On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:59:45 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 08:15:44 -0800, Mary Shafer
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 22:36:54 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Chad Irby
writes

Mary adds some info and makes some big errors:

They were back at base. Bomber and attack and SEAD F-4Es only have
guns to defend themselves.

Absolutely incorrect! All, repeat ALL F-4s always carried Sparrows. We
didn't always have room for AIM-9s, but I never saw a combat sortie
flown by an F-4 when I was there without Sparrows.

I have spent the time since you posted this trying to figure out where
I got the idea that they left the Sparrows at home when they went out
with bombs. I'd have sworn I read it somewhere, but I can't find it
now. Either it was a) another airplane, b) a total misunderstanding,
or c) a work of fiction I can't find now.

Whatever. As you say, it's not true.

Fewer than half the USAF F-4 were fighters with AAM. Since the
non-fighter F-4s would have been carrying their ordnance during the
inbound half of the flight and only been able to get into the fur ball
outgoing, I'd say guns were under-represented in kills. This probably
proves that the escort F-4s had more chances at MiGs than the
home-going non-fighters.

The reason that A/A loaded F-4s got more kills is more subtle. It has
to do with the politics of "ace-building" between the USN and USAF and
the mis-guided over-classification of TEABALL. See Michel's Clashes or
Thompson's "To Hanoi and Back".

I read both those and remembered the discussion just well enough to
know that I couldn't produce a coherent version of it here, so I just
skipped it entirely. I remember Chuck de Bellevue (is that right? I
have a terrible memory for names) talking about the ace-building
competition and one of the USN guys grousing about it.

I still think that having bombing a target as one's mission on a
sortie will incline the person to press on toward the target, rather
than jettisoning the bombs to close on an enemy airplane. After all,
that's letting the enemy pilot succeed in keeping you from bombing
your target. It's not as spectacular as blowing your airplane out of
the sky, but it's just as effective, at least for that one mission.
Of course, it wouldn't be just F-4s. The F-105s, for example, would
be in the same situation.

Escorts didn't even get many shots as they were often used to provide
blocking or herding of MiGs to direct them to a kill zone where the
555th was being vectored on a discrete frequency to do the shooting.

Since the NVAF used ground controllers heavily, did they monitor all
the frequencies? I know it's too much for pilots to manage, but a
ground facility should have a little more monitoring capability.

Is the 555th now at Nellis flying the A-10 or is that the 5555th? Or
should I say "was" instead? The numbers seem to be remarkably
unstable considering.

Thanks for the corrections, Ed. I dunno where I got the wrong ideas
from, but I have, I hope, extirpated them.

Mary


--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer