Wtf was with the US losing so many aircraft in Vietnam?
Poor training
It is what led to Top Gun
>>30615334
>AC-47 Spooky
>>30615334
>529 Phantoms lost
Jesus fucking Christ.
>>30615334
Shitty tactics leaving planes vulnerable
Shitty strategy requiring bombing runs for no effective purpose
Gooks were pretty good at AA and their airforce was competent too
VC were just lettin r rip with the full giggle aks, and not compensating for recoil. So most were accidental.
>>30615334
Radio controled and guided SA-2's
The same stuff that shot down the F-117.
>>30615334
does this include all the aircraft that they abandoned or pushed into the ocean when they left?
>>30615667
Apparently that number includes non-combat "mishaps" as well as instances where the aircraft was too badly damaged to be repaired. It makes sense though, they were actually pretty bad aircraft before the upgrades they got midwar.
Apparently they also lost a lot of them that were parked on the ground during the Tet Offensive.
>>30615334
Most of the combat losses were to ground fire.
The Americans went into the war without full appreciation of the effectiveness of the SA-2. Vietnam amassed huge amounts of radar-directed AAA and SAMs over the duration of the war, and for much of it the US had to fight much of the war with a hand tied behind its back in terms of rules of engagement.
Holy shit, 31 B-52s???
I thought we had air superiority basically from the start of the war. There's no way Charlie with an AK could've done that...
>>30615334
SAMs are hard. most militaries that saw action in that era learned that lesson painfully
>>30615334
>Wtf was with the US losing so many aircraft in Vietnam?
I know John McCain did what he could...
>>30616799
Soviets with state of the art SA-2s can be quite a hassle if you are a B-52.
>>30615334
>F4
there's your problem
>>30616334
I don't know why but i always had it in my head that the phantoms were poorly designed and that high-speed flight would literally rip the plane into pieces...true or am i dumb?
How many hueys did they lose?
>>30617058
Dumb.
The Phantom was FAST.
Fast enough to set time-to-altitude records.
>>30617062
All of them.
>>30617062
None of them.
>>30616953
I didn't realize the Soviets were giving them that much direct support. AKs and ammo is one thing, state of the art SAMs is another.
I thought after the debacle with the Ivan pilots in Korea and the Chinese getting pissy that they'd shipped less to SEA.
>>30617092
after a little searching i think I may have found the root of why i thought that
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=153104
>>30617058
No. The F-4 was a record breaker in its day.It was a Navy and Marine fighter that was so good that the Air Force swallowed its pride and adopted as well. Though they wanted to call it the F-110 Spectre. Presumably so they could pretend it was their idea to begin with. Its main weakness was that the designers and strategists were convinced that the era visual range air to air combat was over, so they built the Phantom without an internal gun.
A LOT of aircraft were destroyed on the ground.
The most successful Vietcong raid using mortars destroyed over 300 aircraft in 2 hours.
Also there was a report when a naked Vietcong infiltrator blew up a hangar full of Phantoms, streaked through the base, into the jungle, somehow didn't get hit by the dozens of people shooting at him, and escaped. Took out over a dozen fighters with sticky bombs.
>>30617171
Enough of this meme.
USN never added a gun; instead, they trained their pilots better, and saw a far greater improvement than USAF did.
Go read Revolt of the Majors before you post again.
>>30617164
Pitch damper failure is really nasty. Basically means you're flying a whole different aircraft, which is easy to oversteer. I'm slightly surprised it broke up and didn't just crash.
>>30617171
The gun was never the issue. Training for A2A was. Look at the numbers-the Navy and AF started the war with around a 3:1 kill rate. The Navy started TOPGUN, the AF installed the M61. At the end of the war the Navy had a 13:1 kill rate, the AF around 4:1.
Wild weasels got fucked.
Thats the F-4 and F-105, flying as live bait for sams.
>>30615334
It was a big war
>>30617449
UU
UU
>>30615334
The loss rate was quite low - 0.4 losses per 1,000 sorties. WW2 figure was 9.7 per 1000
>>30617062
3000+
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War
>>30615334
Shitty US training, good Soviet pilots, decent Gook pilots, good Gook AA.
>>30617502
>Good commie pilots?
Maybe a handful. Once those were gone it was all Sams.
>>30615412
PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON
>>30617434
In fact most of the high loss aircraft on that list were used in sam suppression.
Apparently letting people try to shoot you down is dangerous.
>>30617140
>I didn't realize the Soviets were giving them that much direct support
Soviets were in Vietnam manning SAM's, it's been an "open secret" since the early 00's.
just imagine
they didn't have manpads back then
>>30617745
I suppose a lot of guys who were there have man pads now
It really makes the whole joke of "rice farmers with AKs" look more like a joke. Soviets gave them commies beautiful SAMs and AA guns. Some of them were operated directly by Soviets. There were hundreds of Soviet advisors in North Vietnam.
>>30617494
>>30618255
They're pointing sideways, but moving forward. It's a result of the fins being folded when they leave the tubes. Hey straighten out after a little bit and go in the general direction of the target. The inaccuracy from the launch is the reason the next generation was WAFAR with canted nozzles not FFAR.
>>30617172
>there was a report when a naked Vietcong infiltrator blew up a hangar full of Phantoms, streaked through the base, into the jungle, somehow didn't get hit by the dozens of people shooting at him, and escaped. Took out over a dozen fighters with sticky bombs
Gonna need a source on that. Not because I don't believe it but it sounds amazing.
Think a while ago on /k/ there was a thread about the Aussie contribution to the war that mentioned a VC riding a bike around a base chucking grenades like some deranged newspaper boy.
>>30617494
I was just about to say, ~2k a/c lost in a 10ish year war... thats literally nothing.
>Total aircraft losses for the AAF from December 1941 to August 1945 were 65,164, with 43,581 lost overseas and 21,583 within the Continental United States.[115] Combat losses of aircraft totaled 22,948 worldwide, with 18,418 lost in theaters fighting Germany and 4,530 lost in combat in the Pacific. The AAF credited its own forces with destroying a total of 40,259 aircraft of opposing nations by all means, 29,916 against Germany and its allies and 10,343 in the Pacific.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces#USAAF_statistical_summary
And thats JUST the Air force. Navy not even yet added in.
>>30615334
SAMs and retards who said planes would never shoot at each other again.
