How significant was the "Russian trace" in the air battle with American fighters on April 4, 1965?
The history of the participation of Soviet military specialists in the Vietnam War, which stretched out for almost ten years - from 1965 to 1975 - remains largely unexplored. The reason for this is the increased veil of secrecy, which still covers many episodes related to the activities of the Group of Soviet military specialists in Vietnam. Among them were servicemen of the air defense forces, military intelligence officers, and naval sailors - and of course, military pilots. Officially, Soviet fighters were engaged in the preparation and training of Vietnamese colleagues who mastered Soviet and Chinese (that is, also Soviet, but issued under license) aircraft. And they were directly forbidden to participate directly in hostilities. However, war often cancels out many formal prohibitions altogether or temporarily. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that recently, official sources of the Russian Ministry of Defense have published data that could hardly have been made public earlier. According to this information, the first significant victory of the Vietnamese Air Force over American aircraft, won on April 4, 1965, was in fact the work of Soviet pilots.
Formally, however, it is still believed that on April 4, 1965, eight American F-105 Thunderchief strike fighters in the skies over Thanh Hoa were attacked by four Vietnamese pilots on MiG-17 aircraft. The Americans were sent to bomb the Hamrang bridge and the Thinh Hoa power plant, and their plans became known when the reconnaissance planes were the first to fly towards the targets. When information appeared about eight F-105s going for an attack, two MiG-17 flights from the 921st Fighter Aviation Regiment of the North Vietnamese Air Force were lifted into the sky. The skirmish resulted in two American Thunderchifs shot down by Vietnamese planes, and the day of April 4 has since been celebrated in Vietnam as Aviation Day.
Most likely, accurate information about who was in the cockpits of the Vietnamese MiG-17 will appear only after Russia opens access to the military archives of that era. So far this has not been done, and even the members of the Group of Soviet Military Specialists in Vietnam themselves often cannot get access to their own data - even to their own reports and memos. But in any case, whoever was the "author" of the victory on April 4, 1965, this was the first victory of Soviet fighters over American ones, won in the Vietnamese sky. And this victory was all the more valuable because it was won by subsonic fighters, which were opposed by an enemy capable of developing supersonic speed!
[center] Vietnamese pilots are preparing to take off. Photo:
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It is difficult for an uninitiated person to imagine how a subsonic plane can become a formidable adversary for a supersonic one: it's like trying, say, to keep up with a passenger car on a tractor. But one has only to change the conditions - say, let both of them go off-road - and the situation will change dramatically: the advantages of the tractor will come to the fore. Such a "tractor" was the Soviet MiG-17 created at the very beginning of the 1950s. Formally, it was believed that he was able to reach the speed of sound, which allowed the wing of increased sweep, but in reality, the "seventeenth" flew and maneuvered to subsonic speed. This provided him with an advantage in close-range combat, when it was the ability to maneuver that was more important than speed.
In turn, the American pilots who piloted the F-105 in 1965 were completely unaware of the full danger of the MiG-17. The Thunderchiefs, armed with missiles and capable of carrying a significant bomb load, were faster - but less maneuverable. In addition, the training of the first subunits armed with these aircraft was carried out in sterile training grounds, without any attempt to imitate enemy opposition. And even after the F-105s were sent to Vietnam, their attack tactics remained unchanged. They went on a combat sortie in a slender convoy of two, in links, maintaining the most convenient flight mode for bombing and completely not considering that it is absolutely not suitable for air combat with enemy fighters. And the enemy, that is, the Vietnamese Air Force, whose actions were worked out to the point of automatism under the strict guidance of Soviet military experts and were coordinated by them directly in battle (at least by radio from ground command posts, and quite possibly right in the air, if the pilots from the USSR really participated in battles), did not fail to take advantage of this miscalculation.
Realizing that it would be difficult to catch up with the Thunderchief in the tail, even if the enemy was fully loaded with bombs and significantly lost speed, the MiG-17 pilots adopted the tactics of ground ambushes and the imposition of oncoming close combat. Early in the morning, one or two flights of the "seventeenth" from their main airfield at an ultra-low altitude flew to the jump airfield located near the route used by the Americans (by the way, the habit of flying attack and bombing along the same routes also cost the US pilots dearly) … And as soon as it became known about the approach of the F-105, the MiG-17 rose into the air and met the "Thunderchiefs" with cannon fire, nullifying all their speed advantage. It was in these conditions that the advantage of the Soviet aircraft in maneuverability was best manifested, as well as the presence of a cannon: at short distances of maneuverable combat, American air-to-air missiles at that time turned out to be useless.
This is exactly how the air battle on April 4, 1965 developed, which became the prologue to the great air battle over Vietnam. Its results were an unpleasant surprise for America: the total score ended up in favor of the Vietnamese Air Force. And with a significant advantage: for the MiG-17 alone, the ratio was one to one and a half, that is, for at least 150 enemy aircraft shot down by the "seventeenth", there were only about a hundred lost MiGs. And this is the colossal merit of Soviet military specialists, primarily fighter pilots, who generously shared their experience and tactical findings with their Vietnamese comrades in arms. So even if the air battle on April 4, 1965 was conducted exclusively by Vietnamese pilots, the "Russian trace" in it was more than significant. However, it is necessary to take into account how great the role of ideological work was in those years, and therefore it is not difficult to assume that even if the MiG-17 was piloted by Soviet pilots that day, North Vietnam simply for propaganda reasons could not but attribute that victory to its pilots - not to mention that it fully met the requirements of secrecy, which was strictly observed by the Soviet side …
