Ideal USAF air superiority fighter for the Vietnam War.

[MadRat]

Actually the Vietnamese were in defensive positions, therefore the US showing parity is actually gaining immense superiority. Defenders should win disproportionately as logistics are in their favor by a large margin.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Actually the Vietnamese were in defensive positions, therefore the US showing parity is actually gaining immense superiority. Defenders should win disproportionately as logistics are in their favor by a large margin.

This is a really weird way to phrase "we didn't lose as hard as the numbers suggested we should've" tbf. Nobody keeps score. North Vietnam was so good at defending that it literally never had to the fight the U.S. Army's tank divisions inside its own country. Defenders who win without firing a shot against invaders' own armies are the best defenders of all at the end of the day.

Bombing the enemy is pointless if you don't invade. I'd have thought Goering taught the world this but the USAF missed that memo.

Sounds like you don't care about true Air Superiority.

What, pray tell, is the actual air threat of the VPAF? A few An-2s with hand grenades and an RPD on the back?

The Vietnam War air threat was so non-existent that "air superiority" was meaningless. The Vietnamese were running defensive, a position no air force should be in, literally the entire war. In that case, literally any aircraft can work for air superiority, probably including F-86s, if the USAF had simply trained its pilots good. It didn't. The Navy did. What was lacking was a ground invasion and the capacity to permanently occupy the North, and the U.S. did not have this ability, otherwise it would have done so.

The best air superiority fighter is either an F-104G, which was in production at the time, or the F-4B which was actually adopted.

Neither are genuinely better than the other, what the F-104G lacks in human factors and growth potentials it gains in production numbers, and what the F-4B lacks in cheapness and ready availability of parts it gains in being able to soldier on for 30+ more years in main combat roles.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I forgot about the F5, so we have a real cross section of fighter types from the brand new to the relatively old and the straight line speedsters to the highly agile. Yet none of these aircraft were able to get great results in the environment of Rolling Thunder. IIUC this was indicative of the USAF culture of the time rather than the aircraft they were flying. I've read that from 1960 the USAF put a big focus in flying safety after a horrific, HORRIFIC 50s in terms of plane crashes and aircrew deaths. Apparently the crash rate reduced but at least in part due to a reduction in dangerous training like close air to air combat flying which develops skills.

Exactly. But even the USN F-4 pilots weren't all that hot at fighting against fighters. Only the USN Crusader pilots were good dogfighters, due to guns+sidewinders as armaments and seen in that order.

 

[Rule of cool]

I recall reading something about the disbanding of FAGU (fleet air gunnery unit?) in about 1960 having something to do with the Navy's problems. However the Navy and AF appear to have different approaches to the issue, for example the Navy started introducing the Aim9d in 1965; 3 years before the USAFs 9e. The USAF relied more on the Sparrow and on technology like combat tree IFF(?) and improved EC121s as opposed the the Navy's focus on pilot ACM training.

 

[BlackBat242]

I forgot about the F5, so we have a real cross section of fighter types from the brand new to the relatively old and the straight line speedsters to the highly agile. Yet none of these aircraft were able to get great results in the environment of Rolling Thunder. IIUC this was indicative of the USAF culture of the time rather than the aircraft they were flying. I've read that from 1960 the USAF put a big focus in flying safety after a horrific, HORRIFIC 50s in terms of plane crashes and aircrew deaths. Apparently the crash rate reduced but at least in part due to a reduction in dangerous training like close air to air combat flying which develops skills.

There was also a change that saw military aircraft communicating with civilian air traffic centers after a series of fighter jet vs airliner midair crashes near airports.

 

[BlackBat242]

This is a really weird way to phrase "we didn't lose as hard as the numbers suggested we should've" tbf. Nobody keeps score. North Vietnam was so good at defending that it literally never had to the fight the U.S. Army's tank divisions inside its own country. Defenders who win without firing a shot against invaders' own armies are the best defenders of all at the end of the day.

Nice gross distortion of history - the US had decided before they sent a single soldier to SOUTH Vietnam that we were NOT going to invade NORTH Vietnam at all!
So there never were going to be tanks or any other US military ground force invading - just air strikes to reduce the NV capability to support the Viet Cong in SV - and to try to keep NV forces from invading SV.

Bombing the enemy is pointless if you don't invade. I'd have thought Goering taught the world this but the USAF missed that memo.

You do have a point here.
Without sending troops all we did was temporarily degrade NV's economic and military strength. However, since this (however misguided) was exactly the SOLE reason for the bombing, you could say " Mission Accomplished".

What, pray tell, is the actual air threat of the VPAF? A few An-2s with hand grenades and an RPD on the back?

The Vietnam War air threat was so non-existent that "air superiority" was meaningless. The Vietnamese were running defensive, a position no air force should be in, literally the entire war. In that case, literally any aircraft can work for air superiority, probably including F-86s, if the USAF had simply trained its pilots good. It didn't. The Navy did.

So the VPAF didn't have bunches of MiG-17s, MiG-19s, and MiG-21s? Then what were those aircraft attacking ours?

What was lacking was a ground invasion and the capacity to permanently occupy the North, and the U.S. did not have this ability, otherwise it would have done so.

You know this is utterly false... we DID have a LOT of military forces that were never sent anywhere near southeast Asia - simply because we never had any intention of invading NV!

Had we wanted to invade and subjugate NV it would have been done - bloodily for both sides, but we would have definitely succeeded.

As we declared all along, we were there solely to support SV's attempts to preserve their nation in the face of attacks by the NV-supported VC, and to prevent NV from invading.

And we also did some meddling in Laos and Cambodia that wasn't really part of the Vietnam effort, but none of that was intended to conquer either nation.

 

[Rule of cool]

There was also a change that saw military aircraft communicating with civilian air traffic centers after a series of fighter jet vs airliner midair crashes near airports.

I've read that pilots were taking stupid risks in unstructured 'training flights' that resembled a bunch of hot rodders doing burnouts in a carpark, resulting in engine flamouts, unrecoverable spins and stalls and the like.