Rafale kills F-22....

jskibo said:
OK, back to dog-fighting...

Manfred von Richthofen vs. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, Who wins?
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Ditka.
600full-mike-ditka.jpg
 
Not sure how often two ace pilots met in combat and sometimes when they did, it wasn't quite like in the movies. There were legendary one on one fights, like Cunningham vs some shiite hot MiG-17 driver. Sometimes, when two quality pilots met, they did go at it. One fight that comes to mind was Saburo Sakai vs VF-5's James "Pug" Southerland in an F4F on 7 Aug 42. Though it was Pug's first fight, he was a highly experienced aviator and had just scored the first kill of Guadalcanal, downing a Betty bomber. Sakai had destroyed or damaged 50 allied aircraft and only jumped Southerland when he was getting the best of Sakai's two wingman though Southerland was out of ammo. Pug's F4F was found a few years back, in the jungle and he still had some ammo in its wing. His Colt 1911 .45 was found too!!! Crazy in that in his book, Sakai had said he had hit the Wildcat's prop and when the wreckage was found, two 7.7mm holes were found in the Wildats prop. Anyway...
 
USMCmech said:
Correct me if I am wrong here.

Cunningham's fight vs the Mig-17 is pretty well documented.

But, he probably didn't kill the Vietnamese ace of aces
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It's believed the MiG-17 was most likely flown by a squadron or regiment commander but Toon was most likely made up by Cunningham himself. Cunningham claims intel sources said it was the mysterious Col Toon or Tomb. The leading ace of the war was Nguyen Van Coc, a MiG-21 pilot who claimed 9 kills...7 (3 F-4's, 3 F-105's, an F-102 and drone) of his kills match US records and all were from 1967-1968. He was one of the MiG-21's shot down on 2 Jan 67 during Operation Bolo but survived and went on to claim 9 kills. Only two other MiG pilots made ace, matching US records and both were MiG-21 pilots during 1972 and both had 5 kills, Nguyen Doc Soat and Nguyen Tien Sam. I think Sam was shot down but survived as well. The only MiG-17 pilot that comes close to 5 kills was Nguyen Van Bay but the VPAF would award an entire flight of MiG-17's a kill when they shot down a US aircraft. Though he was involved in 5-7 kills, he was not always the shooter.
 
Seggy said:
Didn't Cunningham later do jail time for bribery?
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Yes, he served 10 years and thought he just got out or is in a half-way house. He was not a well liked or honorable man, I met him four different times and though he was always nice to me, I knew officers/pilots who knew him when I was stashed at Top Gun years ago. He was •....I think he took 2.1 million in bribes, pleaded guilty, etc. Seemed the only thing he was good at was killing MiG's.
 
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