Good research and presentation. Over years since the late 50's I have been buzzed by F-94C, P-51D Mustang, A37, A-7D watched 3 B-58 fly by under where I was standing on a granite peak in Michigan was buzzed by F-104G doing a LABS delivery practice run in Wyoming later a B52G flew by 30 feet off the ground in northern Wyoming also below where the hunting party was at the time. Last but not least I saw the last flight of the B-52D's landing through the thermal viewer on a TOW system when I was training students on M-901 ITV down at Fort Bliss.

This is fascinating. I only flew with AIM-9Ms.

Excellent video, very informative. I didn't know about the accidental shoot down of the B-52.

Beautifully presented, as always.

Again, an excellent video with ground-breaking theme and content. I have often wondered how fighter defence of the CONUS was theorised and what tactics would be employed in the late 50's and early 60's. Great work!

The irony with the bison bomber was that during the Mayday parade 10 bison did a flypaper twice to give the illusion that it was in mass production. The United States then feared a bomber gap . This soviet trick convinced the Americans to build up their bomber force.

Another VERY NICELY DONE video!! With the information you provide here, you easily could have been a participant in an "air combat maneuvering" sortie brief in just about any 1970-90 training mission (I was an USN Strike Aviator in the 80s, and your discussion here, limited to the Hun notwithstanding, could have been a solid addition to any preflight ACM briefing)!

Also another notable bomber of the Soviets during WW2 was the Pe-2. From what I understand, the IL-2 played more of an attacker role, but the Pe-2 played more of a fast/dive-bomber role in addition to some attack duties.

AIR-2 (Genie) was an unguided rocket with a 1.2 Kiloton warhead, range ~6 miles. In service starting in 1958. With a nuke, there was a bit of a fudge factor on accuracy! Earlier, before the Sidewinder, they tried the AIM-26 (Falcon) that "sort of worked" and 2.75" (70mm) unguided rocket pods, which used a shotgun like spread since they were fired in salvos.....

Excellent and very, very interesting videos, indeed. Being 57 years of age, I grew up on the tail end of all this and was a model builder as a kid, USAF and USN aircraft was a major subject of these models. Until the F16, the F100, F105, and the F4 were my favorite aircraft. Very well presented, thank you.

There was also at least one B-52 shot-down by an enemy fighter in the Vietnam War. On December 27th 1972, B-52D #56-0674 was shot-down by a VPAF Mig-21 Fishbed flown by Vu Xuan Thieu, using a K-13 (code-named AA-2 "Atoll" by NATO) missile, which is a direct duplicate of the AIM-9B Sidewinder. Don't underestimate the Sidewinder's ability to splash just about anything that flies. The story about how the Soviets got the AIM-9B Sidewinder is rather interesting as well --- as is the story of how they were able to get a pristine AIM-9D Sidewinder a decade or so later

Great quality friend! I noticed a weird difference right at the beginning with the audio, but man this video was great! I believe it had to do with the video audio combined with your voiceover.

Very impressive videos! Thank you very much for all your hard work and thorough research!

Very nice video. Some feedback: Around 9:40 i had noticed many cuts, "uhhs" and interruptions in your voiceover. That was a bit jarring, but it still really enjoyed it. ❤

Another fabulous professional military staff level briefing!! BRAVO ZULU, well done!!

Great video. Never forget: Air Force regs are written in blood.

This is THE model for clips of this type - beautifully done. Thank you.

Love your description of your channel. I'm a bit older than you. But you took the words outta my mouth. I could only read books to gain my mil aviation knowledge though! By the time I was 18 I had probably 50-60 books on Mil aviation. Sadly lost in a flood in the mid 90's. Just great content your making Sir. I'm always very surprised when someone can tell me something I don't know about military aviation history. Kudos, I doff my cap and o7 Sir.

Bravo, very informative and clear

The breath and scope of the information in this is so riveting. Thank you so much for making an incredible video.

You have high quality work. Thanks

fabulous!

Love your vintage, Revell box art thumbnail image of a Bison bomber! Actually, Revell called the bomber an IL-38 (as in Ilyushin) when the kit was released in the 1950s not knowing it was instead constructed by the Myasishchev design bureau (Perhaps they used a period Jane's "All the World's Aircraft" for reference). As far as I know that kit has never been re-issued since the early 1960s, so it remains quite the collector's item if you have one today.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

Excellent documentary! Thank you for making all these fascinating videos, love em! 🙂

Ive Subscribed to your channel... Your content is WONDERFUL.. Great Work!!

I have just discovered your channel an I like what I see, therefore: subscribed.

Wonderful video. We learned a lot of hard lessons in Vietnam in relation to our tactics as well as our weaponry. Fortunately they were not lost on the next generation of airmen or aircraft design. Training through the 1970s through the 1980s both improved in quantity and spectrum to the extent that the last quarter if the 20th century saw our fighter squadrons superior to any other time in our history of combat aviation.

The 2 navy planes are the FH Phantom (McDonald Phantom 1) and the A3D (Douglas Skylight) the A3D is the one launching the missile.

Surely Dicta Boelcke was the first attempt at a systematic approach for attacking and defending yourselves in aerial combat?

Good video

You are among a few publishing on You Tube, who fully appreciate the genius on John Boyd, and his inner circle. Thank you.

Well said 1 May Parade ! Victory parade, 9 may, was "interupted" for 19 years ! 1946 - 1965 .

So far as I'm aware - the maximum speed statistics given in books tends to be for a clean configuration of the aircraft - no external missiles. Are there any studies that look into how much extra armament would impede an intercept? In a scenario like a Tu-22 (internal weapons) vs an F-100 or F-104 with external missiles that could matter.

17:20 love how you went on a 10 tangent without breathing

Very interesting video. Thanks.

Thank you for this video!

In the late '78, I was stationed in GMU-49 at NAS Point Mugu. I remember that the AIM-9L was having problems with the four metal guides at the outer edge of the wings. The guides were not unlocking at the correct time. So for a month, we testing hundreds of guides unlocking pressure.

NATO Codenames start with: H (Helicopters), B (Bombers), C (Cargo), F (Fighters) the last 3 are either single syllable for Propeller Driven (Bear), are double syllable for jet (Foxtrot).

Thank you! Good vid and professionally presented. Interesting to see that the CIA hasn't really improved over time.

Fascinating!!!!!!

Liking your channel. Obscure long form vids. Just my thing ❤

This is brilliant.

at 19:13 that is the Canadian Velvet Glove missile, developed in partnership with the Sparrow missile team, it was abandoned in favour of the Sparrow.

Excellent!

Thanks

Love your channel, thanks

Knew about Boyd and the OODA loop but never heard of his book/papers nor have I heard of the accidental shoot down.😮😔

Watched this and the 102 video...really great work. With all the limitations of 50s tech and random assumptions about how to conduct an air war in the jet age, we are probably very lucks nothing ever happened till we worked it all out in a few proxy wars.

did you hear about the vulcan exercise against the USA?

would have been an excellent addition to include the use of the F-100 over South Vietnam as a air asset for front line troops who needed air cover during ground operations. I know they were used because they flew from Bein Hoa air base while I was stationed there in 1970, almost on a continuos basis, daily.

Where the Soviets reverse engineered aircraft presented a major annoyance to the USAF, was that their development incurred double the cost of the entire Manhattan Program. Additionally, the Soviets were free to offer a clear threat to NATO.

Well well well... Im glad KZfaq turned me onto your channel! This is excellent! I took a screenshot of your subscriber count bc I have a feeling it's about to explode

19:20 lol even the missiles wings have roundels on them. I've never seen that before. I'm sure that was discarded before long, simply because of the headache of having an insure every missile Finn had them

Well done, keep it up!

Consider doing a video all about early radar systems and how they worked, and how they were actually operated. It's surprisingly hard to find good info on that. Everyone knows that they had a radar scope, but what does that actually show them, what does it look like? What different modes were available in various sets. How did the operator control the various functions? Some of that is getting into kind of particular territory, but just covering A, B, C scopes, PPI scopes and the rest would be cool. No one else talks about it, it took me a while just to learn that much, and im still not sure how that changed over the years, or kf Soviets were any different. And some of it i still don't know. How does a radar tell a ground target from a big rock? What does a ground target look like on a radar screen? Clearly they could do it, and it was even automated by the 60s, with a little icon representing the target instead of the raw returns, but how it all worked is still mysterious to me. I wish there was a source that gave the radar type used in each aircraft, what scopes and modes it offered, ranges to typical targets, scan time, etc.

When I heard the bombers wing blew off first thing I thought was centrifugal force and the bomber crew being pinned against a wall on the way down

Thanks, an interesting video. I'd heard the story of the B-52 shoot down before, but not the fault that led to it. Tragic...

Very nice

Excellent video however remember, with John Boyd, when he wrote the Aerial Attack Study he was an instructor at the Weapon Fighter School at Nellis flying F-100's in the 50's. It was the front line TAC fighter for the USAF at the time and he didn't have the knowledge or experience to expand the study to other aircraft. Now the later in life the John Boyd in the 60's who developed EM Theory did expand his knowledge to pretty much anything that could fly but that really didn't influence aircraft design until the F-15 and F-16 in the late 60 & early 70's.

"Sidewinders motor burns for 18 seconds." Are you sure about that? 🙂

Fascinating and I caught a glimpse a Canadian missile which I think was called the Velvet Glove.

That story about the Ciudad Juarez is shocking and sad 😢

please do more videos about the F4 phantom

Super-interesting if slightly baffling : I wasn’t aware late-fifties and early sixties units tasked with defending CONUS against Soviet bombers ever carried Sidewinders and had moved straight from unguided rockets to the Falcon missile. Can anyone shed some more light on this? Were F100s ever assigned to ADC - they didn’t carry radar and therefore couldn’t have been SAGE compatible…in fact the earlier models weren’t even wired for missiles - in which case why did Boyd write such a comprehensive essay based around the F100 if they were never tasked with bomber interception duties? I’m thinking maybe Boyd was writing a theoretical piece and not a practical guide? Hopefully someone out there has the actual answers…

Your narration and background output volume on your introduction is much louder than the volume in the rest of the video. I had to check my volume app to see if it kicked off on me again 🧐

B52s had quad 50 cal in that era. Not twin 20mm.

I didn't know about the B52 accident. You have to wonder at the safety culture of the time, doing something one button press from disaster and hoping everything goes ok.

Lance corporal Rolf Peterson with the canuck missle

The audio is weirdly choppy.

the missile knows where it is, because it knows where it isn't

The USAF was always more comfortable with interceptors over air superiority fighters. Send them up, launch some missiles, the enemy is driven off or killed, return to base, rinse, and repeat. And so the F-103, F-108, and F-12 arrive on drawing boards. It stands to reason none of these planes would have been effective. At no time in the 20th century was beyond visual range combat allowed for the simple reason that there were too many friendly aircraft up there.

I’d be happy to help you request records from the government.

It's not necessary for s strategic bomber to return.. which was part of the problem

1:27 - interesting photo. Pe-8 (?) being refueled by a US AAC gasoline truck - somewhere in Germany in 1945?

To call the bomber force of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War 'a bit of a joke' is 'a bit misleading', considering the historical context that the Soviets - despite their initial neglect of the impressive Tsarist bomber force in WW I (the first 4 engine designs in 1912, Tupolev's ANT-4 in 1925 and the ANT-6, building toward the world's largest 800 bomber force in 1930 and the ANT-5 holding the record for endurance flight until the 1970s) during the Russian Civil War - had mastered intercontinental flight via the Arctic in the late 1930s (Tupolev's massive ANT-25 in 1937, the PE-8 bombed Berlin in 1941 before enabling Allied communications and conferences). Their geography, stretching for more than 10.000 km gave reason to become invested in front line aviation as a support of it's indispensable ground forces within a combined arms doctrine - with long range transport aviation recognized as a crucial element of air mobile maneuver within a vast, thinly developed territory, hence the large and separate units of paratrooper and air assault to this day. So there is a strong doctrinal aspect in Soviet aviation history - just as the West had put it's faith - rather blindly - in Douhet's concept of 'strategic bombing' (see the rise of a 'Bomber Mafia' within the US during WW II) which proved largely ineffective whenever armament remained conventional (Nazi Germany produced never more equipment and vehicles than in 1944, Vietnam was unwinnable for the US despite more ordnance deployed than in WW II - conflicts were decided by advances on the ground - like the German failure to gain the oil fields around the Caspian Sea, where ground attack aircraft could attrite armored advances, same as in Normandy during the Battle of the Bulge). The reason why Soviet doctrine shifted after the Cold War, pursuing offensive long range aviation was simply the introduction of the nuclear bomb, making strategic bombing finally a 'viable' military objective - that is on paper - for the devastating reason that became clear along the nuclear tests. As long as intercontinental ballistic missiles and submerged launch of nuclear missiles were unheard of (pushed by Admiral Gorshkov unto Chrushchev after STALIN's death in 1953), the Soviets tried to catch up by reverse engineering, mass producing (1949) and further developing stranded US B-29 eventually into the Tupolev Tu-95 (1955 - unlike the under-powered 'Bison', a successful design despite subsonic turboprop propulsion, able to match the jet powered US B-52 in intercontinental reach and thus turning the Arctic into a likely theater of war that demanded US air defense infrastructure, diverted from Europe), concluding the trajectory with the Tu-160 much later in 1987, despite engine technology industrial espionage, the most advanced strategic bomber even before the US B-1B of 1984 (a 'budget' downgrade of the original low level penetration, supersonic B-1 of 1974 that could have replaced the B-52)... Much had to be acquired in guided missile and RADAR early warning technology and organization, ground based, layered air defense networks (arguably further profiting from covert German pre-war collaboration as well as captured or recruited scientists and engineers - e.g. Junkers - but denying Vietnam airspace to more than 10.000 lost US aircraft) to built the Soviet military aviation, the Russian state had inherited and modernized along late Soviet postulates (a joint service 'Reconnaissance Strike Complex' with real time intelligence and automated command and control, delivering conventional precision guided stand-off weapons as effective as tactical nuclear arms - some by the Tu-95H of 1984, the T-95MS of 2015 and the Tu-95MSM of 2020...). That is about the military history behind the Soviet nuclear armed long range aviation force. The account of Boyd's aerial combat considerations is valuable as it reflects contemporary, early Cold War assumptions and practice - explaining the eventual political fall of the US 'Bomber Mafia' and the rise of the 'Fighter Mafia', originally stressing air superiority and maneuverability, but almost immediately taking on a strategic role in an increasingly multi-role design (reflected in a poor readiness of the B-1B bomber force, leading to recent accidents).

What was at the moscow parade this year except for a car and spectators ?

The B-47 wasn't transcontinental even from Alaska it can't reach the small Russian cities in the Far Eastern District it had to be based in Europe to reach Soviet targets unless aerial refuelling was used which would add significant delays in a full nuclear war.

The problem with the F 100 missile pylon was replicated throughout the entire US Air Force. It turns out that it was a manufacturing defect that allowed the moisture to collect, and this was an event that was in evitable going to occur, and it didn't matter on the pilot it mattered with the fact that the moisture was present in all of those pylons. eventually, of course they were all replaced as fast as could happen, but the farming practice did lots of the B-52, that occurred if not that day, it was going to happen sooner or later.

08:50 - the AIM-9B did not fly on a collision course, did it?

The Bisons orbited to make it look like there was more than their actually was. The ' Bison ' was a failure in service.

Tragically the B52 shoot down is yet another example of not pointing a gun/missile at anything you don't intend to shoot. How many times and how many lives? 😢

When the soviets showed off the Bison its future as a conventional bomber was already dead. They wanted all their bombers to be armed by some sort of missile as soon as possible. The Badger recived the K10, the Bear the Kh20, however nothing could fit the Bison... So it became ASW. Btw before the soviets considered one way missions to US... Nuclear war is one way trip afterall.

Insufficient range for round trip attacks is often mentioned today as a limitation of Soviet bomber forces and is used to imply that concerns over Soviet air power were overblown at the time. In reality, it was a nearly irrelevant factor, firstly because there were more bombers than bombs in the Soviet arsenal during the 1950s (meaning that returning to base was pointless, because all bombs could be delivered in the first wave) and secondly because even if you did have more bombs than you could deliver in a single wave, the enemy could nullify these by destroying your bomber bases in his retaliatory strike. As such, while it is true that publicly available estimates overstated the production of the longest - range Soviet bombers, the 'real' figures given by critics seeking to refute the bomber gap 'hysteria' tend to be grossly misleading. They tend to exclude Badgers and Bulls, which were produced in very large quantities, and which could launch one - way strikes on North American targets; and two - way missions were largely pointless for LRA at that time.

Lots of Nike Hercules. I'd have to assume they functioned but I hope the Ordinance Bureau didn't. . . . S-75s obviously functioned.

Say what you will. but Boyd put Everyone who fights in the air, or plans to do so, On Notice. The F-16 (and, Imho, both the Saab J-35 & J37, perhaps the J-39?) seem to bear-out his theories, and, oddly, the YF-20 should have been the Star of such thoughts, even If based upon a much older F-5/T-38 airframe. In his Day, only the NAVY F-11 and F-8 came close to being 'doctrine', where the F-5 was just a tad too austere? Perhaps. In any case, the F-16 has held it's own for 5 decades, based upon Boyd's observations of how Fighting should occur.

What a puny missile 😮

aim/val ace/val?!? would be a lot of work… but worth it

The TU 4 looked similar to B29 but would have lacked many sophisticted systems of the B29. The russian Concorski was very much inferior to the british French Concord

Been thinking about the statement that you keep making that the speed of the missile is "the maximum speed plus the speed of the launching aircraft". I get what you are saying and that's the easiest way to say it, but i don't think that's exactly true. If a missile will accelerate to 2,000 mph from a standstill, its not a given that it will end up at 2,600 from a plane at 600mph and 2,400 from one at 400mph. Because the energy imparted by rocket engine is a fixed amount, in theory, and each one is the same. But air resistance doubles as you go faster, it only takes like 25hp to cruise in your car at 40mph, but you need over 100hp to maintain 80mph. Thats why a 2,000hp plane isn't twice as fast as a 1,000hp plane, if all else is the same (it can be if you minimize drag and allow it to make that power at higher altitude, etc). Not sure how you would write that equation, but the actual top speed would be whatever Delta-V results in adding X amount of energy as acceleration on top of the existing air speed. A missile that it starting at a higher speed starts with much higher drag as well, which increases to a much higher level by the end, because the eventual top speed will be that much higher. I think it essentially extends the burn time by getting the missile to say, 1,500 with three seconds left of burn, instead of one, because it started already halfway to that speed. Unless I'm thinking this all wrong. Clearly higher launch speed adds energy, but it's not a fixed number. I think mathematically it would be the rated top speed of the missile, plus whatever additional speed would be imparted by an equal amount of energy that it took to attain the initial speed, which is going to be much less in knots. If it took 100 units of energy to accelerate the missile to 600 kts, and 10,000 to reach the rated Mach 4, after it reaches Mach 4 it will still accelerate whatever amount 100 units will impart at that speed and with that level of drag resisting it. Which isn't going to be very much, but it's still energy imparted to the missile, and since drag also _drops_ as the speed falls after burnout, the added energy will still substantially increase the range. Bullets are kind of similar, the faster the bullet or shell is fired, the greater the amount of power is needed to make it go faster. It's not hard to go from 500fps to 1,000fps, a small increase in capacity can do that. That same amount of energy will only take a round at 2,500fps up to maybe 2,600. But that extra 100fps has an outsized effect on the power of the bullet or shell.

So in 1960 what was the best interceptor in US service ? It probably wasn't the F-100. It probably wasn't the brand new F-106 Delta Dart with no guns and used the Falcon series of missiles notoriously unreliable against fighters but a little better vs bombers. So I'd say it was the Navy's F-8 crusader which had also just been introduced. Unless of course you're going to be using the Genie Nuclear rocket then it would be the F-101 Voodoo and back to the F-106. Am I missing anything ?

6:35 Boyd wrote the AAS as a guide for the FWS. Also, where can I find evidence that the 40-second legend is a myth?

FYI, The B-52 either used 4 x Cal .50 guns or a single M-61A 20mm Gatling gun. It did not carry twin 20mm guns, that was the B-47

you can do a second take for audio and not mushmouthedly jam a bunch of words together, otherwise neat

The bomber gap fear was based on miscounting the Bisons and Badgers over Moscow on that fateful October parade. In order to impress the world Kruschev and his military bosses had their bombers fly long circles, so each bomber would overfly Red Square multiple times. Not realising this, the CIA and DIA counted each actual bomber multiple times, coming to an estimate of actual Soviet bomber strength that was several times higher than the actual numbers. It wasn't until the actual numbers were being verified accurately during the SALT negotiations that the truth became evident (and then the USA was still very suspicious that the Soviets were hiding hundreds of bombers somewhere).

Imo the bison looks better than the bear

Anybody else a bit thrown off with cultural traditions and genetic heritage being in that OODA loop? I mean, I get it was the 50s, but wtf does genetics have to do with a dogfight?

The young lt who's missle let lose, later became the Deputy Commander for Maintenance.

Boyd was a hack. stop using him

That’s China or Korea, fyi, not Moscow.