Navy aviation officials were stunned in the late 1960s at the heavy losses sustained in Operation Rolling Thunder, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara's attempt to win the Vietnam War with a sustained aerial blitz.
This, despite confidence that American planes — and their pilots — were far superior to the Russian-built MiGs flown by the enemy, statistics said otherwise. Only two enemy planes were being downed for every U.S. plane that was lost.
Naval Aviator Dan Pedersen was based on a carrier in Yankee Stadium in the Gulf of Tonkin, the major operating base. As losses mounted, “we learned what it was like to sit at a wardroom table surrounded by empty chairs.” He and colleagues became used to “a burning American plane heading towards the jungle below.” The Navy lost 532 aircraft in three years.
What went wrong? In Capt. Pedersen's opinion, the unwitting villains were Pentagon “whiz kids who decided the day of close-range air combat was over.” Instead, the U.S. reliance would be upon long-range missile technology. “No longer did you have to close to within a few hundred feet to score a kill. Pilots could shoot an enemy plane out of the sky long before getting into dogfight range.”
Supposedly, at any rate. But such proved deadly wrong. The North Vietnamese responded with defensive missiles (based on captured American technology) which blasted U.S. planes from the sky.
Pilots were barred from seeking out one-on-one encounters.
The pilots who suffered the deadly brunt of the policy realized it was failing. Once a plane's missile was fired, it was defenseless, without the standby 20mm cannon for protection.
Capt. Dan Pedersen became one of a handful of aviators who convinced Navy brass that a change in tactics was essential. Thus was born a Navy program intended to revolutionize aerial combat. (First known as “Topgun,” the name was changed to “Top Gun” by producers of a movie starring Tom Cruise, who wanted a snappier title.)
The change began as what Capt. Pedersen calls “a sort of underground subculture with supersonic fighters.” Pilots used a sector of airspace some 80 miles west of San Diego for what was illicit dogfight training.
Word of the informal “fight club” spread among Navy aviators. Some tactics sound basic in retrospect. For instance: “Never lose sight of your opponent.” As Capt. Pedersen puts it, “Lose sight, lose the flight.”
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