A Brief History of the Douglas F-6 Missileer
March 23rd, 1968 marked the beginning of a new age in aerial combat. At 1137 local time, two US Navy F-4B Phantom II fighters, Streetcar 304 and 305, both of which were providing MiGCAP over North Vietnam for a strike by Navy and Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawks and A-7 Corsair IIs, spotted a flight of four North Vietnamese MiG-17 fighters in a low altitude circle, one of the infamous wagon wheels.
The wagon wheel was an excellent defensive formation. If Streetcar dived down to the low altitude of the MiGs and tried to engage with AIM-9 Sidewinders, another MiG would be on the collective tails of Streetcar as soon as they tried to engage while ground clutter prevented the use of AIM-7 Sparrows. Additionally, the MiGs were more maneuverable at low altitude than were the Phantoms while the wheels themselves were often placed above anti-aircraft artillery units.
However, as with nearly all things aeronautical, the success of the tactic depended on the skill of the pilots and US pilots were more skilled than their Vietnamese opponents at this point in time. Thus, Streetcar could have engaged and broken up the wheel, likely killing one or two of the enemy fighters in the process. But, much to the annoyance of Streetcar’s pilots, the pre-mission briefing had included an order that, in such an instance, Red Crown, ship-based Navy fighter control, was to be alerted and the Phantoms were to engage only in self-defense or if given the go-ahead by Red Crown.
Upon hearing of the wagon wheel, Red Crown immediately informed the Phantoms that they were not to engage, but were to observe the enemy flight and report on anything unusual.
“I was damned upset when they told me to just sit there and watch them. I was convinced that Washington had decided that it was going to decide whether or not we could take a shot against MiGs,” recalled Streetcar 304. “So I’m stewing up there, hating Red Crown, hating the President and McNamara, and hating those damned MiGs that I couldn’t touch. As I’m doing that, I think I had just finished calling McNamara a thrice-damned sonofabitch, when one of the MiGs exploded. I think my RIO summed it up for both of us when he shouted out, ‘What the hell?!’ Just as he finished saying that, a second MiG exploded, followed by a third just a few seconds later. I guess that the last one figured that he had better get out of town, because he started running straight about the time that the second one blew up, but he blew up and crashed after just a few seconds as well.”
Unbeknownst to Streetcar, a pair of F-6 Missileers[1], part of USS Enterprise’s air wing, which had just arrived at Yankee Station, had been flying a CAP some fifty nautical miles away. Though they had the wagon wheel on their own radars, the rules of engagement prevented them from engaging it without the positive ID that the F-4 Phantoms provided. This engagement would be but the first of many for the MiG Sniper.
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The Douglas F-6 Missileer started its life as the F6D Missileer in 1960, making its first flight in December of 1963 shortly after redesignation as the YF-6 under the Tri-Service Designation System. The Missileer, quite unusually and controversially for a fighter, was not developed on its own sake, but rather, for the benefit of a missile, the then-designated AAM-N-10 Eagle. This was, quite obviously, the complete opposite of the normal fighter development process and was subject to harsh criticism and more than one attempt to cancel it.
While such criticism seems absurd with modern hindsight, in the context of the times the criticism made perfect sense; indeed, it is far stranger that the program survived than is the harsh criticism surrounding the aircraft. While the Douglas was building the first subsonic interceptor in a decade, and one that was far less maneuverable than its supersonic and subsonic predecessors, McDonnell was starting production of a Mach 2 fighter-interceptor (that would enter service as the F4H/F-4 Phantom II), Vought had prototyped a Mach 3 fighter for the Navy’s smaller carriers (the XF8U-3, though this would not enter service), and the Air Force was building a Mach 3 bomber, the XB-70 Valkyrie, although the Valkyrie was suffering from political controversy over its cost and vulnerability compared to ICBMs. In the black world, the CIA had contracted Lockheed to build the A-12 OXCART, a reconnaissance platform designed to operate at Mach 3.4 and 90,000 feet. Is it any wonder then that the pedestrian Missileer, whose sole advertised virtues were an untested missile and an extremely long loiter time, would be looked at quite askance?
Indeed, it is highly likely that the F-6 Missileer would have been cancelled almost at its inception by departing Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates in December of 1960 had it not been for an internal Navy study that indicated the tremendous capability of the F-6 Missileer. Analyzing the defensive capabilities of Navy carrier battlegroups against projected Soviet air raids a decade hence, it was found that a CAP composed of F4H Phantom IIs made almost no contribution to fleet defense, increasing the survivable raid size by only two bandits over what the battlegroup’s SAMs alone could provide. While launching Phantoms in the midst of the raid to counter the enemy provided a significant increase, by fifteen bandits, this was only as many as an F6D CAP would provide. Most significantly, deck launched Missileers provided a 75% increase in the survivable raid size as compared to only SAMs.[1]
This increase was significant enough for Secretary Gates to forbear canceling the project while he was in office, leaving the decision to his successor, Robert McNamara.
To be continued
[1]In TTL, the F6D is redesignated as F-6 while the OTL F-6, the F4D Skyray, is redesignated as F-7. The F2Y Sea Dart is not redesignated as it was OTL.
[2]Actual study, contained in
Carrier Task Force Anti-Air Warfare in the 1970 Era. Only applicable to no-ECM environment, as the F6D/Eagle had already been cancelled by the time they got around to ECM environment, but Eagle armed F6D would have been far more useful than a Sparrow III armed Phantom.
I'm aware that TF30 did not fly until 1964, I'll take care of that when I update this.