Word: mig
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Phantom II jetfighters, flying "CAP" (Combat Air Patrol) for a bombing strike on the Bac Giang bridge linking Hanoi with China, headed down to their orbit area. At 18,000 feet they picked up "bogies" on their radar, and wheeled to intercept them. Within minutes they spotted six MIG-175 flying level in close formation below them. The MIGs jettisoned their external gas tanks, split up, and with cannons winking, climbed to meet the Phantoms' attack...
Armed with heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles and Sparrow radar-guided missiles, the U.S. flight leader dove out of the sun but overshot on his first pass. Three MIGs cut between the Phantoms, separating them into pairs, and went after the two U.S. lead planes. The second brace of F-4Cs, sweeping into the classic 6 o'clock target position that the Sidewinders require for homing, closed in, dropped one MIG with a missile right up the tailpipe. When a fourth MIG tried to pull in behind, the successful Phantom's wingman pounced, followed through in a diving roll...
Later in the day U.S. planes again encountered MIGs, with no losses on either side. But two of the enemy planes were the advanced MIG-215 known to pilots as "Fishbeds"-the same generation of fighter as the Phantom and capable of flying twice the speed of sound. The U.S. had long wanted to measure the Fishbed in battle...
Thinking both had missed, and muttering to himself in a cold rage, Gilmore followed the MIG through another wrenching, rolling loop of a brain-draining six gravities, then cut loose a third Sidewinder. The enemy's tail section came apart in a tumble of torn metal, and the plane pitched earthward. In fact, Gilmore's first Sidewinder had also scored, and the Red pilot had ejected. In getting the first MIG-21, Gilmore had killed it twice...
...Hanoi's own, why the decision to commit a fledgling force of some 60 MIG-15s and 17s and only 15 MIG-215 to combat with the vastly larger and more experienced American air armada? The most likely explanation: in severing Hanoi's rail links to China, the U.S. was hitting so uncomfortably close to home that every defense had to be employed. Under the high drama of last week's dogfights, the workhorse bombers were busy as ever. Guam-based B-52s unloaded 300 tons of high explosives on the Mu Gia Pass infiltration route into...