America, the “civilian commercial airline” that At that moment, Captain Tom Moore of Air downwash of the chopper’s blades to make was actually a cover for CIA transport opera- America was delivering ammunition to the it stall and begin dropping. Woods climbed tions in Southeast Asia. station in his Huey helicopter. The scene was out onto the helicopter’s skid and, holding onto the helicopter with one hand while Thai mercenary hired by the CIA to guard the As the bullets and rockets began flying, a aabsurd: third burned two biplanes on the fleeingground. from “It looked the wrath like the Antonov’s cockpit with bullets. Worldof a crazed War I,”Kalashnikov-wielding he later admitted. man while operatingBy the hisend AK-47 of the with 20 theminute other, chase, sprayed the thesite rannearest out andAntonov, opened which fire withplummeted his AK-47. to Moore and his mechanic, Glenn Woods, second biplane had crashed while the third He emptied the 27 rounds of his clip into quickly gave chase in their unarmed Huey. To two Antonovs, startled by the unexpected their surprise, they discovered that the heli- the ground and burst into flames. The other fled to safety. This incident marked the only response from the ground, wheeled around aircraft, as well as the only air-to-air kill Artist’s rendition of the attack that above the closest plane, using the powerful scoredvictory byof the a CIA.helicopter over a fixed-wing brought down the second Antonov An-2. copter was faster than the planes! They flew and fled. The Birth Of Dov Levy Topgun The World’s Premier Fighter Pilot Training School When Soviet fighter pilots strikingly outperformed their American counterparts during the first phase of the Vietnam War, officials in the Pentagon were stunned. They took drastic measures to turn things around, leading to the creation of the world’s foremost training school for fighter pilots in the nearly forgotten techniques of aerial dogfighting. This is the story of Topgun, omething was clearly wrong. Heads Vietnam. They had gone in with the best- shook in the Pentagon as the top brass the fighter training school that grew from unlikely Stried to make sense of it. The situation a severely under-equipped enemy supplied beginnings into an organization that produces was so bad that President Lyndon Johnson withequipped aging forces Soviet and weaponry.were fighting It againstshould had just called off Operation Rolling Thun- have been a completely one-sided affair. some of the world’s best fighter aces. der, the four-year US air offensive in North This was especially true in the air, where 246 | ZMAN • October 2015 ZMAN • Tishrei 5776 | 247 15 minutes saw the most intense aerial it until the MiG finished his turn, calculat- combat of the entire war. Olds describes part ing the time so that, if I could keep on trouncedthe American their opponents.military fielded its newest of his experience: turning behind him, I would get on his andThey best didn’t.jet fighters. US pilots should have tail, with a deflection angle of 20 degrees, The operation was originally intended A third enemy plane appeared at 10 at a distance of 1,500 yards. That was to last just eight weeks. It would serve as o’clock, from the left to the right…. The exactly what happened. He never saw me. a tour-de-force, shocking the North Viet- first MiG zoomed away and I engaged Behind and lower than him, I could clearly namese with an overwhelming display of the afterburner to get in attack position. see his silhouette against the sun when I US military might and forcing them to the I reared up my aircraft in a 45 degree launched two Sidewinders. One of them bargaining table. angle, inside his turn. He was turning to impacted and tore apart his right wing. Things did not work out as planned. the left, so I pulled the stick and barrel- The expected swift and lopsided bombing A MiG-17 chases a Thunderchief over Vietnam. rolled to the right. In just 13 minutes of that engagement, campaign quickly escalated into a tenacious Thanks to this maneuver, I found battle. myself above him, half upside down. I held nearly half of the enemy squadron—without well. Operation Rolling Thunder cost the Olds and his fighters downed seven MiGs— The Air Force’s Best US Thenearly fighter 1,000 escortsaircraft suffered(many lost dearly to anti- as Showing: Operation Bolo tag of $900 million—three times the damage In the heat of Operation Rolling Thunder, aircraft fire and SAMs) and carried a price the US military faced a potentially disastrous Colonel Robin Olds, commander of the threat. The Air Force’s brand new, supposed- USAFit inflicted 8th Fighter on North Wing, Vietnam! came up with a solu- ly unstoppable F-105 Thunderchiefs—highly tion that helped make him a living legend. sophisticated, supersonic aircraft—were Already a storied World War II ace with 12 getting knocked out of the sky with ease by Luftwaffe kills to his name, he realized that largely obsolescent Soviet-built airplanes. Early on, the Air Force discovered that by the Thunderchiefs made it easy for the its highly vaunted supersonic bomber was enemythe highly to pickpredictable them out flight on patternsradar screens used vulnerable not only to the fast new MiG-21 from miles away. Olds arranged for a group Left: An F-105 Thunderchief is hit by a SAM. Right: Robin Olds in front of his F-4 Phantom, Scat 27, which he flew in Operation Bolo. His trademark moustache violated Air Force regulations and became part of the Olds legend. of Phantoms to simulate the formation, swoopfleet of downthe North suddenly Vietnamese on the bombers, Air Force who but the call signs and radios signals used by wereeven toat thea disadvantage aging MiG-17s. due The to MiGstheir wouldbomb Thunderchiefs.altitude, flight path, airspeed and even load. These planes carried out the bulk of the attack and bombing missions in the North right over the base of the 16-plane MiG-21 Vietnamese interior. After knocking a few squadron.On January Sure 2, 1967,enough, Olds the led hisMiGs fighter popped jets Thunderchiefs out of the sky and forcing the out of the clouds in a carefully coordinated others to jettison their bombs prematurely, attack meant to hit the Thunderchiefs simul- the MiGs would disappear again. taneously from front and rear… except that they weren’t Thunderchiefs. By the time the MiG pilots realized who they were facing, it escortMaddeningly, the Thunderchiefs America’s all thepowerful way to theirF-4 was too late for them to disengage. targetsPhantom because fighter ofjets the were danger unable from even radar- to guided surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs. encouraged the pilots under his command (While the Thunderchiefs were protected to sharpenAn avid their dogfighter, maneuvering Olds skills,had alwayssome- against the SAMs by radar jamming pods, thing that was not emphasized in the “new” high-tech Air Force that relied more on as well.) The Soviets were aware of this, sophisticated technology than on human andthere they weren’t readily enough took podson the to Thunderchiefsoutfit the F-4s instinct. That experience was put to good once their Phantom escorts were at a safe use now as the American pilots attacked Sequence showing a Sidewinder missile hitting a drone in 1957 View from an F-105D Thunderchief as it shoots down a North distance. their nimble enemies with gusto. The next during the missile’s development by the US Navy at China Lake. Vietnamese MiG-17 with Vulcan 20-mm shells, June 1967. 248 | ZMAN • October 2015 ZMAN • Tishrei 5776 | 249.