* The Phantom fought in many wars, but it is most strongly associated with the US war in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. This chapter describes the Phantom's service over Vietnam, as well as its service withA American forces after the war.
* The US military had just become comfortable with the Phantom when the time came to send it to war. US activities in the sputtering conflict in Vietnam had been growing steadily in the early 1960s, and finally went past the threshold to full involvement in the summer of 1964.
On 2 August 1964, the US Navy destroyer MADDOX got into a confrontation with North Vietnamese torpedo boats, which were then attacked by Navy F-8 Crusader fighters on combat patrol. Two days later, on 4 August, the MADDOX and another US Navy destroyer, the TURNER JOY, got into a night altercation with what they believed were more North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The facts of this second incident are murky, and it may have been nothing but nerves and shooting at shadows. Whatever the case, on 5 August major airstrikes were launched at the PT boat bases, and on 10 August the US Congress passed the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution", committing America to direct, large-scale intervention in the conflict.
The Navy began a campaign of limited bombing attacks against North Vietnam codenamed BARREL ROLL in December 1964 that continued into January 1965. Following attacks on US facilities in South Vietnam by Vietnamese Communist ("Viet Cong") guerrillas in early 1965, the US began to ramp up a bigger air campaign against the North, codenamed ROLLING THUNDER, that would continue off and on for several years.
In the meantime, the Phantom had apparently drawn first blood, but it was not an inspiring introduction to combat. On 9 April 1965, US Navy Phantoms mixed it up with Chinese MiG-17s over the Gulf of Tonkin. A Phantom may have shot down a MiG down with a Sparrow AAM, but the victorious Phantom was lost with both crewmen, apparently the victim of a "friendly fire" accident involving a Sparrow launched by their wingmates.
* As ROLLING THUNDER ramped up, both Navy and USAF Phantoms became involved, initially operating in the air superiority role to protect strike elements from MiGs. On 17 June 1965, Navy F-4Bs were flying a "barrier combat air patrol (BARCAP)", protecting a strike package that was attacked by four North Vietnamese MiG-17s. Once the Phantom pilots visually identified the MiGs, they took them on, firing Sparrows at them. Two Phantoms, one piloted by Commander Louis Page and the other by Lieutenant Jack Batson, each scored a kill. These were the first "People's Army of Vietnam North Air Force (PAVNAF)" MiGs shot down in the war.
The US Air Force couldn't let a Navy success like that go unchallenged, and on 10 July 1965, four F-4Cs accompanying a strike package of Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs, known as "Thuds", formed up as the tail end of the strike formation, in hopes of luring PAVNAF pilots into thinking they were bombers and worth attacking. The trick worked. Two MiG-17s came up to intercept, and the four Phantoms split off in pairs to meet them.
A short dogfight followed. One F-4C, piloted by Captain Kenneth Holcombe with WSO Captain Arthur C. Clarke, got onto the tail of one of the MiGs. Holcombe fired all four of his Sidewinders. Three missed, but the last detonated behind the MiG, which went up in a fireball a moment later. A second F-4C, piloted by Captain Thomas S. Roberts with WSO Captain Ronald Anderson, was then trying to get on the tail of the second MiG. Roberts fired three Sidewinders, the third exploding behind the MiG and sending it into a dive trailing white smoke. Roberts followed it down and fired his last Sidewinder, but had to give up the chase when he ran into intense anti-aircraft fire.
More MiGs came up to challenge the Americans, but the Phantoms were low on fuel and had to go home. In addition, although both Holcombe and Roberts still had their Sparrows, their radars had failed, rendering the missiles so much dead weight.
* These successes were encouraging and the Phantom would score more kills in the coming months, but the pilots were not very happy. The US was fighting a "limited war" in Vietnam, and neither the military nor the political leadership had much experience with the concept. The end result was micromanagement from the top.
US President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara saw the air strikes against North Vietnam as a political pressure tactic, designed to discourage the North Vietnamese from supporting the South Vietnamese Viet Cong and hopefully push a negotiated settlement of the conflict, while avoiding escalation of the war. To this end, the strikes were conducted in an intermittent and highly selective fashion, constrained by "rules of engagement (ROE)" that told the pilots what they could and could not attack. One Air Force pilot, Captain Bill Jenkins, later commented: "The rules of engagement were such that I sometimes felt I needed a lawyer in the back seat, instead of a WSO."
While the pilots were wrestling with ROEs issued from the rear, they were also trying to deal with North Vietnamese air defenses hitting them in the teeth. North Vietnam's air defense network was proving much more formidable than expected. The North Vietnamese were equipped with the best anti-aircraft weapons their Russian allies could provide, including light, medium, and heavy anti-aircraft artillery (AAA or "triple-A"), and in particular batteries of SA-2 "Guideline" SAMs.
Compared to the flak and SAMs, the PAVNAF and its MiGs were an annoyance. In fact, annoyance was their combat doctrine. Since most PAVNAF pilots were not highly trained, they were guided or "vectored" to formations of US aircraft by ground controllers; the MiGs would drop into the formations from high altitude, cannons blazing, and then zoom off, rarely hanging around to fight. If they could disrupt strike packages and force them to jettison their bombs, the MiGs had done their job.
The SAMs were the real threat. What made them even more frustrating was that, at first, the ROEs did not permit attacks on SAM sites, since Russian advisers were assumed to be working there. On 27 July 1965, USAF Captain Richard Keirn was flying over North Vietnam with a group of four F-4Cs on a "MiG combat air patrol (MIGCAP)", a free-ranging hunt for MiGs, when a Guideline popped up through the clouds and exploded. Keirn was shot down and became a prisoner of war (POW), while the other three Phantoms were damaged.
That was the war's first loss to a SAM. Both USAF and Navy brass asked their political superiors for permission to hit SAM sites, and were refused. On the night of 11:12 August, a Navy Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by an SA-2. The brass repeated their requests, and this time were granted permission. However, the North Vietnamese moved the SAMs around, and in two days of strikes none were confirmed destroyed, while five aircraft were lost.
The effectiveness of North Vietnamese air defenses would push the US to develop countermeasures as the war dragged on. RWRs were retrofitted to combat Phantoms, and eventually became production fit. Electronic countermeasures (ECM) pods were carried by Phantoms, on a stores pylon or in some cases fitted to a Sparrow launch recess under the forward fuselage. F-4s were initially fitted with the AN/ALR-101 series of ECM pods introduced in the late 1960s, followed by the AN/ALQ-119, which went into service before the end of the war. In the postwar period, they would carry the AN/ALQ-131.
BACK_TO_TOP* Although the F-4 was used mostly in the air superiority role by the Air Force and Navy at the time, it was of course an excellent attack aircraft, being rugged and able to carry a heavy warload, and the two services would use it more and more in this role as the war went on. Since Marine aviation is mostly dedicated to support of the "grunts" on the ground, USMC Phantoms were generally dedicated to the battlefield strike, or "mud-moving", role from the early days, attacking Communist forces in South Vietnam. They had little opportunity to chase MiGs.
Phantoms assigned to the strike role were armed with general-purpose "slick" bombs, napalm tanks, unguided rocket pods, and cluster munition dispensers or canisters. Although the Phantom could carry the Bullpup ASM, that weapon proved unreliable and ineffective and was not widely used. The F-4 could also carry chemical-agent dispensers and tactical nuclear free-fall bombs, but of course these have never been used by the Phantom in combat in Vietnam, or anywhere else.
As the recce RF-4Cs and RF-4Bs arrived in the battle theater, they too found themselves immersed in the war. Reconnaissance missions were often very hazardous. USAF RF-4Cs over North Vietnam not only faced heavy air defenses, but often had to conduct "post-strike intelligence" missions, photographing target areas after a strike, when the North Vietnamese were fully alert and expecting them. Marine RF-4Bs didn't face such an array of heavy weapons, but they had to get down low to get good intelligence, and the Viet Cong shot at them with everything they had. The fact that the recce Phantoms were always unarmed didn't reassure their pilots, either.
BACK_TO_TOP* The service of mud-moving and recce Phantoms in Vietnam tends to be obscure, since histories have focused on the campaigns against the North and the struggle for air superiority. By 1966 the PAVNAF was fielding Mach-2 MiG-21 interceptors, on paper much more of a match for the Phantom than the MiG-17. On 26 April 1966, USAF Major Paul Gillmore, with WSO Lieutenant William Smith, was protecting two Douglas EB-66 jamming aircraft on a raid over North Vietnam when they were "bounced" by a flight of MiG-21s that dove on them, firing, and then went back up to get altitude again. Gillmore got his Phantom behind one of the MiG-21s and closed to fire a Sidewinder at it. The pilot ejected, but Gillmore didn't notice and fired two more Sidewinders, one of which went up the MiG-21's tailpipe and turned it into a fireball. It was the first MiG-21 kill of the war.
In reality, although the MiG-21 might have seemed a bigger threat to the Phantom than the MiG-17, simple speed did not carry the day with the F-4 because it was much more powerful than the MiG-21. The Phantom's weakness was its limited maneuverability, and so in practice the MiG-17's agility made it the more dangerous opponent. On 21 September 1966, MiG-17s shot down a Navy F-4C, the first Phantom to be lost in air-to-air combat.
The US military was learning hard lessons in the skies over Vietnam. At the time of the Phantom's conception, dogfighting was thought to be an obsolete concept. Aircraft would blast each other out of the sky from long range with AAMs, or so the script went. The Phantom was designed as an interceptor, a strike aircraft, and a reconnaissance aircraft, none of which placed a premium on maneuverability.
Reality turned out to be more complicated. Although much faith had been placed in AAMs before the war, they proved much less effective in combat than anticipated. The most obvious part of the problem was that the designs themselves weren't as wizardly as imagined. For example, the heat-seeking sensor head on the early Sidewinder AAMs used in Vietnam was easily confounded by sources of ground heat, and even sunlight glinting off bodies of water. The Sidewinder's infrared seeker reported target locks to the pilot through a "growl" or "tone" in his earphones that grew stronger as the lock intensified.
One Air Force pilot, Major William Kirk, described the behavior of his Sidewinders during an engagement over North Vietnam in frustrated terms: "There I was, closing at a godawful rate with Sidewinders in an overhead attack. I'm pointing those Sidewinders at the ground, and they are just growling and sputtering like mad. Of course, all they are 'seeing' is the heat of the ground."
Another part of the problem was the poor reliability of the missiles, particularly the Sparrow AAM. Even if the Sparrow had been reliable, its advantage of long range was often negated by the fact that the ROEs demanded that pilots get a visual ID of a target before engaging it, in order to prevent "friendly fire" losses. That made sense, in that most of the aircraft flying over North Vietnam air were American, but it also undermined the fundamental rationale on which the Phantom had been originally designed.
Finally, pilots had simply not been trained very well in the use of these weapons. The AAMs had a definite engagement and performance envelope, outside of which they were ineffective. They weren't magical under the best of circumstances, and though they have been greatly improved since then, they still require that the pilot understand how best to use them. All that said, the Sidewinder missile still proved to be the most effective weapon in air-to-air combat over Southeast Asia. The day of the gun was fading.
It was, however, not over completely, and Phantom crews greatly regretted the lack of a built-in cannon. Such a weapon often proved vital in close-in situations, or when a pilot needed to "finish off" a damaged adversary, and there were cases when the bandit got away because of the lack of a gun. William Kirk commented: "I loved the F-4 and thought it was probably the answer to a fighter pilot's prayers -- with the exception of the lack of an internal gun. We missed that terribly."
That issue was starting to be addressed in 1966 with initial deliveries of Vulcan cannon pods to the war zone, but it wouldn't really be solved until the introduction of the F-4E. Even then, the Navy and USMC would still be stuck with the cannon pods. After Vietnam, new US fighter designs would be fitted with a built-in cannon from the outset -- but that was in the future.
The Phantom now had to engage in dogfighting for which it had not really been designed, but it was still hardly defenseless. Although not agile, by the standards of the time it had plenty of engine power, and that meant that a competent pilot could choose when to engage a MiG, and when to break off combat as well. Trying to get into a turning contest with a MiG-17 was foolish, all the more so because of the F-4's nasty spin characteristics; maneuvering slats wouldn't become available until the 1970s. Unfortunately, the belief that dogfighting was obsolete had also infected pilot training, and for the time being many Phantom pilots really didn't know how to make effective use of their machines in air-to-air combat.
* By the end of 1966, the futility of the ROLLING THUNDER campaign was becoming increasingly evident. The North Vietnamese seemed indifferent to the bombings; the US had lost hundreds of aircraft and aircrew; and many aircrews were discouraged and frustrated.
American pilots didn't lack for determination, however. The USAF 8th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW), nicknamed the "Wolfpack", had arrived at Ubon AFB in Thailand in September, under the command of Colonel Robin Olds and his executive officer, Daniel "Chappie" James. The two worked very closely together, and since James was black American, they were referred to as "Blackman & Robin".
The 44-year-old Olds was a charismatic, tough, competent leader who had combat experience going back to 1944, flying North American P-51 Mustangs against Hitler's Luftwaffe. When of the Wolfpack's pilots, Captain John Stone, came up with a plan to allow the 8th TFW to pull a trick on the MiGs, Olds was willing to listen. Stone's suggestion was simple: fly formations of Phantoms fitted for air combat just as if they were a strike package of F-105s, and then take on the MiGs when they came up to attack. Olds gave the OK for Stone and other pilots to begin planning the mission, which was codenamed Operation BOLO.
BOLO took place on 2 January 1967. 56 F-4Cs participated, organized in two groups with seven flights of four aircraft each, one group from the 8th TFW and the other from the 366th TFW. The effort also involved 24 F-105D Wild Weasels for defense suppression; four EB-66 jamming aircraft; and a Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star radar warning aircraft, a military version of the Lockheed Constellation airliner fitted with a radome and known to pilots in theater as "College Eye" and later "Disco" for its callsign. Another hundred aircraft were to perform diversionary strikes.
The 28 Phantoms from the 8th TFW departed first, with 12 aircraft in a first wave that took off at about 1225 local time, followed by 14 aircraft about a half-hour later. The Phantoms were fitted with the ECM pods normally carried by F-105s. The flights in the operation were named after automobile types. The first wave of 12 Phantoms was divided into three flights, with Robin Olds commanding the OLDS flight, Chappie James commanding the FORD flight, and John Stone commanding the RAMBLER flight.
They flew towards Hanoi as if on a strike, and at about 1500 an EC-121 notified them that MiGs had scrambled and were coming up to meet them. The enemy had snapped at the bait. There was cloud cover beneath the Phantoms, but they picked up the MiGs on their own radar, and turned around to jump them as they emerged from the cloudtops. A wild fight followed, with aircraft darting in and out of the clouds. Olds fired two Sparrows and a Sidewinder at a MiG that disappeared into a cloud, but as Olds curved over in a barrel roll he saw another MiG emerge. Olds thought the North Vietnamese pilot hadn't seen him, so he delayed coming out of his roll to drop right down on the tail of the MiG, and then fired two Sidewinders. The first blew the MiG's wing off, a clear kill.
In the meantime, Old's wingman, Lieutenant Ralph Wetterman, got a solid radar lock on a MiG and fired two Sparrows. The Sparrow homed in on reflections off a target from the radar of the launch aircraft, meaning that the launch aircraft had to maintain the lock, but Wetterman was able to keep the radar beam on the target, and one of the Sparrows sent the MiG up in a fireball. A third member of OLDS flight, Captain Walter Radecker, also destroyed a MiG with a Sidewinder.
In the meantime, Chappie James' FORD flight was having it out with the MiGs as well. His four Phantoms fired a total of four Sidewinders and two Sparrows; a Sidewinder launched by Captain Everett T. Rasberry sent one of the MiGs tumbling to the ground. By this time, OLDS and FORD flight were beginning to run low on fuel and had to leave the target area.
RAMBLER flight had lagged behind in the flight into the target area, and took up where OLDS and FORD left off. Stone saw two MiGs below him and launched two Sparrows, scoring a hit on one of the MiGs and taking it down. As that happened, two more MiGs made a head-on attack against Stone and his wingman, Lieutenant Lawrence Glynn, firing cannons at the Phantoms and then passing between them. Stone and Glynn engaged afterburner and pulled up and over to get on the tail of the MiGs. Glynn fired two Sparrows, hitting one of the MiGs, with the pilot ejecting -- another clear kill.
Another member of RAMBLER flight, Major Phillip Combies, got a radar lock on a MiG below him and fired two Sparrows, both of which went wide. Frustrated, Combies fired all four of his Sidewinders, two of them striking the MiG's tail. The Phantoms were jumped by more MiGs and Combies did not see what happened to his target after that, but as the Phantoms exited the target area the Americans spotted a parachute, indicating a kill.
* The MiGs had gone back to ground by the time the second wave of Phantoms arrived, but overall the 8th TFW had reason to be pleased with themselves. They had fired 28 missiles to destroy seven MiGs and a "probable", with no loss to themselves. Olds would end the war with four kills of his own.
BOLO was encouraging to the USAF and one of the great air combat stories of the Vietnam War, but it made little or no difference in the course of the conflict. The PAVNAF avoided fights for a while, and when they did start to engage in combat again, their tactics were much more cautious. Unfortunately, the wastage of American aircraft to AAA and SAMs continued.
Phantoms scored more kills, but 1967 proved to be a very tough year, with high losses. On the plus side, the ROEs were modified to allow attacks on certain North Vietnamese airfields, which had previously been off-limits. Strikes were made on the airfields beginning in April 1967. That had the contrary effect of forcing more air combat, since the PAVNAF realized that their aircraft were less vulnerable in the air than sitting on the ground.
* By that time, , Air Force Phantoms were generally carrying the SUU-16/A 20-millimeter cannon pod. On 14 May 1967, USAF Phantoms escorting a strike package of F-105s mixed it up with PAVNAF MiG-17s, and the cannons scored two kills. Major James Hargrove had expended all his missiles and then got the drop on a MiG, moving in to close range and slamming 20 millimeter rounds into it until it exploded. Captain James Craig fired two Sparrows at a MiG and missed, but finished the job with his cannon.
On 20 May, Colonel Robert E. Titus made excellent use of all of the Phantom's armament, shooting down three MiG-21s -- one with a Sparrow, one with a Sidewinder, and one with the cannon.
William Kirk, nearing the end of his Vietnam tour, did get his hands on a cannon pod before he left. On 21 October 1967, he was on a MIGCAP over North Vietnam, protecting a strike package of F-105s. An EC-121 Warning Star and a Navy cruiser were watching the airspace over North Vietnam on radar; they warned Kirk that bogeys were approaching. The Phantoms turned to meet the attackers, Kirk recalling: "As I rolled out of this turn, I met a MiG-21 head-on. It was highly polished -- a beautiful little airplane -- and as we passed within twenty yards of each other I thought: What a shame to have to shoot at him."
He had to protect the F-105s, however, and so climbed up to reverse his course and get on the MiG's tail. To his surprise, he found that the MiG was doing the same thing. The PAVNAF rarely liked to dogfight, and in fact the MiG pilot would have been better off to have gone on to disrupt the formation of Thunderchiefs. The Thuds were his priority target, and the MiG-21 was fast enough to make pursuit difficult.
The two aircraft wheeled through two vertical loops, the Phantom held back by its external fuel tanks. Kirk finally managed to discard his tanks, which confused the MiG pilot and allowed Kirk to get on his tail. Kirk's WSO fired a Sparrow, but it exploded short. Kirk fumbled for the switches to arm his cannon pod: "It couldn't have taken more than a couple of seconds, but when I looked up, I had a windscreen full of MiG-21! He was in a hard left turn and the gunsight pipper was right in the middle of his back. I squeezed the trigger and the 20-mm Gatling sawed a hole right through him between the wing roots. He bailed out immediately."
* The bombing rose to a high intensity during the summer of 1967, and many MiGs were shot down or destroyed on the ground -- but the North Vietnamese showed no signs of weakening, and were in fact intensifying their war in South Vietnam. Back in the US, the public was increasingly wondering what their country was doing in Southeast Asia.
The air war, as implemented in the ROLLING THUNDER campaign, was not working. Robert McNamara became disillusioned with the war and was on questionable terms with his boss, President Johnson. In November 1967 McNamara resigned, to become President of the World Bank. For the moment, however, ROLLING THUNDER continued, and American aircrews continued to gripe about the ROEs.
Then, in early 1968, the war took an abrupt turn for the worse as far as the Americans were concerned. The Buddhist New Year's, Tet, takes place at the end of January, and on 30 January 1968 North Vietnamese troops launched simultaneous attacks on provincial capitals all through South Vietnam, assisted by uprisings all over the country. After weeks of bitter fighting, the Tet Offensive was crushed. Tactically speaking, the enemy had lost. The North Vietnamese had suffered heavily, the Viet Cong had been almost wiped out -- though to North Vietnam, the elimination of their overly independent Communist comrades in the south was not entirely unwelcome.
However, in hindsight, the US had lost the war. The Communists did not have to win battles, all they had to do was to survive and keep on fighting until the Americans decided they were sick of the fighting. The US military's story that progress was being made in winning the war no longer seemed convincing to many of the folks back home. On 31 March, Lyndon Johnson, knowing how low his public approval ratings were, announced that he would not seek re-election, and the next day the ROLLING THUNDER strikes were halted for a month. They were resumed off and on in a declining fashion until they were given up completely on 1 October. They were officially ended on 1 November, with presidential elections coming up.
Richard Nixon won the election, partly on promises that he would disengage America from the quagmire in Southeast Asia. There would be little air activity over North Vietnam for three years.
BACK_TO_TOP* ROLLING THUNDER, in hindsight, had accomplished very little other than the loss of hundreds of aircraft, with over a thousand aircrew killed or missing in action. The lack of success extended to aerial engagements. The kill ratio for both the Air Force and the Navy versus the MiGs was about 3:1, in favor of the Americans, but still regarded as unacceptable. (Russian accounts of the air war hotly dispute even that ratio.)
The low kill ratio was partly due to the "Mickey Mouse" ROEs, but there wasn't much the military could do about them directly, and plenty else was wrong. The Navy assigned an experienced fighter pilot, Captain Frank Ault, to produce a report on what could be done to make US Navy fighters more effective in air combat. Ault released him report in early 1969. His conclusions focused on the deterioration of dogfighting skills due to training doctrines that were based on the concept of long-range shootouts with AAMs. In response, in March 1969 the Navy began the first "Post-Graduate Course in Fighter Weapons, Tactics, & Doctrine" at the Miramar Naval Air Station in California to provide Navy fighter pilots with intensive training in dogfighting.
The course became known as TOP GUN. Flight exercises involved dogfights with "dissimilar" aircraft that had similar performance to MiGs. An unladen A-4 Skyhawk, for example, flew very much like a MiG-17. The Air Force had been running a fighter training school at Nellis AFB in the state of Nevada for several years, and decided to enhance their own course as well, but the Air Force did not emphasize combat with dissimilar aircraft at first, and their course suffered accordingly.
* During this quiet time, improved weapons were acquired. The Air Force got their F-4Es, with built-in cannon, and the Navy got their new F-4Js, which could carry the Hughes Mark 4 cannon pod. New and much more effective jammer pods were introduced.
The Phantom also helped pioneer the operational use of "smart" munitions. The US Navy had introduced the Walleye "electro-optic glide bomb (EOGB)" into combat in 1967. It was originally carried by Navy A-4 Skyhawks fitted with radio-link gear to control the weapon, and eventually was carried by Phantoms as well. In 1972, the USAF introduced their own EOGB, the Rockwell "Homing Bomb System (HOBOS)", as well as the first operational "laser guided bomb (LGB)", the Texas Instruments "Paveway I" series. Phantoms carried both weapons. Both proved accurate, though the HOBOS was not entirely reliable in combat and was more expensive than the Paveway bombs.
The Phantom needed to carry a laser "target designator" to shine a laser spot on a target for the LGB to home in on. Initially, Phantoms were fitted with a laser mounted to the frame of the rear canopy and pointed by the back-seater. That improvisation was quickly replaced by the large banana-shaped "Pave Knife" pod, which provided a moving turret with a TV camera boresighted to a laser beam. The Pave Knife pod was used in combat against North Vietnam during the final air offensives in 1972.
One of the more unusual payloads carried by Phantoms were sensor systems designed to detect the passage of North Vietnamese trucks along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main supply line from North to South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia. These sensors looked like big spikes, burying themselves in the ground on impact, leaving their antenna sticking up out of the ground, camouflaged as a bamboo tree. The effort against the Trail, codenamed IGLOO WHITE, still proved a failure.
BACK_TO_TOP* The quiet spell began to end in early 1971. On 19 January of that year, a Navy RA-5C was performing a reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam, with a flight of Navy F-4Js assigned to perform air-defense suppression. The flight was led by Lieutenant Randall Cunningham, better known as "Randy" or "Duke", with RIO Lieutenant William Patrick "Willie" Driscoll. They were both Top Gun graduates.
The Phantoms dodged a number of SAMs, and then ran into MiG-21s. Cunningham saw two MiG-21s moving fast below him and dived on them. Driscoll got a Sparrow lock, but Cunningham decided to close in and use a Sidewinder. He fired; the PAVNAF pilot broke right and shook off the missile. Cunningham's TOP GUN training told him not to get into a turning contest with a MiG, so he went down low and fast to get out of that game and seek a better opportunity. He got it; though the second MiG-21 flew out of the fight, the first came out of his turn, the pilot failing to see the Phantom below him. The MiG banked left and Cunningham popped up, firing a Sidewinder on a nice clear target outlined against the sky. The missile scored a direct hit on the MiG, blowing off its tail. It was the first Navy air combat victory in almost two years.
That was just a warmup. The air war revived in earnest in the spring of 1972. On 30 March, the North Vietnamese Army came across the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam in force, supported by armor and artillery. Although President Nixon had pushed to "Vietnamize" the conflict, training and equipping the South Vietnamese to conduct the ground war, the South Vietnamese were still dependent on American air power.
On 15 April, President Nixon ordered that air strikes against the North be resumed under Operation FREEDOM TRAIN. Most of the ROEs were lifted. Although Boeing B-52s had not been used in ROLLING THUNDER because losing one of the big bombers would have been too embarrassing, they were now performing terrifying carpet-bombing attacks against North Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese had improved their air defenses during the previous few years, but new American electronic countermeasures paid off, helping to nullify the SAM threat. Improved fighter weapons and tactics paid off as well, with the Air Force shooting down three MiGs on 16 April and the Navy achieving the same score on 6 May.
On 8 May, Navy A-6 Intruders mined Haiphong Harbor. Duke Cunningham and Willie Driscoll were flying escort, when they were attacked by a MiG-17 that fired a heatseeking AAM at them and their wingmate. The Phantoms banked and shook the missile. Cunningham turned on the MiG and took a shot at him with a Sidewinder. The firing position was far from optimum, but the missile struck home.
Cunningham and Driscoll didn't have much time to enjoy this victory, since another MiG-17 immediately jumped them. Cunningham turned wildly to escape, damaging his aircraft in the process, only to look up and see the MiG-17 just above him. There was no out-turning a MiG-17, but he could out-run it. He ducked into a cloud and engaged afterburner to give the MiG the slip. Cunningham and Driscoll counted themselves lucky to have got away.
* On 10 May 1972, the bombing campaign took another step up with concentrated strikes against North Vietnam's rail infrastructure, with the offensive now renamed LINEBACKER. The Air Force's main target that day was the Paul Doumer Bridge, a heavy concrete structure that had resisted all attacks during Rolling Thunder. On 10 May, however, Phantoms armed with laser-guided and conventional bombs rendered it unusable. They would come back the next day and finish the job.
That was later. MiGs had come up to oppose the initial strike, and the Air Force Phantoms responded. One of the things that had been improved since ROLLING THUNDER was IFF procedures, and Phantoms were now equipped with receivers developed under the COMBAT TREE program that could get a positive ID on a MiG from its IFF system. There was no longer any requirement for a visual identification before engaging an enemy.
A flight of F-4s under Captain Robert Lodge took on the MiGs. Lodge fired two Sparrows from long range, missing with one but scoring a kill with the second. The Sparrow was finally being used as designed. Two of the other pilots in the flight, Lieutenant John Markle and Captain Richard S. "Steve" Ritchie, also scored kills with Sparrows. Unfortunately, Lodge became preoccupied with a new target and failed to respond to warnings that two MiG-19s were on his tail; the MiGs shot his Phantom full of holes. Lodge was killed, though WSO Captain Roger Locher ejected, evading capture for 23 days before being picked up by a rescue helicopter.
* The Navy was having adventures of their own that day. Cunningham and Driscoll were part of a strike package hitting a railyard alongside Haiphong Harbor. As they were pulling out of their bomb run, one of the other Phantoms blew up in a fireball, a victim of ground fire, just as Driscoll reported a MiG-17 coming up on their own tail. Four more MiG-17s joined the first, and Cunningham found himself in a wild mixup. He managed to use the Phantom's superior speed and power to get on the tail of one of the MiGs -- so close that he was too near to fire a Sidewinder, wishing he had a cannon pod.
However, the MiG pilot panicked, and instead of trying to out-turn the Phantom -- which he could have done easily -- he engaged afterburner and tried to run away. That would have been a losing game with the Phantom in general, and all the PAVNAF pilot did was get enough space to allow Cunningham to put a Sidewinder up the MiG's tailpipe, blasting it out of the sky.
Cunningham applied power and got altitude, to look down on a scene full of MiGs and Phantoms. One of the Phantoms broke out of the fight with several MiGs in pursuit. Cunningham dived down on the four aircraft and got a Sidewinder lock, but he couldn't safely launch since the other Phantom was in the line of fire. Cunningham called out: "Showtime, break right, break right!" The pilot of the second Phantom, distracted, didn't respond. Cunningham tried again: "Showtime, reverse starboard!" Nothing happened.
Cunningham finally shouted: "IF YOU DON'T, YOU'RE DEAD!" The second Phantom then rolled out of the line of fire, and then Cunningham launched, scoring a hit that tore apart the MiG. The North Vietnamese pilot somehow managed to bail out or was thrown clear.
Cunningham circled back around out of the fight. Driscoll observed a MiG-17 on their tail, but Cunningham easily shook him. They didn't see anything but MiGs in the sky and decided to head back for their home, the carrier USS CONSTELLATION.
On the way back out, they encountered a MiG-17 approaching from ahead. Cunningham turned into the attack, abruptly jinking out of the way and going vertical when the MiG pilot started firing. Cunningham thought that would be the end of it, given the usual "hit & run" tactics of the enemy, but the PAVNAF pilot was there to fight, pulling up vertically so the two aircraft were canopy-to-canopy. The MiG-17 didn't have the power to keep up in this game, but that wasn't good news for the Navy men; it meant that the Phantom would soon climb into the line of fire of the MiG's hard-hitting cannons. Cunningham dropped out of the climb and dove just as the MiG opened fire again.
The two fighters separated and came back at each other again, performing two up-and-down maneuvers, trying to get on each other's tail. The MiG stayed with the Phantom every step of the way. Cunningham thought: "He's gonna get lucky one of these times."
Then Cunningham cut power and extended his airbrakes, forcing the MiG to overshoot. The MiG pilot went into a steep dive to escape and Cunningham followed. The range was long and Sidewinders could be easily confounded by ground heat sources on a downward shot, but Cunningham launched anyway. Somewhat to his surprise, the missile went home and the MiG exploded.
Cunningham and Driscoll were not quite through with the excitement for the day. Near the coast, an SA-2 SAM popped up near them and exploded, spattering shrapnel into their Phantom and badly damaging it. They made it well out to sea, called ahead to the CONSTELLATION for a rescue helicopter, and then ejected. They were picked up about 20 minutes later, being brought back to a wild celebration. Not only had they shot down three MiGs in a single sortie, but Cunningham and Driscoll, who were given equal credit for kills, were now the Navy's first aces of the Vietnam War.
The identity of the Vietnamese pilot remains something of a mystery. The scuttlebutt went around that he was the mysterious "Colonel Tomb", with 13 kills. However, Colonel Tomb may have been something of an "urban legend" among US fighter jocks; while the North Vietnamese often played up their aces in propaganda broadcasts, they said little or nothing about Tomb. Cunningham would become a Top Gun instructor after the war, then move on to lead the Navy's "aggressor squadron", which provided Navy pilots in training to fight Soviet aircraft, using A-4 Skyhawks to simulate MiG-17s and Northrop F-5s to simulate MiG-21s.
10 May 1972 had been an exciting day. The Air Force and Navy had shot down 11 MiGs. They had lost two Phantoms in air combat, a third to AAA, and a fourth to a SAM. Most of the targets on the strike list had been destroyed, and those that hadn't were picked off in the following days. On 13 May, Air Force Phantoms with LGBs dropped the Than Hoa Bridge, which like the Paul Doumer Bridge had resisted all attacks during Rolling Thunder.
* The Air Force of course had to get an ace of their own, and they weren't far behind the Navy. On 31 May 1972, Steve Ritchie was leading a flight of Phantoms on a MIGCAP, and the F-4s were jumped by MiG-21s. Ritchie got behind one of the MiGs and fired four Sparrows, the last one scoring a kill.
A little over a month later, on 8 July 1972, Ritchie was leading another MIGCAP near Hanoi when an EC-121 Warning Star warned them that MiGs were approaching. The American and North Vietnamese fighters closed the range. Ritchie passed close by one of the MiGs, zipping by too fast to allow either adversary to fire, then took his Phantom down low. Ritchie figured that there was a second MiG following the first, and sure enough one showed up seconds later. The PAVNAF pilot didn't see the camouflaged Phantom against the jungle below; Ritchie rolled up and around, got a radar lock, and fired two Sparrows. The first missile struck and destroyed the MiG, while the second passed through the wreckage as it fell out of the sky.
In the meantime, the first MiG-21 had got on the tail of another Phantom, and Ritchie engaged afterburner and pursued. He closed and got a Sparrow lock. The MiG tried to escape with a high-gee turn. Ritchie launched, and though the Sparrow was at the limit of its maneuvering envelope, it still struck home.
On 28 August 1972, Ritchie dropped another MiG. He was now the first Air Force ace of the Vietnam War. His WSO, Captain Charles Debellevue, was not an ace because he'd only been in the back seat for four of the kills. However, Debellevue would be in the back seat with another pilot for two more kills, making him the highest-scoring ace of the Vietnam War. Another WSO, Captain Jeff Feinstein, would also become an ace, with five kills.
Even the Marines, who didn't have the opportunity to do much dogfighting during the war, got into the act during LINEBACKER. On 11 September 1972, USMC Major Thomas "Bear" Lasseter and RIO Captain John D. Cummings shot down a MiG-21, the only Marine air-to-air kill of the conflict.
Of course, the F-4 continued to perform air strikes, helping to break the North Vietnamese ground offensive. To that end, one USAF F-4E was configured as a close-support "gunship", carrying two SUU-23/A Vulcan cannon pods along with its built-in cannon, plus four Rockeye cluster munitions -- obtained from the Navy, the Rockeye not being a normal Air Force store. This single F-4E, which was given the callsign "Chico", performed ordinary strikes during the day, being converted to a gunship each evening for night attacks, operating in that role in May and June.
The "Chico" Phantom proved devastatingly effective, the twin Vulcan cannons being able to kick North Vietnamese tanks over. It doesn't appear any other F-4s were used in this way, which is a bit puzzling; presumably, "Chico" was an improvisation to help out when more conventional close-support assets were overstretched. It acquired a bit of fame, with model kits of "Chico the Gunfighter" later sold, featuring its markings and stores loadout.
* LINEBACKER still did not persuade the North Vietnamese to be more flexible in their negotiations -- even though by that time, the US was really only seeking a way out of the war. On 13 December 1972, the North Vietnamese diplomatic delegation walked out of the peace talks in Paris.
President Nixon, on the logical assumption that if the North Vietnamese didn't want to talk then they wanted war, decided to give it to them in aces. On 15 December, he began LINEBACKER II, an intensive bombing campaign spearheaded by B-52s bombing with minimal restrictions. The B-52s suffered heavily, losing 15 of their number to SAMs. B-52 crews complained about tactics to their brass, and the tactics were revised, with the attacks conducted on a saturation basis that gave the North Vietnamese no relief, exhausting air-defense crews and running them out of SAMs and AAA ammunition.
On 29 December 1972, the North Vietnamese delegation returned to the negotiating table. The raids were cut back, but continued until 15 January 1973, when the North Vietnamese finally agreed to terms. A cease-fire was signed on 23 January 1973, and the Air Force began airlifting POWs out of Hanoi on 18 March 1973.
LINEBACKER II was regarded as a successful operation, though all it really did was clear the way for an American exit from Vietnam. Many strategists think that had ROLLING THUNDER been conducted like LINEBACKER II, things might have turned out very differently in Vietnam. Whatever the case, the end of the Vietnam War closed a tough chapter in the history of American air power. Thousands of aircraft were lost, with even more aircrew killed or missing in action. The Phantom was in the thick of the action from first to last, and suffered accordingly.
BACK_TO_TOP* During the last years of the war, the Phantom did stints with both the US Navy "Blue Angels" and USAF "Thunderbirds" aerial demonstration teams. Although the Phantom wasn't a very aerobatic aircraft, its brute size, power, and sheer screaming noise made it quite a crowd-pleaser for public performances.
Both teams operated the Phantom from 1969 to 1974. The Blue Angels flew stock F-4Js that remained combat-capable. The Thunderbirds flew F-4Es that had been stripped of almost all combat gear on the production line, and then ballasted appropriately to ensure balance. However, the Phantom was too expensive to operate for the flight demonstration role, and apparently there were a number of accidents. In 1974, both teams switched to more practical aircraft, the Blue Angels moving to the A-4 Skyhawk and the Thunderbirds moving to the Northrop T-38 Talon trainer. Ironically, the Blue Angels had originally considered the Skyhawk, but adopted the Phantom simply because every Skyhawk rolling off the production line was being sent off to Vietnam at the time.
* The Phantom was still in its prime at the end of the Vietnam War, with many more years of service in it. As mentioned, many of the Phantoms flying with the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps were upgraded in the 1970s, resulting in the F-4N, the F-4S, and notably the USAF F-4G Wild Weasel II. Phantoms were also provided with smaller, incremental upgrades, and fitted with new tools and weapons:
The last act in combat for US Phantoms was the Gulf War in 1991, when Air Force F-4G Wild Weasels hit Iraqi radar sites with HARMs and other weapons, and the service's RF-4Cs conducted extensive tactical reconnaissance missions. In that same year, the Navy and Marines retired the last of their F-4s.
The USAF RF-4Cs were phased out in 1995, and the F-4Gs followed a year later. The retirement of the F-4G was with regrets, since the Air Force did not have a true replacement for it in the defense-suppression role. The QF-4 target, as noted, did persist until early 2017.
A number of Phantoms have been used by US aerospace companies as chase planes, and at least one is in civilian hands as an airshow "warbird". Some number of F-4s remain in service with other air arms around the world, though the type is clearly in its final days.
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