Word: phantoms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Suddenly a Sparrow. The first encounter took place just north of Hanoi as four Air Force F-4C 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...
...chance came two days later when an Air Force Phantom commanded by Major Paul Gilmore, 33, of Alamogordo, N. Mex., spotted two jets diving in on him. Both were Fishbeds. Gilmore went into a tight diving turn of his own, whipped up behind one of the MIGs, fired off two Sidewinders...
...heat-seeking Sidewinder, none of the Red planes fired them in last week's dogfights. Even so the U.S. confirmed what it had suspected: that the MIG-21 is indeed, as Pentagon Air Operations Colonel Thomas D. ("Robbie") Robertson observed, "one hell of a good bird." The Phantom, at 1,584 m.p.h. on the straightaway, is swifter (by some 300 m.p.h.) and more powerful. But the lighter, single-seat MIG-21 has an advantage in maneuverability, and a 10% faster rate of climb...