In World War II and Korea, American fighter pilots compiled impressive "kill ratios" against the Germans and Japanese (8 to 1) and the Chinese and North Koreans (10 to 1). These successes came to an embarrassing halt over the skies of Vietnam in 1967. The North Vietnamese pilots found that they could defeat the larger, more complex and cumbersome American fighter aircraft by shooting them down with unsophisticated heat-seeking missiles and cannon fire. When kill ratios diminished to near parity, the American air services resolved to spare no expense to regain absolute dominance in the air. For the next 40...
