Aerial Combat over Vietnam Introduction The Vietnam War provided challenging and exciting times for United States (US) military aviation. Jets were still considered new technology at the beginning of the 1960’s and had not been tested thoroughly during the Korean War. As the situation in Vietnam started to escalate, US leadership recognized the importance of air superiority and the need to use and adapt newer technology. Air superiority can be achieved through multiple means, but none as romanticized
would fit better in the definition of bravery, but his experience in the navy and post navy career was in the testing and research of developmental planes. In fact Armstrong worked in the research and development of planes such as the F-100 Super Sabre, F-105 Thunderchief and many other experimental planes (Dunbar). These planes were not tested for safety. Continuing to work with these planes despite the inherent risk is what marked him as a courageous
"From 1962 to 1971, American C-123 transport planes sprayed roughly 20 million gallons of herbicides on an area of South Vietnam about the size of Massachusetts" (Budanovic). In just a short sentence, a massive war can be summarized, and the horrific actions that soldiers in the Vietnam war participated in can be exposed. C-123 aircrafts did not only deploy herbicides, but also deployed massive bombs on Vietnamese opponents in which many contained napalm. Created by the US Chemical Warfare Service