Col Toom Ace Of Aces...Or Was He?

[casey jones]

I now have the complete set DVD "Dog Fights" and it is just marvolus....years ago I had a copy
Air Progress Magazine that had a artcle of the PDRV Air Force ace...it showed a picture of his
Mig-21 with 15 American stars on the highly polished fuslage. It also showed another picture
of him standing by his Mig-21 wearing an american flying helmet, american fliying boots, and
a american air force flying suit. Since then I have searched the net for this elusive ace...in
the artical he described the Phamtun F-4 as no dog fighter and that it had a difficult time in
staying with him during a dog fight. I have also found a number of You Tube interviews with
PDRV pilots who had shot down at least 5 F-4s...but it is all in VIetnamese.

Cheers

Casey

 

[bearcat241]

Speaking of Tomb and his lot, you can actually credit these guys for the creations of "Top Gun" FWS, the USAF equivalent "Red Flag", the F-15, F-16 and F-14. They forced the US Pentagon to change tactics and weapons as a painful reminder to the generals and the aircraft manufacturers that close combat dogfighting - with a gun - will always remain as the only path to air dominance and air superiority. The F-4's design was never intended for this role. Like the F4F Wildcat and the P40 Tomahawk vs the Zero in WWII, the Phantom, with its unreliable air2air missile arsenal and lack of original guns, was only just enough to give the enemy something to think about, but it was not an air superiority weapon when stacked against dissimilar competition. Add to that a whole cadre of Vietnam-era US Air Force and Navy fighter/bomber pilots who had lost the art of pure gunfighting. The redemption of the Wildcats and Tomahawks were their team-playing, gunfighter-minded pilots. And when the US pilots in Vietnam went back to practicing this gunfighter mindset with team tactics they became more than a match for anything the NVAF could put up.

 

[TARPSBird]

I think Col. Toon (or Tomb or Tuan) has turned out to be a fictional Red Baron type character, the Vietnamese themselves have admitted it. There are about a dozen or so confirmed VNAF aces with 5+ kills. They had some good aviators, unlike our more recent adversaries (Libyans and Iraqis) who would eject as soon as their threat warning gear beeped.

 

[Willy]

I think Col. Toon (or Tomb or Tuan) has turned out to be a fictional Red Baron type character, the Vietnamese themselves have admitted it. There are about a dozen or so confirmed VNAF aces with 5+ kills. They had some good aviators, unlike our more recent adversaries (Libyans and Iraqis) who would eject as soon as their threat warning gear beeped.

That's what I've understood about Toom is that he's fictional.

 

[bearcat241]

That's what I've understood about Toom is that he's fictional.

Same here, but without all the facts i didn't want to go there. But regardless of the fiction, their ace threats were not imagined. Along with the SAM's, these guys took down a lot of good US pilots and forced some of the most perilous rescue ops in the history of aviation. They might have been even more dangerous had it not been for their strict tethering to GCI even after merging. But in the end they changed the way we trained and fought and built our high performance fighters. I salute them as worthy adversaries. :salute: