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MiG-21 of the North Vietnamese Air Force. (Lou Drendel)
When Winning is Everything
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In the 1978 edition of the Australian Aviation & Defence Review, we published the following spellbinding account of how air combat is fought and won. Lt Randy Cunningham and Lt Willie Driscoll were the US Navy’s only Vietnam aces; how they scored their kills makes fascinating reading. We reprint this article on the basis of ongoing requests from our many readers who do not have a copy of the 1978 AADR annual. Again we are proud to present.
Since the Korean campaign there has been little air combat in which sufficient regularity of missions has enabled individual pilots the opportunity to score sufficient ‘kills’ to attain the status of ace. Apart from the Middle East, where there are many Israeli aces (by US standards), even if they are not ceremoniously treated as such, the only conflict that has actually recorded continuous combat operations was in the skies over North Vietnam during the late sixties and early seventies.
Due to the ever-increasing development of technology the pilots engaging in air combat over Vietnam were flying and fighting in an environment never before experienced. A typical mission would involve numerous types of aircraft – flak and SAM suppression aircraft, Wild Weasels, top cover, low-level strike, and reconnaissance would all be represented by highly specialised aircraft types backed up by airborne EC-121 radar pickets and of course your friendly post-op tanker safely orbiting in less hostile airspace.
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