"Couple Questions Regarding the North Vietnamese Air Force" Topic

All,

Did the North Vietnamese Air Force have air to air missiles for its MiGs?

Were any US aircraft shot down by air to air missiles?

Thanks in advance.

V/R,
Jack

Yes.

Yes, both fighters, and supposedly a few B-52s as well, though there are arguments over the latter.

Cool. Any reference stuff I can look up/look at? I'd like to read up on it.

V/R,
Jack

These two pages give you lists of confirmed, claimed, and probable air-to-air victories scored by Vietnamese pilot which includes the weapons employed.

link

link

They are a obviously very dry with no real description of the combat but will give you the bare details.

Osprey Combat Aircraft 29 MiG-21 Units of the Vietnam War is a good source and worth a read.

Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972 by Marshall L. Michell III is a brilliant source, if you own only one book about the Vietnam air war this should be it.

Fatman

The best book on the subject, as Fatman suggests, is Clashes.

Definitely worth purchasing.

A lot of the other Ospreys are too, e.g. the Mig-17, Mig-19, Mig-21, and US aircraft books: F-4 Phantoms, F-8 Crusaders, A-4s, etc., etc.. Look them up by aircraft types – Osprey covers a wide range of different aircraft for the Vietnam War.

There were some early jets, like Mig-17s, Mig-19s, and perhaps even some Mig-21s that didn't have missiles, but I think most of their aircraft did have those from the mid-war period, and later.

A lot of their fighters were tightly controlled by the Ground Control Intercept (GCI) ground stations, and they tended to try to get a bounce on American aircraft from behind, whenever possible. Frequently, the Mig-21s would just make one high-speed pass from the rear, and then attempt to flee. That worked sometimes, though our aerial controllers were listening in, and watching their radar scopes too, which were frequently able to give warning to those aircraft units about to be bounced by the enemy.