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US Pilot Shot Down Four Soviet MiGs in 30 minutes – A secret for 50 years
- opensores 4y ago[flagged]
- nradov 4y agoRetired naval aviator Ward Carroll interviewed Royce Williams and got a firsthand account of the engagement. https://youtu.be/7tqHWH1bYb0 https://youtu.be/7tqHWH1bYb0
- jackfoxy 4y agoWard puts out quality content on his channel. He frequently interviews professional military analysts and asks the kind of questions professionals want answered, not the puff-piece talking head interviews on the major networks.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jeffreyrogers 4y agoThere is an old manual on USAF dog fighting tactics written by Frederick Blesse after the Korean War. It's pretty interesting: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/delimitedoptions/files/docs/NGNG.pdf https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/delimitedoptions/files/do...
- GalenErso 4y ago"Assume every pilot you meet is the world's best (you can swallow your pride that long) and maneuver your aircraft accordingly until he shows you he is not." "When in doubt - attack!"
- formerly_proven 4y ago[flagged]
- godzillabrennus 4y agoIn Ukraine today an entire Russian Air Force might be shot down by a nerf gun (aided of course by Putin’ led decades of systemic corruption allowing the planes to become unusable for their intended purpose).
- cpursley 4y agoYet Russia keeps running sorties and plane based missile launches with impunity. Please consider balancing out your news with sources other than reddit and twitter.
- knodi 4y agoProvide the counter balance sources please.
- cpursley 4y agoWestern sources have reported over and over that Ukrainian air defense is severally degraded and their airforce is basically non-existent since early on. And that Russia has lobbed many Kh-22's and other ballistics from their Tu-22s and Mig-21s. There's a reason Ukrainian leadership is asking for F-16s and Patriot missiles defense system now. I know its fun to imagine otherwise, but this is a time for maturity and realism about the threat and how to counter if effectively; this is not call of duty - real people are dying. Only amateurs and fools underestimate their enemy. Arrogance and incompetency gets people killed in war. The Russians might "suck" according to social media, but they're somehow still inflicting major damage and taking territory.
- justhere4beer 4y agoF-16's make sense, they are combat effective. Patriot missiles make less sense. They are crap. The only redeeming value to provide Patriots is to deplete inventory.
- kenjackson 4y agoWhy only the second highest medal? What types of things are required to win the highest medal?
- dmoy 4y agoSelf-sacrifice and very high risk of one's own life (a not insignificant number are given posthumously) So a lot of medal of honor recipients are infantry pulling wounded squad mates out of danger in extreme circumstances. The entire air force has only 17, the army has over two thousand.
- sigzero 4y agoHe did risk his life when he interjected himself between the fleet and the approaching MIGs and then spent the next 30 minutes in a dogfight to down 4 of them. It's probably a lot harder in the Air Force to get one but I would consider that one.
- b112 4y agoHe was brave, and did his duty. But, is this different than infantry advancing while under fire?
- mustache_kimono 4y agoThe highest is the Medal of Honor for "Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor
- garbagecoder 4y agoYeah to get a better idea of what that means there might be an example on Army writer. You have to write these a certain way and the granting authority will have their own quirks.
- garbagecoder 4y ago
- Topgamer7 4y agoThe article states that the Russians released information that corrected the record from 3 to 4 kills. I would love to see actual military reports from both sides of the encounter.
- egberts1 4y agoAt first, a direct interview of the said pilot shows no shotdown of four aircrafts. direct source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SImG_7g-Lvg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SImG_7g-Lvg
- jameshart 4y agoI mean, he doesn’t count them off, but he describes what he saw at the time - talks about the hits he saw, the planes he saw going down. The CNN article actually says that four kills were only confirmed by the release of Soviet records in the 1990s, so even at the time he only thought he’d got three.
- whartung 4y agoObviously this account didn’t make it, but if you enjoy hearing about air combat actions, I can highly recommend the series “Dogfights” from the history channel. It gets really in depth about what’s going on, the encounters, the tactics, the technology. For me it was edge of your seat TV. I think History put many of these on YouTube. My only lament is that I can’t seem to find the pilot episode (or, rather, the show they did that eventually turned into a series). That show had a great account of Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s action in Vietnam. The only Naval Ace of the Vietnam War, he, too, shot down 3 aircraft in a single engagement. That awarded him the Navy Cross. He became a disgraced congressman convicted of fraud and corruption. That may be why we can’t find that show anymore. But it was a compelling account, broadcast before the scandal. Anyway, if this topic is interesting, I highly recommend “Dogfights”.
- the_af 4y agoWhat I find fascinating is that the Vietnamese air force (not just the Soviets helping them) was quite capable, giving the USAF much trouble. The Vietnamese even had fighter aces! You don't hear about that too often.
- jononomo 4y agoI read the article carefully, but I still can’t figure out how Royce Williams managed this feat. It seems like a situation out of a movie in which the bad guys miss when they fire, but the good guy always hits when he fires. He should have lost a dogfight against only one MIG, since the MIG was the superior aircraft. Was he just unbelievably lucky?
- the_af 4y agoHe probably both flew well and was very lucky! He mentions the Soviets also flew well but made mistakes. It's not outside the realm of possibility that they simply were as unlucky as he was lucky.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 4y agoThe Migs put 263 holes in his aircraft. Grumman combat survivability and skills got him back to the carrier.
- Sharlin 4y agoWhy did the Soviet pilots open fire? Are there any records that give more information as to their motives? Surely the Soviet brass wanted to avoid direct confrontation with the Americans as well!
- aoki 4y agoThis was in 1952. Soviet pilots started flying over Korea in 1951, posing as Chinese or Korean pilots [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_and_the_Korean_War#Soviet_Pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_and_the_Korean_Wa...
- Eleison23 4y ago[dead]