Word: radars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...already noted that the North Vietnamese usually scrambled their fighters when U.S. planes approached this sensitive sector, but this time the 50 incoming planes were not cumbersome fighter-bombers. Instead, the Phantoms were flying "clean," without the bombs and extra fuel tanks that reduce maneuverability. To North Vietnamese radar, however, they looked just like fighter-bombers, and up came the MIGs to harass them. What resulted was the first pitched battle between the two best operational fighters in the world: the Communist MIG-21 "Fishbed" and the American F-4C Phantom...
Other Americans used their missiles to equal effect. Standing off from the Communist cannon fire, they locked on target with radar and sent six more MIGs down in flaming fragments. The entire fight took scarcely 12 minutes-a commentary on the speed of modern warfare-and only one Phantom was damaged (hit by chunks of a disintegrating MIG). When they returned to base, the flyers received well-earned recognition: a third Silver Star for Olds, Distinguished Flying Crosses for the 13 other aviators who had scored...
Ready for a Shift. All the while, Red fighter planes kept their distance. One exception: two prop-driven aircraft spotted by radar heading toward the cruiser U.S.S. Long Beach in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two Phantom F-4Bs streaked off the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk and downed them with air-to-air missiles. Though the skies were otherwise clear of enemy planes, U.S. pilots wondered how long they would stay that way. In the past two months North Viet Nam has built its air force from 70 to 110 MIGs. Curiously enough, North Vietnamese MIGs have also been spending...
...starts. Lunar Orbiter 2, which will begin surveying the lunar surface for suitable landing sites this week, was eased into a high orbit around the moon. Astronauts James Lovell Jr. and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. blasted off for the last of the dozen Gemini flights, and, despite a radar failure, performed with polished perfection the complex rendezvous and docking maneuvers that simulate those to be made on the Apollo moon mission...
Missing the Eclipse. After two successive 24-hour postponements caused by malfunctions in their Titan rocket's guidance system, Astronauts Lovell and Aldrin finally soared into orbit in Gemini 12. Using an optical tracking device in place of the faulty radar, they successfully rendezvoused and docked during their third orbit with an Agena target vehicle that had been fired aloft 99 minutes before Gemini...