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John Madden | Captain John Madden Flying his first combat mission on 5th October 1965, leading fighter pilot John Madden flew three combat tours in Vietnam, notching up an impressive record of 3 kills and 1 damaged, flying F-4 Phantoms. On 28th August 1972 he was part of the same mission when Steve Ritchie made Ace status. That same year Madden led over 50 combat flights and he never lost a wingman. Flights under his leadership accounted for 5 enemy aircraft downed, and 1 damaged. He left Vietnam in 1975, and retired from the USAF in 1984. On Sept. 9, DeBellevue was flying with Capt. John Madden Jr. when they were making a turn to withdraw following an encounter with a lone MiG. That's when two MiG-19s swarmed in for an attack. 'We acquired the MiGs on radar and positioned as we picked up on them visually,' DeBellevue recalled later. 'We used a slicing low-speed yo-yo to position behind the MiG-19s and started turning hard with them. We fired one AIM-9 missile, which detonated 25 feet from one of the MiG-19s. We then switched the attack to the other MiG-19 and one turn later we fired an AIM-9 at him. I observed the missile impact the tail of the MiG. The MiG continued normally for the next few seconds, then began a slow roll and spiraled downward, impacting the ground with a large fireball. Our altitude was approximately 1,500 feet at the moment of the MiG's impact.' Madden and DeBellevue returned to their base thinking they had destroyed only the second MiG-19. An investigation, aided by the testimony of another aircrew, revealed that they were the only aircrew to shoot another MiG-19 which crashed and burned on the runway at Phuc Yen that day. DeBellevue was asked how he felt about becoming an ace. 'I feel pretty good about it. It's the high point of my career,' he said at the time. 'There's no other job that you have to put out as much for. It's frustrating, and yet when you do shoot down a MiG, it's so rewarding.' |
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Phantom Fury by Robert Taylor. The biggest, fastest, most powerful fighter of its day, the McDonnell Phantom was an awesome war machine that came to dominate aerial combat for over two decades. It may have been the size of many World War II bombers but it could outperform anything that crossed its path; it was quicker, could turn faster, was better equipped with electronics, carried more ordnance than anything comparable, and it had an unbelievable rate of climb. The F-4 Phantom was the benchmark against which every fighter in the world came to be judged; it was simply the best. And when it saw combat for the first time, in Vietnam in 1961, it was the lucky Navy and Marine Corps pilots who were the first to fly it. Whether it was carrier-based attack with the Navy, land-based bombing missions with the Marines, air combat sorties, or Forward Air Control missions, it was unbeatable. So impressed were the Air Force that they bought it too, and three years later, in 1964, the USAF received their Phantoms. The Air Force pilots just could not wait to get their hands on it. And one of those just itching to take it into combat was a young, then Captain, Steve Ritchie. Flying with the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the illustrious Triple Nickel, Ritchie would, in the space of a few weeks during Operation Linebacker in the summer of 1972 become a legend - the only USAF fighter pilot Ace of the Vietnam War. The painting shows Steve Ritchie, first into action, flying his lead F-4D Phantom through a hail of deadly enemy flak as he exits the target area after a typical FAST FAC mission on enemy installations in North Vietnam, 1972. Behind him a vast trail of devastation mark the progress of the mission, as his fellow Phantom crews continue to wreak havoc with their heavy ordnance, the target area exploding in a series of mighty detonations. |
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