[Tallguy]

the AIM 7 was sometime like 1 in 10 or so actually hit the target and the AIM 9 was worse.

The AIM-9 Sidewinder had most of the MiG kills in Vietnam; the AIM-7 Sparrow -- which was Radar homing -- had only about 2 kills in over a couple of hundred shots. There were very few gun kills in Vietnam. Even the USN's vaunted F8U Crusader (known as the last of the 'gunfighters') scored the vast majority of it's kills with the Sidewinder.

You're right, though. Test percentages need to be heavily discounted. A missile with a 90% reliability in test may only have a 20-25% kill rate in combat (and I think I'm being overly generous with that estimate).

[GrandEagle]

I got in at the very end and worked a bit with the 9E and the 7E on the F4's. I believe my original post I got them mixed up - your right. The 7E was fairly pathetic.
I then moved on the the F15's and the 9 J/J1. The F15 also moved up to the 7F. In theory the 7F had a much better kill ratio. The 9J1 was a vast improvement over the 9E but had a tendency for the influence to come unscrewed in a rapid, hi-G turn on the F-15.
The 9L solved this problem by changing the way the missile parts mated together. The 9L was the hot thing when I got out. It, among other things, changed the way the reticule was cooled to an argon gas cooling system. This dramatically increased it's sensitivity and it's ability to pick out what it was actually locked on to from the background. There were also significant changes made to the influance fuce so that the 9L was the first 9 that you had much chance at all of making a head on shot (again in theory). In theory they claimed it would hit 8.5 out of 10 targets if the pilot had a good lock on at launch.
Since the Israelis were the only folks that had drawn much blood in combat with the F15 at the time - and they flew their own version of the heat seeker, there were not many combat related firings to back that claim up.
Many times we would fire them at radio controlled F-100's in training with a TM pack instead of the warhead. In those situations, the data seemed to support the claim, but since neither the 9 or the 7 were designed specifically for a direct hit, the results were derived from data on how close it came that was sent back by the TM pack. Not nearly as accurate as watching the target fall out of the sky.
We actually did hit one once - that was cool.

Cordially,GE

[RightWingConspirator]

Due to its reputation for “no-guiding”, pilots would shoot an AIM-7 (Sparrow) to get the MIG to turn tail, then would launch an AIM-9 (Sidewinder) to get the kill.