The Vietnam War and its Repercussions on Wartime Engineering
Background
The Vietnam War was a war of many impacts. It was the first war that was televised into American living rooms. With its exposure came a remarkably devastating degree of death and destruction that raised anti-establishment sentiments, the end of the Cold War draft, and a new outlook on the power third world nations had. Among these many important consequences of the Vietnam War, there remains a considerable degree of influence the war had on military engineering. Ideologies on wartime engineering and science that had previously been thought to have faded into irrelevance saw resurgence during the Vietnam War, and from the many conflicts of the war came new developments that revolutionized the way wars would be fought in the future.
Dogfights of the Korean War
In certain ways the Vietnam War was remarkably similar to the Korean War. After all, both were proxy wars fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, and to some degree, the technologies of both sides that contested each other on the frontlines harbored a tinge of syncretism as well. Just like those over Korea, the skies over Vietnam saw engagement between Soviet and American military aircraft. The Soviet aircraft that patrolled the air remained similar to those that had seen action during the Korean War. The same models of fighter jets and bombers were used in the Vietnam War on the Soviet side.
The Korean War had seen the development of the first swept-wing aircraft—a design that featured wings protruding from the body of the aircraft at an angle as opposed to being perpendicular to the fuselage. Designs like the North American F-86 Sabre and the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 engaged one another in high-speed engagements at velocities that had never been observed before by both pilots and engineers. Encounters between such jets reached transonic speeds and were characterized by close-quarters combat that relied heavily on the mounted machine guns on the jets. These types of confrontations became known as dogfights. Throughout the Korean War, American F-86 Sabre jets among other American military aircraft reigned as the dominant forces in the air, maintaining a eight-to-one kill ratio over the Communist aircraft. The F-86’s stability and advanced radar capabilities greatly aided in their supremacy.
American Military Design Transitions
However, by the time of the Vietnam War, American engineers had concluded that the future of aerial combat would no longer be defined by the close-quarters dogfighting of the Korean War. Instead, in the eyes of the Americans, air-to-air warfare would rely on “beyond-visual-range” instruments. Namely, the development of missiles and radars had revolutionized aerial combat. Vietnam War-era aircraft were no longer carrying the fifty caliber machine guns of World War Two warplanes due to the belief that missiles would be a substantial replacement for the machine guns not only as a weapon but in terms of the weight reduction it would have on the jet itself. Thus, in 1958, aerospace and defense pioneer McDonnell Douglas pitched a design for what would become the F-4 Phantom II.
A bulky aircraft that could reach well over supersonic speeds, the F-4 was designed with nine external hardpoints and could carry up to 18,000 pounds worth of bombs and missiles as well as a brand new overhauled radar system. It was evident by 1960 when the F-4 began taking to the skies as the Navy’s principal air superiority and interceptor aircraft, the aircraft was the exact brainchild of American military engineer’s transition to designs that leaned heavily towards missiles, bombs, and “beyond-visual range” warfare tactics. For some time, the F-4 was a versatile workhorse, and it entered the United States Marine Corps as well as the United States Air Force, where with the latter, the F-4 would eventually begin to prowl the skies over Vietnam beginning in 1964. As a matter of fact, early versions of the F-4s that served in Vietnam were designed without the standard M61 Vulcan cannon.
Phantoms and Fishbeds
Vietnam War air combat was fought between the American F-4 Phantoms and Soviet MiG-21s, the latter colloquially referred to as “Fishbeds.” In contrast to the bulkier and missile-packing F-4s, MiG-21s were lighter, featured a triangular, “delta-wing” design focused on maneuverability of the airframe. It seemed apparent the more technologically advanced F-4s would be evidently victorious in an engagement against the more primitive MiG-21s. However, this was not the case.
Though American F-4s claimed countless air-to-air kills over the Communist MiG-21s, ultimately, the F-4s suffered a significantly poorer 1.5:1 kill ratio against the MiG-21s. Though the missiles had been a promising assortment of weaponry, radar capacities of the F-4s came short when it came to distinguishing allies and enemies. Perhaps one could say the primitive AIM-7 Sparrow missiles the F-4s were armed with were too immature of a technology. As a result, F-4 pilots would need to draw closer to the MiG-21s in order to identify them, leaving them vulnerable to the more agile Soviet aircraft that could best the F-4s in a dogfight, given that the American pilots were trained in missile warfare, not air-to-air combat.
