US Navy Fighters ’97

First impressions (1998): MiG-21 vs F-4 Phantom

US Navy Fighters ’97 kicks off the campaign with President Richard Milhaus Nixon announcing Operation Linebacker.

And then it's over to you, strapped into the F4J Phantom (with guns) and ready to rock'n'roll!

If you want a tad more authenticity you can fly the F-4B which had no guns. Be warned though the AIM-7 Sparrows and AIM-9B Sidewinders are dumbed down from their usual sim efficiency. This was designed, I believe, to give you a taste of their actual performance (hits and misses) in combat at the time. The record was fairly dismal.

Anyway, drop the flaps, burner on and HAUL the beast over the top.

This MiG is about to meet Marx! ... maybe ... With his burner on he's a pretty good target for the AIM-9 unless he hauls it past the sun in which case the missile will lose lock.

The missile missed and a series of vertical scissors ensued until... my wingman shot him down.

So it's Back to the ship we go, mission accomplished, ah well if only life were like a sim! On the other side of the ideological fence you can fly my favourite, the MiG-21 Fishbed.

After a spectacularly unsuccessful (read fatal) intercept mission against 3 F-4 Phamtoms's, I thought I'd best try again, this time heeding the advice given in the briefing, to use classic GCI tactics of the period.

Accordingly this time we remained low and radar silent until our flight was in firing position, about 1 1/2 miles behind and below the Yankee dogs! Going supersonic we unleashed a volley of missiles, hit the treetops and got out of there!

We zipped at low level, until, reaching rising terrain, and still hugging the ground we encountered dense cloud at 5,000 feet.

The experience of squinting through the windscreen looking for the ground while travelling near supersonic made me a tad nervous so I ordered a course change 135 degrees left.

By examining the moving map display..... which certainly wasn't present in an original MiG-21, but I wasn't complaining, I saw we had left the high ground and we descended back to the deck in time to see our glorious comrades in Air defense splash the western bandits.

Another victory against the capitalist / imperialist tyrants!

Flushed with success I immediately volunteered to show my North Vietnamese comrades the correct tactical employment of the Fishbed's older sibling, the MiG-17 Fresco.

Ahem, ahem... this was a bad move as it turned out!