Word: phantoms
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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...
...Russian fighter has another more atavistic advantage. It is equipped with a pair of 30-mm cannons built into the fuselage. The Phantoms can mount 20-mm. cannons, but only in external wing pods, which are not as stable and accurate as fuselage-mounted cannons. The Phantom was designed to stand off at some distance and zero in electronically. In the duels so far, the MIGs have been unwilling to play that game, are ducking in close where missiles are virtually useless. An advanced Phantom with integral cannons is under development; in the meantime, for all the U.S. success thus...