Off at the Elbow

Unlike World War II and Korea, when enemy airmen aggressively contested its control of the skies, the U.S. has found the air over North Viet Nam relatively empty of challenge. Most of the American planes shot down have fallen to antiaircraft fire and SAM missiles. Indeed, until last week the entire 23 months of the air war had produced only 37 air-to-air "kills"--27 of them against the enemy. Uninterested in dogfighting, the North Vietnamese prefer to harass U.S. fighter-bombers on their runs over the North, attempting by feints, forays and cannon fire to make the Americans jettison their bombloads short of target or burn extra fuel in evasive maneuvers. Last week the U.S. set an aerial ambush to end that harassment--and in the process chopped Ho Chi Minh's air arm off at the elbow. Final tally: destruction of nine MIGs, representing nearly half of the North's best aircraft and one-tenth of its total air strength.

Swirling Battle. The ambush was classic in its simplicity. Out of Thailand swept 14 flights of Air Force Phantoms, heading toward "MIG Valley," the industrial envelope 30 miles northwest of Hanoi. American intelligence officers had 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.

"It was a swirling battle that covered a huge part of the sky," said Air Force Colonel Robin Olds, 44, who led the fighter sweep. The MIG-21s pressed in aggressively on the first three flights of Phantoms, hoping to use their 30-mm. cannon inside the deadly jab range of the American Sidewinder and Sparrow air-to-air missiles. Olds, an All-American football player in his West Point days and 24 1/2-kill ace during World War II, picked off one MIG by flipping his Phantom on its back and then diving in behind the enemy plane to send a Sidewinder straight up the MIG's tailpipe.

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.

Aging Aviary. The trap play worked again later in the week when Phantoms knocked down two more MIG-21s over the same area. That brought the American kill ratio in aerial combat to nearly 4-1, and raised the question of whether North Viet Nam's air force could afford many further tangles. Clearly, Ho's air strength is inadequate to counter the American armada alone. Pentagon intelligence shows that Hanoi possesses at most 101 aircraft, controlled, flown and maintained by a scant 3,500 officers and men. Moreover, it is an aging aviary: before last week's kills, only 20 to 25 of the planes were modern, high-performance MIG-21s. Still on the ground are some 80 slower, less maneuverable MIG-15s and 17s, which Hanoi is loath to commit to combat.

For the past two months, though, the North has been building its air force--slowly in numbers, more swiftly in terms of training. "They're getting better," says U.S. Air Force Lieut. Colonel Robert E. Wayne, "and they are far more aggressive than before." Part of that aggressiveness is due to the presence of some 50 North Korean jet pilots who arrived in North Viet Nam in December to train Hanoi's aviators. Peking and Moscow almost certainly have advisers in the North, but so far at least they have not flown in combat against the U.S.

Plump Targets. The MIGs have used several bases since they first scrambled to challenge the U.S. in the air. Over the past 21 months, they have been spotted at Kep (37 miles northeast of Hanoi), Cat Bi (five miles southeast of Haiphong), and Gia Lam (just across the Red River from downtown Hanoi). Lately, most of the MIGs are flying from Phuc Yen, a fully equipped jet strip with a 10,000-ft. runway some 15 miles northwest of Hanoi. The airfields themselves are plump targets, and in any earlier air war they would have been among the first sites to be hit.

Many American airmen feel frustrated at leaving Phuc Yen unscathed, would like to take out the MIGs on the hardstands. But the top command would rather have them where they are, and know they are there, than bomb the fields and force the escapers to take refuge in Red China, from which they could continue to operate over North Viet Nam. That would force the U.S. to decide whether to follow them over the border. After all, says Air Force Secretary Harold Brown, "we're doing pretty well without attacking the airfields." Last week's nine kills are clear proof of that.

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