#Air combat maneuver kill full#

The subsequent MiG kill of this engagement was shared by both Hartmann III and Johnson. He never returned our fire, rolled, inverted, and hit a small hill, exploding and burning in a farm field.” Charlie’s rounds appeared to go down the intake and into the wing root, and mine along the top of the fuselage and through the canopy. Charlie and I fired simultaneously as he passed so close that Charlie thought I had hit his vertical stabilizer with the tip of my tail hook. He turned into us, making a head-on pass. Air Victories in Vietnam 1965-1973” as follows: “I fired a short burst at the MiG and missed, but got the MiG pilot’s attention. Johnson described this engagement in Donald J. Johnson, flying A-1H BuNo 139768, callsign “Canasta 577,” evaded them before and maneuvered to shoot down one of the MiGs with their 20 mm cannons. Hartman III, flying A-1H BuNo 137523, radio callsign “Canasta 573,” and Lt. The two enemy jets launched missiles and fired with their cannons against the two A-1Hs, but both Skyraiders’ pilots, Lt. 20, 1965, when a flight of Skyraiders from the Strike Squadron 25 (VA-25) Fist of the Fleet, took off from the USS Midway (CVA-41) supporting the rescue of a downed USAF pilot in the northwest corner of North Vietnam were attacked by a flight of MiG-17s.

The first of these victorious engagements took place on Jun. In fact, some of the most unusual kills of the conflict did not come from the F-4s, F-105s, or F-8s, but from the Korean War-era piston-engine Skyraiders, thanks to the four M3 20 mm fixed forward-firing cannons capable of firing 800 rounds per minute, that fitted the A-1Hs.

#Air combat maneuver kill full#

This airplane had a unique capability: even when it carried its full internal fuel of 2,280 pounds, a 2,200-lb torpedo, two 2,000-lb bombs, 12,5 inch rockets, two 20 mm guns and 240 pounds of ammunition, the Skyraider was still under its maximum gross weight of 25,000 pounds.Įntered in service just in time to take part in the Korean War, the Skyraiders in the improved A-1H version were quite slow nevertheless in spite of performance not even comparable to those of the other assets in the air wing’s strike group, the propeller-driven attack aircraft managed to shoot down two MiG-17s during the early part of the Vietnam War. Navy attack aircraft to disappear from the decks of the flattops was the Douglas AD Skyraider. The Douglas Skyraider has been the last piston engine propelled aircraft to shoot down a jet fighter.