Thanh Hoa Bridge - American Lessons

American Lessons

The raid had been carried out with great precision, but despite having been hit by more than 300 bombs, the Thanh Hoa bridge still stood. As minor damage caused the circulation to be interrupted for a few days, it was seen as a modest success cost that had cost the US Air Force three F-105s. But U.S. Air Force chief of staff General John P. McConnell, was "hopping mad" to hear that two of America's most advanced F-105 Thunderchiefs had been shot down by slow, elderly left-over MIGs of the tiny 36-jet North Vietnamese air force. The subsonic MiG-17s had been in service for over 12 years since 1953, and was barely improved over the original MiG-15s that sparred with F-86 Sabres in dogfights during the Korean War. By contrast, the F-105, which was on the drawing boards as the MiG entered service, was two generations ahead (and the escorting F-100s one generation ahead). The F-105 was the USAF's most advanced Mach 2 class fighter bomber, with sophisticated navigation and radar systems which could be armed with Sidewinder missiles and a bombload comparable to World War II bombers. But at slower speeds, the older MiG could outmaneuver any of its adversaries, and at a time when air-to-air missiles were highly unlikely to actually destroy their targets, the cannons of the MiG were much more reliable, and deadly against F-105s, which at the time were vulnerable to hits on systems such as hydraulics.

The losses to MiGs resulted in the subsequent replacement of the F-100 Super Sabre escorts with F-4 Phantoms. The incident would start a series of events that would lead to a reassessment of fighters better suited to close-in dogfighting. While the F-105 would finish off its service with a slightly better than even kill-to-loss ratio over MiGs, the large plane had been designed primarily to deliver bombs at low level rather than shoot down other fighters. Its replacement was the even larger Phantom, which had been designed without any guns to fire missiles at stand-off ranges rather than tangle in turning dogfights. This experience would re-introduce the requirement that future fighters would need to be able to mix with MiGs on more equal terms and not just shoot missiles from a distance. This would lead to training programs such as Top Gun. The expensive swing-wing F-111B, which could not dogfight, was dropped in favor of the VFAX, which evolved into the F-14 Tomcat. The USAF would develop its own purpose-built FX supersonic air superiority fighter as the F-15 Eagle along with smaller teen-series fighters. The new fighters that came on line during the 1970s would dominate American airpower for the remainder of the 20th century and inspire similar Soviet designs.