Probably better asking that question in the historic section.

There is life in the old dog yet:
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=73400&highlight=lebanese+hunters

As good a place to start as any….

A few photos from Colombia:

I read somewhere the columbian crop dusters have (kevlar?) armor and bullet resistant windscreens because they are used to spray defoliant on Coca plantations.

Scorpion, I don’t know if this ties in with your European viewpoint, but I believe the RAF will transition to a Typhoon fleet that has more advanced capabilities than is currently planned in a shorter timescale. Whether they go for all 232 is doubtful at the moment though.

Somebody in one of the other Typhoon threads claimed the Typhoon contracts were pretty bulletproof that way. Trance 3 can only be cancelled if UK, Germany, Spain and Italy all agree, and Germany for one doesn’t seem terribly interested in that and on top of this canceling would supposedly cost almost as much as buying the aircraft. How in hell are the LibDems and the Toreys planning to weasel out of these 232 aircraft? It seems to me the best they can do is re-sell the early trance aircraft to other air forces and keep the later and more sophisticated trance 2 and 3 aircraft for them selves. And that’s assuming the new UK coalition government doesn’t cut down the UK armed forces to a token force armed with slingshots, golf clubs and pepper-spray. It’s kind of ironic that provisions the Brits among other put in to keep the Germans from bailing out of the Typhoon project are actually keeping them selves from doing so.

I wonder how accurate the MiG’s cannons are for strafing runs…it would seem that they would be devastating on ground targets.

Well, the MiG-17 had a 37mm gun which made the two 23mm guns look small and made the .50cal guns on an F-86 look like BB guns. the Germans during WWII determined that a single 37 mm round was usually guaranteed to bring down a B-17. A 37 mm round could deal with pretty much any fighter or small to medium size bomber and had no problems with soft skinned or moderately armored vehicles and things like field fortifications. Judging from descriptions by Western mercenaries that flew for the MiG-17 for the Nigerians, the MiG-17s guns were an excellent tool for ground attack missions. I’d certainly not want to be on the wrong side of the N-37. The Problem with the MiG-17s gun armament was apparently that the trajectories of the 37mm gun and the 23 mm guns were different which caused obvious problems. The problem with the MiG-17 it self as a ground attack aircraft was the fact that the only two underwing hard points had to be occupied by drop tanks to achieve any meaningful range. This is why you see field modifications like the ones done in Egypt and outright redesigns like the LiM-6 which was fitted with two extra pylons and a drag chute for operation off of short airfields. If I had been in the market for a jet aircraft for a small airforce back in the 60s or 70s I’d have picked either the Lim-6 or the Fiat G-91 (make that the G.91R/3 Luftwaffe version with two 30mm guns). Both were a compromise between a basic fighter and a ground attack aircraft and both were very robust and able to operate under quite primitive conditions.

The NVAF MiG-17s were heavily used for CAS missions during the last part of the Vietnam War.

Outside of the attack on those warships, I’ve never heard of VPAF MiG’s being used for any types of ground attack sorties. Are you saying that U.S. troops were directly attacked on the ground by VPAF MiG-17’s?

I’m thinking about getting the Osprey book on the North’s MiG-17’s and MiG-19’s…seems like there could be some interesting stuff in it.

I’m not saying anything, although perhaps I overstated by saying MiG-17s were heavily used for CAS missions, I’m just regurgitating some of what Istvan Toperczer has written on the VPAF. The VPAF was heavily outnumbered by the Americans during the war and a large portion of the VPAF was allocated to air defense right up to the end so not all that many MiGs were available for ground attack. When the Americans left in 1973 that relieved a lot of pressure on the VPAF and left scope for thinking about doing more with the MiGs than just pure air-defence missions. Some of Toperczer’s books mention briefly that MiGs were used for CAS/Strike missions down south after the NVAF recovered from Linebacker II and especially towards the end in 1974-5. This would have been after the US troops left, and while the NV forces were administering the coup-de-grace to the SV regime. The MiG-17 was re-assigned to ground attack duty during the late 1970s, he does not offer many details beyond that. A quote from “MiG-21 units of the Vietnam War” talking about the offensive in the south that started on the 4’th of march 1975:

The VPAF was also involved in the invasion, although the intention was to keep the MiGs missions secret, even from the Russian technical officers serving in the North – the Vietnamese government did not want Russian pilots in-country fighting the Western backed South Vietnamese, thus turning the conflict into another Korean War. However, it was difficult, if not impossible to keep these missions a secret, for MiG-21s were taking off fully armed with bombs and rockets and returning without them. Meanwhile the faces of the VPAF pilots spoke volumes about the missions they were flying.

Most if not all those CAS/Strike missions flown would thus have been against SV forces not US forces. Toperczer’s books also offer a few photos of MiGs in ground attack mode carrying rocket pods and bombs There is, for example a nice picture of a MiG-21MF carrying Atolls and FAB bombs on P.80 of the Osprey NV MiG-21 book. One final thing to note about the VPAF and the topic of ground attack is that they had some Il-28 bombers although I don’t know anything about whether they were ever used to bomb the south during the final stages of the war. I’d sure like to find out.

The book “Air War Over North Vietnam: The Vietnamese People’s Air Force: 1949-1977” has a sureal description of NVAF aircraft landing on airfields in the South among entire squadrons of captured, US supplied, SVAF aircraft. The NV forces captured a huge hoard of equipment, at Tan Son Nhut alone they captured 23 A-37s, no less than 41 F-5A/E fighters, 50 UH-1s, a miscellany of transports and large quantities of spares, weapons and support equipment. There is another interesting story (in “Air War Over North Vietnam”) of NV forces capturing A-37s, restoring them to airworthyness and then promptly using them to bomb SV and remaining US forces at Tan Son Nhat (this would have been on April 28, 1975). Toperczer has done a lot of research on the Vietnam conflict using Vietnamese sources which makes his books very interesting. I’m not saying his claims are gospel but they are interesting. The classical problem with research on the Vietnam war is that it was written by Americans and based heavily on US sources so you rarely got a balanced point of view. You got excellent coverage of the US story but were left asking questions about what the North Vietnamese were doing. You get only a limited picture reading just US accounts of NV activities. The same goes for WWI/WWII. A surprisingly weak attempt has been made to use, for example, Japanese sources (WWII) and to a lesser degree German language sources (Especially for WWI).

Osprey books tend to range from some that are good, many are average to a few that are crappy. In this case I’d recommend the Osprey books (also the ones covering the USAF in Vietnam):

MiG-21 Units of the Vietnam War

MiG 17 and MiG 19 Units of the Vietnam War

This book is also good because it has lots of pictures of SAMs, radars, FLAK guns, BTR-40 FLAK gun carriers, etc.. as well as aircraft (including some interesting pictures of above mentioned and elusive VPAF Il-28 bombers):
Air War Over North Vietnam: The Vietnamese People’s Air Force: 1949-1977 – Vietnam Studies Group Series

Regarding those UARAF Mig-17PFs with K-13 misiles, i’d love to see it too ! maby it was in Tom Cooper “Arab Mig-15 and Mig-17” book ?

Has anybody seen that book, are there any good photos in it? I take color profiles with a grain of salt.

It appears the PFU precedes the AS which makes sense, and that the AS would appear as modifications of both afterburning and non-afterburning Frescos in service. You’ll also probably find the PFU was reserved from non-Soviet export until the MiG-21PF was in service.

According to the Aerofax book (P.35/6 & 23) The MiG-17PFU equipped with RS-1-U beamriders was a “mid-life-upgrade” to the MiG-17PF and only 40 examples were converted at the Gor’kiy plant. AFAIK it was never exported and saw use mostly as a trainer for MiG-19PM pilots unlike the PF which was exported. The MiG-17AS was a fighter bomber, the AS referred to the AS-21 weapons system regardless of the aircraft’s original version but Martinez already pointed that out. Apparently this system had the habit of experiencing “uncommanded launches” which necessitated a safety upgrade in 1955. The Aerofax book also mentions a MiG-17F variant “…armed with R-3S (K-13/NATO AA-2-2 Advanced Atoll missiles) IR-homing air-to-air missiles (AAMs) at the customer’s request.” (P.18) but offers no details beyond that.

I’d like to see a photograph of a MiG-17 with an Atoll….seems like it’s pretty rare. For a while I thought the MiG-17AS was the Atoll armed model, but it appears that the AS was an air-to-ground modification to allow it to carry large-caliber HVAR rockets.

Somebody already posted pictures of that Cuban MiG-17AS. The N-Vietnamese supposedly wired up MiG-17s and F-6s with Atolls. I’d actually like to see Vietnam War period photos to back that claim up. So far all I have found is a single picture from the Vietnamese Air Force museum of an F-6 packing atolls.