As the F-4s landed at Ubon, their ground crews lined the taxi way. As each Phantom passed, cockpits opened, the pilots indicated with upheld fingers the numbers of kills they'd scored. Of the 16 MiG-21s known to be in the VPAF inventory, 11 to 14 had been engaged on that day (depending on the source), with seven destroyed and two others probably shot down (by Combies and Maj. Herman L. Knapp, Rambler 03). Years later, Vietnamese government sources admitted that Operation Bolo on January 2 was one of the worst days for the VPAF during the war. The VPAF claimed to have lost five Mig-21's, with no enemy kills to claim.
The success of Operation Bolo led Seventh Air Force to plan a similar mission simulating an RF-4C photo reconnaissance mission. The immediate reaction to Bolo by the VPAF was to challenge the daily "recce" mission on the two days immediately following Bolo, in each case causing the mission to be aborted. On both January 5 and January 6, a pair of 555th TFS F-4C Phantoms, flying a close formation to appear as a single target on North Vietnamese radar, flew the high-speed profile. On the second day, intercepted by 4 MiGs, they again surprised and shot down two during the encounter, with Crab 01 (Capt. Richard M. Pascoe and 1st Lt. Norman E. Wells) and Crab 02 (Maj. Thomas M. Hirsch and 1st Lt. Roger J. Strasswimmer) each scoring a kill.
For the North Vietnamese (and their Soviet allies who supplied the MiG-21 aircraft and helped set up the integrated air defense network), the two reverses on January 2 and January 5-6 forced them to husband their assets by grounding the MiGs for several months for retraining and devising of new tactics.