Guerrilla Aircraft

The U.S. Air Force chief of staff, General John P. McConnell, was “hopping mad,” according to an April 1965 report in Time magazine. Two fighters from North Vietnam’s tiny air force had gone up against two U.S. F-105 Thunderchiefs—and they had won. “What McConnell wanted to know was how the Thunderchief, a big brute of a plane with speeds up to 1,400 mph, had been bested in combat by the snail-paced (730 mph) MiG-17, a relic of the Korean War,” Time noted.

The MiG-17 didn’t have radar and missiles. And it wasn’t much to look at. Lieutenant Colonel Earl Henderson, who had taught U.S. pilots to fight MiGs in a program called “Constant Peg,” derisively compared the MiG-17 to a “tractor.”

“It was crude,” he told Steve Davies, who wrote Red Eagles: America’s Secret MiGs, a book published in 2011. “The cockpit had valves—faucets, literally—to turn everything on and off.”

Still, the fighter had an impressive and lethal advantage during combat with F-4s: It could turn on a dime. “That little airplane can give you a tussle the likes of which you’ve never had before in your life,” the late Robin Olds, Operation Rolling Thunder’s most successful fighter pilot, told a U.S. study team in 1967. “Their turn radius has to be seen to be believed. It’s incredible.”

With guidance from ground controllers, MiG-17s became adept at ambushing U.S. pilots. “The North Vietnamese air force seems to be adopting some of the tactics the Viet Cong guerrillas have used on the ground for years—hit and run, and fight only when you think you are stronger than your opponent,” the Associated Press reported in 1965.

Other, more advanced MiGs would enter combat over the course of the war: the MiG-19 (the world’s first mass-produced supersonic aircraft) and the delta-wing MiG-21, which was equipped with radar and heat-seeking missiles and could equal the acceleration of the F-4. Still, some North Vietnamese pilots continued to favor the MiG-17 because, while it was slower than its successors, they regarded it as more maneuverable.

And they inflicted a terrible toll: From 1965 to 1972, MiG-17 pilots downed 71 U.S. aircraft.

Mark Strauss is the managing editor at Air & Space Quarterly.

This article is from the Spring issue of Air & Space Quarterly, the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today. Explore the full issue.

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