yes, and most of them left chinese airspace before PLAAF had a chance to scramble fighters.
Then that pretty much debunked your claim of how the PLAAF 'repeatedly' shot down USAF fighters. Spare everyone the hyperboles next time.
380 F-105's and 700 F-4's were lost in the area of operation of north vietnam alone,
The vast majority of the loss were from SAMs, not from air-air combat.
...do you think that if the USAF pulled off 380 sorties into mainland china the way it did into iraq it would get away with any less?
Yes. Have no doubt the PLAAF leadership studied Desert Storm and Yugoslavia very closely and found itself wanting.
...one loss for the NVAF doesn't mean anything, especially for their backwards tactics and untrained pilots.
Operation Bolo was a major set back for the PAVN since the loss was upon the MIG-21. The F-4s were less maneuverable and armed with error prone Sidewinders. The USAF were also restricted to visual range only rules-of-engagement, leaving the F-4s with only those Sidewinders. Still, when engaged, the MIG-21s' superior maneuverability can be effectively countered by the F-4's superior power.
what matters is the self proclaimed best air force in the world losing 1000 planes in a tiny enclosed space to a backwards 3rd world country. especially shameful is how the USAF only produced 5 pilots with 5+ air to air kills while vietnam produced 16.
Har...You need to reconcile your own arguments. First the North Vietnamese pilots were untrained but now they are superior airmen. Make up your mind. Try taking a class in statistics. The reason why the North Vietnamese Air Force produced more aces was simply because there were more American targets, not because they were superior airmen. The reason why the Americans produced less aces was simply because the VPAF engaged in mostly air hit-and-run tactics, which was Soviet inspired, and against far less maneuverable F-105s flying predictable routes due to restrictive RoE. Yours is a classic abuse of statistics to come to a false conclusion.
There is a dictum: In a fight, you win not by fighting under your opponent's rules but by forcing him to fight under yours. And cheating is allowed.
Those rules are advantages, such as superior power or superior radar.
Operation Bolo proved that dictum. The MIG-21s when forced to fight under the F-4's rules came out the losers.
Operation Bolo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Of the 16 MiG-21s known to be in the VPAF inventory, 11 to 14 had been engaged (depending on the source), with 7 destroyed and two others probably shot down (by Combies and Maj. Herman L. Knapp, Rambler 03).
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 forced them to husband their assets by grounding the MiGs for several months for retraining and devising of new tactics.
When at least %50 of your best fighters are destroyed in a single engagement, that does not speak well for your air force. The USAF was also prevented from going after those ground radar controllers because they were manned by Soviet and Chinese crews. So if this restriction was not in place, there would not be any VPAF aces at all. Get it?
