Armed Forces: How It Happened

The U.S. Air Force chief of staff, General John P. McConnell, was hopping mad. He had just heard that two U.S. F-105 Thunderchiefs had been shot down by MIGs of the tiny (36 jets) North Vietnamese air force. What McConnell wanted to know was how the Thunderchief, a big brute of a plane with speeds up to 1,400 m.p.h., had been bested in combat by the snail-paced (730 m.p.h.) MIG-17, a relic of the Korean War.

The answers seemed to be 1) faulty tactics, and 2) inadequate radar.

Out of the Mist. Forty-eight Thunderchiefs had been assigned to bomb the Thanhhoa...

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