F4

After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israelis dispatched an F-4 crew to TOPGUN

New tactics are acquired in battle, lost or discarded when conflict is over, and relearned at great expense during the following conflict. This is a recurring theme in the history of air combat. When America was sucked into the Vietnam War, this pattern continued into the 1960s. Despite having an advantage in training and equipment, US Navy aircrews were struggling to defeat North Vietnamese fighters. Lessons in air combat from earlier conflicts that had been forgotten or thought to be irrelevant due to technological advancements were once more useful.

The Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, TOPGUN, was founded in 1968 to train others in these tactics, teach Navy aircrews the fundamentals of air combat, and make sure that naval aviation “never again” forgot its lessons.

Although foreign aircrew from a number of nations, primarily Israel, Australia, Germany, and Canada, attended TOPGUN’s ground school and some, including the Germans and Israelis in 1975, actually flew against the TOPGUN instructors, very few foreign students attended the TOPGUN class, according to Brad Elward in his book TOPGUN: The Legacy: The Complete History of TOPGUN and Its Impact on Tactical Aviation.

After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, according to Dan “Bad Bob” McCort, an F-4 pilot who worked there from 1977 to 1980, the Israelis sent a crew to TOPGUN. “We had them come through as a crew in a class so that they would have interaction with the staff and the students because of their experiences and their employment of the F-4 specifically against a MiG-21, the high threat at the time,” McCort said. “I remember going out one on one against Zev Rahz in an F-4—I was in an F-5 for that mission—and watching him employ it in a way that I’ve never seen an F-4 employed. I mean, that was a no-kidding eye-opening; this is what we call a pivotal moment here.”

According to McCort, the encounter with the Israelis altered the way TOPGUN instructed pilots on the MiG-21. “We had this concept of how to employ the airplanes based on some of the results of the Have programs, and that’s what we were teaching.” McCort added, “A lot of these tactics had been, in concept, understood, but these guys having done it day in, day out (because we hadn’t got to that point yet), really clearly got it!” McCort went on: “For example, Zev was the one that showed us how to turn into a MiG-21, maintain knots, and drag the guy down in altitude to the point where his thrust-to-weight advantage and his energy addition rate and his lack of bleed would make the difference.”‘ McCort said that as he and Zev met and passed, “I was used to seeing an F-4 either try for a two-circle turn or go into a vertical move to try to get something to happen. Zev basically tried to drive it one circle, and he just dove down deep. It was a really big surprise. That was a tactic that we jumped on and refined to exploit the energy addition for the Phantom and the bleed rate in the MiG-21. This was a key component of my 1v1 lecture in the F-4 against what became a Category II airplane.

Mike “Squeeze” Gaskell, an instructor on staff in the late 1970s, vividly recalled the Israelis’ visit to TOPGUN. “I’ve never seen things done with the F-4 that these guys could do with the F-4,” said Gaskell. “They were excellent pilots,” Gaskell said there was one incident in particular that stuck with him. “During one of our debriefs, they really didn’t want to hear a lot about the TOPGUN way of doing a debrief or tactics. They kept asking questions […]. This guy would ask, ‘Now, when you did this, what were you doing?’ And he’s pretty much grilling me. I didn’t understand what it was all about until years later. Those guys were the two pilots who led the strike—Operation Opera or Babylon—against the Iraqi nuclear power plant.” Here, Gaskell was referring to the Israeli’s Jun. 7, 1981 strike. Saddam had a powerful air force at that time, “and they wanted to know more [about Iraqi Air Force air-to-air tactics]. That’s why they were there.”

The Israelis’ presence also helped TOPGUN realize how important it is to train for “one v. many” combat scenarios. Manfred “Fokker” Rietsch, TOPGUN’s first Marine Corps instructor, recalled the Israelis told the staff, “You need to develop tactics for a ‘one versus many.’ ‘How do you fight one versus many?’ So we took their word for it and said, `Okay, fine. We’ll have one versus many tactics.’” Rietsch said it was really an acknowledgment that in a large fight, “You’re not going to have a Sparrow or be two versus two, or two versus one, or one versus whatever. You’re going to have a bunch of airplanes out there. This is where it’s so important to have the internal coordination within your flight on how you sort, who targets who, and if you engage, who’s going to engage what.”‘ The “one v. many” flight was introduced in the mid-1970s under Jim Ruliffson’s command tour but was slow to take start because it demanded “a lot of assets,” said Rietsch.”

Curiously, the USAF also realized the advantages of “one versus many” training at around the same time. Donald L. Gish, then a major on active duty, wrote the following in a 1975 article for the Fighter Weapons School Review: “Other areas in which training and tactics must improve are ‘one vs many’ and ‘gaggle’ type engagements. Viewing the European scenario, we cannot expect to fight with a superior number of aircraft, not when the odds are even.” Gish wrote further, “We must anticipate and train for an element against four or six opponents, or a flight of four against twelve.” Due to their perceived impending conflict on the plains of Europe, where they would be outnumbered by Soviet and Warsaw Pact air forces, both fighter weapons schools started training.

TOPGUN: The Legacy: The Complete History of TOPGUN and Its Impact on Tactical Aviation is available to order here.

Photo by War Thunder Via Pinterest and U.S. Air Force