Paul Michael Brown wrote:

Marshall Michel's "Clashes" covers the MiG engagements, but is flawed
in that he doesn't name participants and only uses call-sign for
engagements. If you are familiar, you can discern Olds, Richie,
Cunningham, Madden and others.

Even worse, Michel admits that "not all of the call signs used . . . in
the engagement descriptions are the ones actually used on the missions . .
. . a significant number, however, are generic ones." (Footnote on p. 8.)
I found this distracting and unsat. But as Mr. Rasimus notes if you are a
student of the SEA air war you can figure out who was flying in some of
the better known engagements.

snip

I'd like to point that they weren't, strictly speaking, generic callsigns.
Where Marshall didn't use the actual callsigns, it was because he was working
from Red Baron event reports as opposed to other sources. Red Baron doesn't
use the actual callsigns; rather it assigns callsigns by type of mission, to
de-personalize the combats. So, all MiGCAP/escort flights are given names of
U.S. cities (Ocala, Boulder, Tucson, etc.), strike flights receive metal
element or alloy callsigns (Copper, Iron, Bronze, etc.) and all support
flights, e.g. chaffers, weasels and H/K, jammers etc., receive fish names
(Tuna, Trout, Marlin etc.) These callsigns are used once only in Red Baron,
so there's no duplication. Here's some typical Red Baron event listings
(picked out from the Red Baron III event summary) of otherwise well-known
combats:

"20. 10 May 1972/1055H
Tahoe: Four F-4Ds on MiGCAP, 01/03 COMBAT TREE equipped, engaged four MiG-21s
and destroyed three. While maneuvering on the fourth, Lead was downed by two
MiG-19s."

"27. 10 May 1972/1408H
Fallon: When two flak-suppression F-4Js engaged MiGs in the target area, Lead
bagged three -17s. On egress Lead was downed by a SAM."

Anyone familiar with the subject matter can immediately identify Oyster flight
(Lodge/Locher in 01, Ritchie/DeBellevue in 03, etc.) for "Tahoe" flight in
event 20, and "Cunningham/Driscoll in Showtime 100 with Grant/Sullivan on
their wing in Showtime ??", for "Fallon" flight in event 27.

Here's a slightly more obscure one:

"35. 20 May 1972/1300H
Indy: Four F-4Ds on MiGCAP were attacked by two MiG-21s. In a hard break, 02
went out of control and crashed."

Ritchie was in 01 (I don't know the actual flight callsign); this was his
wingman John Markle (Jim Williams was his WSO). Markle had also claimed a
kill on 10 May as part of Oyster flight.

Guy