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RNZAF A-4 Skyhawks Smoked USAF F-4 Phantoms

How RNZAF Pilots Outflew Some Of The Best From the USAF

Former Commanding Officer of 75 Sqn RNZAF, Wing Commander John Lanham provides some interesting information on how well the Royal New Zealand Air Force Strike Wing pilots faired against their US counterparts during joint military exercises in the early 1980s.

John notes:

"We could give a very good account of ourselves (against other nations) simply because we had a good dog fighting aircraft, and of course that point was well made that in the Navy's Top Gun program, made famous by Tom Cruise, of course (and the movie was of absolutely nothing like the Top Gun program)".

"But the Top Gun program was designed as an operational readiness exercise, as it's been found over the years that the most dangerous time for a fighter or a strike pilot is his first ten missions. So if you can simulate those first ten missions in some training program, the pilot has a much greater chance of surviving.

So the Navy's Top Gun and the United States Air Force 'Red Flag' programw were set up and designed to try to create (much as you can without firing real bullets) your first ten missions, and they were enormously realistic in that you did have missiles fired at you but they were paper mache, the missile radars would go off, they would use guns to fire, they would track you on radar and play it all back.

And of course, they had the famous aggressor squadrons in the Air Force equipped with F-4s (Phantoms) and the adversary squadrons in the Navy equipped with Skyhawks who simulated Soviet aircraft. Those aircraft were actually painted in Soviet colors, with the pilots wearing Soviet uniforms and flying Soviet tactics -- flying with these guys was an eye-opener.

We did have the chance to test ourselves against some of these pilots in my time as commanding officer in the early 1980s, when the Americans and New Zealand were still allies. We went to a couple of those programs. We couldn't get to the US, but the American Air Force had a smaller version of Red Flag in the Philippines, which it called Exercise Cope Thunder, and it was effectively just a small Red Flag.

So the (75) squadron went three times to that program, and that was incredibly realistic. I went twice—once as the squadron commander and once as the deployment commander when I was OCS of the strike wing.

The incredible thing was, even with a basic analog Skyhawk, just how good an account we could give of ourselves because our tactics were effective. They involved very low flying.

When I was the CO and went on the second Cope Thunder program, we used very widespread, wide-space tactics to fly eight Skyhawks, and we flew at 50 feet. Now, the Americans' general limit for their strike squadrons was 500 feet, and their elite squadron, the fast-fac squadron of Phantoms that did fast-faccing—you know, where they raced through an area at 600 knots, marking targets, and the strike units followed to hit the targets—they were allowed down to 100 feet, as I recall.

But we flew at 50.

Now, because our formation was very widespread—2000 meters apart between aircraft—it was hard enough for us even to see the Skyhawks ahead or behind, but the Skyhawk was so tiny and at 50 feet, they did not see us."

John continues:

"In the two-week program that I went to, flying two missions a day at eight Skyhawks—one in the morning, one in the afternoon—we were never intercepted, and that really smoked the Americans.

They were getting seriously angry towards the end that they were not getting this Kiwi squadron. Their radars were not picking us up because we were so low until too late, and then we were just dropping dumb bombs, which were streamlined bombs without high drag.

So we had to drop relatively high, pulling up to about 3,000 feet and then down in a 20-degree dive.

But of course, in the Philippines, it was dead calm.

So, literally, once you'd finished jinking and everything else, for a couple of seconds, you'd fly level, put the piper on the target, and then, because we were well-trained and had a lot of weapons practice back at Ohakea, in 35 to 45 knots, gusting 55, hitting the target up there was a breeze.

So, our weapons scores, again, totally astounded the Americans."

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