operation Bolo : alternate outcome

Bear in mind the reasons that the MiG-21 was successful against the US over North Vietnam - it was over North Vietnam.

Sure, the VPAF was on the defensive and heavily supported by a SAM and AAA defensive network. But then the US had vast had vast numerical and technological edges that the VPAF had to work carefully around if it wanted to avoid stuff like Bolo being the rule rather then the exception in '67. So it picked its fights carefully, focusing on laden strike aircraft more than fighters. But this strategy was hardly unbeatable: had the US leveraged it's resources better, the air war in '67 as a whole could have gone a lot better for it. In fact, that is what happened when the US started leveraging it's resources better. After the fiasco that was the overall air war in Rolling Thunder, the Americans went back to basics and gave their pilots a level of intensive air-air combat training using resources the North Vietnamese could not have hoped to match. As a result, when the USAF came back for another go in the early-70s with the Linebacker raids, they generally kicked the VPAF's ass up and down the street without needing to rely on the sort of set-piece operations staffed by select elite pilots that Operation Bolo represented... and which largely left the USAF in the lurch when Old's and his cadre of experienced pilots departed in the summer of '67 and were replaced by pilots poorly trained in the vagaries of ACM.
 
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Would Hanoi and their Russian
Advisors commit all of their MIG-21s to combat one American raid? In 1967 North Vietnam is under air attack day and night as long as the weather permits. They are also under attack by carrier aircraft in the Tonkin Gulf. If the North Vietnamese now have access to 100+ MiGs why not try to overwhelm a raid against the infamous Thanh Hoa Bridge “The Dragon’s Jaw”?
 
Which doesn't describe the MiG-21 at all, which has generally proven to be a cost-effective fighter even able to still compete with many 4/4.5 generation fighters with aggressive modernization... rather like the F-4. It's short endurance has never proven to be much of a hinderance when performing it's actual role as a short-range air superiority fighter/interceptor.

Because the US was able to lure the MiGs into a surprise ambush. They didn't know they weren't fighting Thuds until they were being shot at, at which point it was generally too late. That has very little to do with either the role or the ability of the F-4 and more to do with the good preparation on the USAFs part for this particular case. When it came to "purer" battles between the F-4 and MiG-21, the usual decider was pilot skill. That's generally how it goes between aircraft of comparable ability.

The implication which you are missing is that they were not as confident when they were flying MiG-17s or 19s.

Well, I don't recall him having much to say about the Phantom. He did have a lot to say about the missiles the Phantom carried at the time, very little of it pleasant.

My distaste for the Mig 21 originally stems from the unwarranted criticism of the Lightning, if the Lightning is useless because of short range then so is the Mirage IIIC (IIIE less so) and the Mig21. That said, it does belong to the first generation of aircraft with 20+ service lives by virtue of mach 2 performance thus is worth upgrading for many counties who can't afford anything better. However lets not forget that in the Indian airforce it developed a terrible reputation for crashing and for low availability rates, IIRC only the Indians were able to get them up around 70%, everyone else only got 50-55%. Of the 4 aircraft I mentioned, I'd pick the mig 21 last.

Once in the trap the Mig21s were unable to escape, the USAF was confident enough in the F4C that once they got the Mig21s in the air they could shoot them down.

No pilot is confident flying a fighter of vastly inferior performance, it can be made to work (Sea Fury against Mig 15), but its not where you want to be. With the RoE and types of engagement the Mig21 would obviously be the best plane for VPAF pilots to be in.

So he wasn't shy about criticising bad things, but was quiet about the Phantom? There might be something in that.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
My distaste for the Mig 21 originally stems from the unwarranted criticism of the Lightning
Once in the trap the Mig21s were unable to escape, the USAF was confident enough in the F4C that once they got the Mig21s in the air they could shoot them down.
But again numbers were heavily in favor of F4 as well
4 times as many committed that day

With israelis the F4 performed much better in A2A combat vs mig21, but so did the mirage III and even if Israelis had the f104 the results would not have been much different.
 
But again numbers were heavily in favor of F4 as well
4 times as many committed that day

The fact of the matter is that if there weren't so many Phantoms that day Bolo would likely not have worked. The whole point is that Mig21s would come up to engage a whole wing of Thuds, if the number of Phantoms had been smaller the radar picture would not have looked like a wing of Thuds nor would the radio traffic have sounded like a wing of Thuds. But yeah, a 4:1 advantage in number is how I'd like to have my fights too.

The idea behind Bolo is an old one. The RAF asked O.R. why the Luftwaffe would come up to engage formations with bombers but not sweeps with only Spitfires. O.R. found that when bombers were present the formation flew at speeds and heights suitable for the bombers, but Spitfires alone flew high and fast, so it was obvious to the Luftwaffe radar operators that the track was only fighters. I think in the end the RAF would send as few as 6 lightly loaded Blenheims as high and fast as possible to bring up the Luftwaffe fighters for the 36 Spitfires to engage.
 
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