-125 radar from the E-2 Hawkeye...

And more importantly, a way for the EC121s to act as air controllers to give more than just a warning and a vector to the detected MiGs.

but to really make gains in time for Rolling Thunder they need to implement the recommendations of the Ault and Red Baron reports years before they even happen.

Exactly.

 

[Rule of cool]

I just read an article 'The Red Baron reports, what they really said' by William Sayers. His contention is that in fighter to fighter combat the USAF pilots actually did very well, the numbers look bad because the NthV Migs were going for the strike aircraft only under the most favourable conditions. The conclusion is the appalling reliability of the AAMs after launch and the lack of a comms network like Red Crown before Teaball was introduced were huge problems rather than USAF pilot training.

Interesting stuff.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I just read an article 'The Red Baron reports, what they really said' by William Sayers. His contention is that in fighter to fighter combat the USAF pilots actually did very well, the numbers look bad because the NthV Migs were going for the strike aircraft only under the most favourable conditions. The conclusion is the appalling reliability of the AAMs after launch and the lack of a comms network like Red Crown before Teaball was introduced were huge problems rather than USAF pilot training.

Interesting stuff.

The USAF report might have said that, but the USN report said that "yall need to train in basic fighter maneuvers" since the F8s had a far greater kill rate than the F4s. F8s, being armed with guns first and then Sidewinders, had pilots that trained to dogfight. F4s were not trained to dogfight.

 

[Rule of cool]

IIUC much of the Top Gun training wasn't basic fighter maneuvres, but utilising such maneuvres to get within the weapon's no escape zones and fire with the best chance of success.

 

[Scott Kenny]

IIUC much of the Top Gun training wasn't basic fighter maneuvres, but utilising such maneuvres to get within the weapon's no escape zones and fire with the best chance of success.

Not how to physically do the maneuvers, how to use the maneuvers.

In martial arts terms, going from doing the forms/katas to sparring.

 

[Pioneer]

Targets had to be airborne, wheels up, clearly identified, and "showing hostile intent".

That "clearly identified" seems to come up and go around continuously as a bedbug of the U.S. air war over Vietnam. But I can't but wonder and shudder how many friendly kills would have occurred had the ROE been opened up to Beyond Visual Engagement!

Regards
Pioneer

 

[Archibald]

One example comes to my mind. On the glorious day of May 10, 1972 when a good numbers of MiGs were shot down, sometime in the late afternoon "MiG fever" almost got A-7s shot down... mistaken for "yeah yeah more MiGs to add to today's tally !" Mercifully, visual I.D saved the day. The A-7s drivers were very pissed off...

 

[datafuser]

This is from a CHECO report "Rolling Thunder July 1965 - December 1966" published on 15 July 1967.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA486573.pdf

 

[Rule of cool]

Here's a link to the article I referenced earlier. It's a quick read and quite informative, the main point is that in an air to air fight started on neutral terms the USAF was virtually unbeatable, despite the disadvantages of fighting over enemy territory without a lot of support from AEW and the like.

 

[nintender-dorfin]

Aren't you kind of going down the same path that led to the YF-17, but with one engine instead of two?

Absolutely. Or an American Mirage F1, if that's a fair way to describe it.

 

[Archibald]

Well, Boeing and Dassault had a few MoUs in the 1960's - 1970's. Related to licence-build Mirages... including a F1 with a J79. A good start, then imagine a J101 Mirage. Of course the logical end of this is the F-20 Tigershark.

 

[MadRat]

I don't think in any reality either USN or USAF opts for an F1. If anything the F-8 with a J79 made sense to compliment the F-4. But think of it this way, light carriers had greater commonality using J57. Getting J79 onto a light carrier was an issue. And if the carrier could hold F-4 it made more sense to simply load more F-4 rather than mix in F-8s using J57. In the end practical heads prevailed.

 

[datafuser]

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA586319.pdf

 

[kpuscas]

That "clearly identified" seems to come up and go around continuously as a bedbug of the U.S. air war over Vietnam. But I can't but wonder and shudder how many friendly kills would have occurred had the ROE been opened up to Beyond Visual Engagement!

Regards
Pioneer

I saw something just recently talking about Project Bolo. One of the key (and hardest) parts of the plan was to basically ground all other air activity over North Vietnam during the mission. The plan was to draw the Migs out and use AIM-7s to engage them at BVR initially but because IFF at the time was "iffy" (sorry pun intended ) they couldn't be sure they weren't engaging a friendly unless they were the only ones up there. Timing issues threw a wrench in the plan and so it ended up being a furbal but that was at least the idea. So yeah a lot of the reason for that ROE was to avoid friendly fire.

 

[sferrin]

The Thud's kills come with the caveat that, AFAIK, they were mostly down to the Vietnamese pilots making the poor life choice to make head-on attacks right into the gun. They weren't exactly engaging in ACM to get those kills.

Wut?

 

[Cjc]

I guess most of US losses to MiGs were due to this kind of hit-and-run attack from behind, and the problem was not the type of fighters, but lack of early warning.


View attachment 727007

Below is from a Senate hearing on 13 March 1973. Mugs McKeown and Duke Cunningham testified in this hearing.

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This is really the issue, the f-4 (even the early versions) were perfectly fine, the issue in vetnam was the tactics used by north vetnam and the complet lack of forsite by the usaf. North vetnam could use hit and run tactics on usaf missions due to the usaf not having AEW and signal tracking in north vetnam. Once teaball (lead by the same man who lead a similar operation in the korean war so the usaf could and should have set this up the moment they started missions in north vetnam) got started, us k/d ratios started going passed what they had achieved in Korea.