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Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972
This classic work--part of the Marine Corps reading list--makes full use of declassified U.S. documents to offer the first comprehensive study of fighter combat over North Vietnam. Marshall Michel's balanced, exhaustive coverage describes and analyzes both Air Force and Navy engagements with North Vietnamese MiGs but also includes discussions of the SAM threat and U.S. countermeasures, laser-guided bombs, and U.S. attempts to counter the MiG threat with a variety of technological equipment. Accessible yet professional, the book is filled with valuable lessons learned that are as valid today as they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Some 29 photos and 33 drawings and maps, including diagrams of both American and North Vietnamese formations and tactics, are included.
340 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
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About the author
Marshall L. Michel III
5 books2 followersMarshall L. Michel III, USAF (Ret.) served as a combat pilot during the Vietnam War, flying 321 missions in F4 Phantoms and RF-4s.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 22, 2024
During the eight years of its engagement in the Vietnam War, the airpower of the United States was involved in a bifurcated conflict. In the south American warplanes enjoyed an uncontested dominance of the skies, which they used to deploy American resources to surveil and attack the enemy. Air Force and Navy planes entering North Vietnam airspace, however, found themselves in a much different situation, as they faced an air defense network that grew increasingly sophisticated as the war went on. In his book Marshall Michel analyzes the air war fought over the skies of North Vietnam, detailing its twists and turns as both sides sought an advantage in a key front in the conflict.
As Michel notes, given the tactics and technology employed, the air war in North Vietnam "was the one area of the Vietnam War that has military significance in the global balance of power." There both sides deployed planes and weapons designed for a potential war in Europe between the Soviet Union and NATO. For the United States Air Force, this meant using F-105 fighter-bombers built to strike their enemies quickly, relying upon their speed for protection. Armed with heat-seeking and radar-guided missiles, they were designed without cannons in the belief that, in the new age of missiles, dogfighting was obsolete. This was soon proved mistaken, as the smaller and more agile MiG-17s posed a challenge for which the F-105s were poorly equipped. Armed with cannons as well as missiles, the Navy's F-8s proved much more capable of meeting the threat, though their pilots were also frustrated by technical problems with the missiles and rules of engagement requiring visual confirmation before attacking, which often inhibited the ability to launch their weapons.
As the war went on, all sides adapted in response to what they learned. For the North Vietnamese, this involved developing an elaborate ground control interception (GCI) system that employed both North Vietnamese fighters and growing numbers of anti-air cannons and missiles. While both the Air Force and the Navy sought improved weapons and supporting technology, the Air Force's exclusive reliance on technical fixes contrasted with the Navy, which in 1968 established the Topgun School in an effort to improve dogfighting abilities. New aircraft were also introduced — the F-4 for the U.S., the MiG-21 for the North Vietnamese — which also represented an escalation in ability prior to the termination of the North Vietnamese bombing campaign by President Lyndon Johnson in March 1968.
When Johnson's successor Richard Nixon resumed the bombing in North Vietnam in 1972, the new lessons were employed in full. The Air Force found themselves launching ever-larger missions to bomb tough North Vietnamese targets, while North Vietnamese pilots adopted new tactics to contest control of the air. By now the superiority of the Navy's approach was becoming more indisputable, reflected as it was in the superior kill ratios of North Vietnamese planes to their Air Force counterparts. As a result, once the war ended in 1973 the Air Force moved to establish their own Weapons School to teach the hard-won lessons of the now-concluded conflict and employ them to secure American air superiority in future wars.
As a former F-4 pilot who flew in Vietnam, Michel brings a firsthand familiarity to his subject. This he uses to interpret the mass of staff reports, expert assessments, and personal narratives that he draws upon to detail the various airborne engagements that defined the war. He does this dispassionately, favoring analysis over dramatic narrative, yet his book engages the reader with its clearheaded insights and perceptive conclusions. While it suffers from the lopsided nature of his coverage favoring the Americans (which is understandable given the relative inaccessibility of North Vietnamese records), this is nonetheless the best history of its subject, one that explains the hows and whys of the air war in North Vietnam better than every other book out there.
As Michel notes, given the tactics and technology employed, the air war in North Vietnam "was the one area of the Vietnam War that has military significance in the global balance of power." There both sides deployed planes and weapons designed for a potential war in Europe between the Soviet Union and NATO. For the United States Air Force, this meant using F-105 fighter-bombers built to strike their enemies quickly, relying upon their speed for protection. Armed with heat-seeking and radar-guided missiles, they were designed without cannons in the belief that, in the new age of missiles, dogfighting was obsolete. This was soon proved mistaken, as the smaller and more agile MiG-17s posed a challenge for which the F-105s were poorly equipped. Armed with cannons as well as missiles, the Navy's F-8s proved much more capable of meeting the threat, though their pilots were also frustrated by technical problems with the missiles and rules of engagement requiring visual confirmation before attacking, which often inhibited the ability to launch their weapons.
As the war went on, all sides adapted in response to what they learned. For the North Vietnamese, this involved developing an elaborate ground control interception (GCI) system that employed both North Vietnamese fighters and growing numbers of anti-air cannons and missiles. While both the Air Force and the Navy sought improved weapons and supporting technology, the Air Force's exclusive reliance on technical fixes contrasted with the Navy, which in 1968 established the Topgun School in an effort to improve dogfighting abilities. New aircraft were also introduced — the F-4 for the U.S., the MiG-21 for the North Vietnamese — which also represented an escalation in ability prior to the termination of the North Vietnamese bombing campaign by President Lyndon Johnson in March 1968.
When Johnson's successor Richard Nixon resumed the bombing in North Vietnam in 1972, the new lessons were employed in full. The Air Force found themselves launching ever-larger missions to bomb tough North Vietnamese targets, while North Vietnamese pilots adopted new tactics to contest control of the air. By now the superiority of the Navy's approach was becoming more indisputable, reflected as it was in the superior kill ratios of North Vietnamese planes to their Air Force counterparts. As a result, once the war ended in 1973 the Air Force moved to establish their own Weapons School to teach the hard-won lessons of the now-concluded conflict and employ them to secure American air superiority in future wars.
As a former F-4 pilot who flew in Vietnam, Michel brings a firsthand familiarity to his subject. This he uses to interpret the mass of staff reports, expert assessments, and personal narratives that he draws upon to detail the various airborne engagements that defined the war. He does this dispassionately, favoring analysis over dramatic narrative, yet his book engages the reader with its clearheaded insights and perceptive conclusions. While it suffers from the lopsided nature of his coverage favoring the Americans (which is understandable given the relative inaccessibility of North Vietnamese records), this is nonetheless the best history of its subject, one that explains the hows and whys of the air war in North Vietnam better than every other book out there.
May 24, 2016
The best single volume history of the air war in Vietnam I have yet read. Author is USAF Vietnam vet and the book is frequently a devastating critique of Air Force leadership. The Navy created Top Gun to better prepare it pilots for war; Air Force refused to acknowledge it had a problem until years after the war when the old guard retired and young pilots who suffered so much rose in rank.
October 14, 2024
May be a bit dry for the casual reader. However, I find it interesting and it presents a lot of background information which is good to have when reading other books on the subject.
November 21, 2014
Vietnam was a fractal war-a self similar pattern of bad decisions and disasters at every level. The air war over North Vietnam was no exception, as Mitchel demonstrates in this comprehensive and exhaustive account of Operation Rolling Thunder and Linebacker I & II. Mitchel takes as his analytic frames the tactical learning between the two sides during the years-long bombing into North Vietnam, and the introduction and evaluation of new weapons and tactics. The story is USAF and MiG heavy, but there's plenty of room for other parties: Navy Aviation, SAMs, electronic warfare, and command and control. As Michel describes, SAMs could be dealt with be ECM pods and electronic warfare, AAA took down a lot of planes but could be avoided by flying fast and high, and the ultimate enemy were the MiGs; deadly when guided into ambush attacks by North Vietnamese ground controllers, dangerous in a low turning fight, and ultimately only survivable by alert and aggressive pilots. This last aspect is where the USAF failed.
The book itself is calm, evenhanded, clinical in describing the results of combat encounters, but I don't have to be, and I am shocked that the USAF managed to shoot down any MiGs at all, given how bad their training and doctrine was. How bad? Guided missiles were supposed to be the weapon of the future, to the extent that the F-4 Phantom lacked an internal cannon (and lol at trying to dogfight in a Thud without an anti-air gunsight), but American guided missiles sucked. Designed and tested for use against high-altitude Soviet bombers, they were nearly useless against low-level fighters. The AIM-9 Sidewinder was the best missile, but couldn't be fired in more than a 2G turn and lost guidance when the target flew towards the sun, the ground, or into clouds. The AIM-7 Sparrow took 5 seconds to lock on and fire, required the Phantom to keep its nose pointed at the enemy until the missile hit, and just failed to launch or guide over 60% of the time. The AIM-4 Falcon was even worse, if that's imaginable. Bad missiles came on top of a lack of guns or ranging gun sights. The Phantom was plagued by bad radios-located below the co-pilots ejection seat in a compartment that drained all the moisture in the cockpit. Pilots died when they didn't hear radio calls of "Break break break!" Contrary to popular belief (or at least my prior belief), the Phantoms and Thuds were not totally outmatched in a dogfight-the MiGs were difficult to fly at the edges of the envelopes-but big smokey Phantoms against small agile MiGs stacked the deck against American aircraft.
The real killers were American training and doctrine. It took too long for effective command and control to be made available to pilots over North Vietnam, because while NSA electronic warfare planes were listening to North Vietnamese radios and could hear the MiGs making their attack runs, that data was classified and couldn't be transmitted to pilots. The Air Force put bomber and transport pilots in fighters to spread out the load of combat tours, and air to air training consisted of half dozen mock dogfights at the end of the refreshed course, compared to about one hundred air to ground training missions. Training units were rated on safety, not aggressiveness or preparation for combat, and so discouraged pilots from flying the F-4 at its limits and learning about dangerous adverse yaw flight characteristics. The 4 plane 'fighting wing' formation used by the Air Force let only the flight lead shoot, and had the other three flying formation. The three wingmen couldn't even look out for MiGs, since they had to maintain position, and basically existed to decoy missiles away from the lead. The Navy had solved many of these problems, with the famous TOP GUN air combat school and the 'loose deuce' formation, (oh, and a better variant of the Sidewinder), but for the Air Force, even worse than losing pilots over North Vietnam was admitting that the Navy was doing things better!
There were darker times in the Air Force's history. The 8th Air Force over Europe saw way higher losses. But in a war of choice, in a war where America had technical superiority, even if it was fighting under political restrictions that prevented an all out offensive against Hanoi until Linebacker II, the inability of the USAF to adapt, and develop tactics and weapons that would give it air superiority, was a major failure in leadership. The USAF learned a lot of valuable lessons, instantiated in the F-15, AWACS, and Aggressor training, but too many pilots paid the cost for that knowledge.
The book itself is calm, evenhanded, clinical in describing the results of combat encounters, but I don't have to be, and I am shocked that the USAF managed to shoot down any MiGs at all, given how bad their training and doctrine was. How bad? Guided missiles were supposed to be the weapon of the future, to the extent that the F-4 Phantom lacked an internal cannon (and lol at trying to dogfight in a Thud without an anti-air gunsight), but American guided missiles sucked. Designed and tested for use against high-altitude Soviet bombers, they were nearly useless against low-level fighters. The AIM-9 Sidewinder was the best missile, but couldn't be fired in more than a 2G turn and lost guidance when the target flew towards the sun, the ground, or into clouds. The AIM-7 Sparrow took 5 seconds to lock on and fire, required the Phantom to keep its nose pointed at the enemy until the missile hit, and just failed to launch or guide over 60% of the time. The AIM-4 Falcon was even worse, if that's imaginable. Bad missiles came on top of a lack of guns or ranging gun sights. The Phantom was plagued by bad radios-located below the co-pilots ejection seat in a compartment that drained all the moisture in the cockpit. Pilots died when they didn't hear radio calls of "Break break break!" Contrary to popular belief (or at least my prior belief), the Phantoms and Thuds were not totally outmatched in a dogfight-the MiGs were difficult to fly at the edges of the envelopes-but big smokey Phantoms against small agile MiGs stacked the deck against American aircraft.
The real killers were American training and doctrine. It took too long for effective command and control to be made available to pilots over North Vietnam, because while NSA electronic warfare planes were listening to North Vietnamese radios and could hear the MiGs making their attack runs, that data was classified and couldn't be transmitted to pilots. The Air Force put bomber and transport pilots in fighters to spread out the load of combat tours, and air to air training consisted of half dozen mock dogfights at the end of the refreshed course, compared to about one hundred air to ground training missions. Training units were rated on safety, not aggressiveness or preparation for combat, and so discouraged pilots from flying the F-4 at its limits and learning about dangerous adverse yaw flight characteristics. The 4 plane 'fighting wing' formation used by the Air Force let only the flight lead shoot, and had the other three flying formation. The three wingmen couldn't even look out for MiGs, since they had to maintain position, and basically existed to decoy missiles away from the lead. The Navy had solved many of these problems, with the famous TOP GUN air combat school and the 'loose deuce' formation, (oh, and a better variant of the Sidewinder), but for the Air Force, even worse than losing pilots over North Vietnam was admitting that the Navy was doing things better!
There were darker times in the Air Force's history. The 8th Air Force over Europe saw way higher losses. But in a war of choice, in a war where America had technical superiority, even if it was fighting under political restrictions that prevented an all out offensive against Hanoi until Linebacker II, the inability of the USAF to adapt, and develop tactics and weapons that would give it air superiority, was a major failure in leadership. The USAF learned a lot of valuable lessons, instantiated in the F-15, AWACS, and Aggressor training, but too many pilots paid the cost for that knowledge.
February 17, 2018
The best book on the tactical and operational details and evolutions of Vietnam and post-Vietnam.
June 9, 2020
An excellent account of air-to-air Combat from Rolling Thunder through Linebacker II. My only criticism is that it is somewhat on the drier, technical side.
April 18, 2019
OVERALL RATING: 5 stars (9 out of 10)
I really enjoyed this book, and found much of the information provided to be quite fascinating.
While some aspects can get a bit repetitive (as others have noted), I still really appreciated the blend of historical context, technological description, broader level strategies, and detailed tactics.
I haven't really read any other similar books to compare this one to, but this one gets my highest recommendation!
I really enjoyed this book, and found much of the information provided to be quite fascinating.
While some aspects can get a bit repetitive (as others have noted), I still really appreciated the blend of historical context, technological description, broader level strategies, and detailed tactics.
I haven't really read any other similar books to compare this one to, but this one gets my highest recommendation!
June 17, 2020
Detailed but does not get bogged down under the weight of information it provides. Strong analysis of the tactics, operations, and many tribulations of the air war in Vietnam.
January 4, 2011
Clashes is an excellent study in the air war over Vietnam. Col. Michel doesn't pull punches with his service and gives an honest view of what was ineffective and effective in the air war over North Vietnam. He doesn't go on where other authors have written about the meddling of the Johnson administration but instead uses it as a factor among other factors such as training levels, administrative decisions in the Air Force and the Navy as well as technical matter ranging from missiles to aircraft design issues. After reading the book the reader should have a clearer understanding of the limitations US and North Vietnamese pilots faced over North Vietnam
March 8, 2014
Exhaustive, if somewhat repetitive, accounting of the air war over North Vietnam. Like all Vietnam books, the closer you read, the more you realize a lot of the overly-simplified "lessons" people have taken from that war are complete nonsense, and the truth is much more complicated. A good read, but you can get away with a skim.
September 25, 2016
Though some people might find the boring technical details boring, I thought they were excellent. The detail is great, and the upshot—that North Vietnam acquitted itself fairly well, given its opponent—was a little unexpected.
February 9, 2016
Outstanding treatment of tactics and technology developments during the air war in Vietname. Comparisons between Navy and Air Force approaches are particularly interesting.
May 1, 2015
Excellent critical examination based on very thorough research and convincing analysis. The author makes his case in the strongest possible manner while also creating an engaging narrative.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews