A couple of years ago I read Marshall Michel's excellent book on Linebacker II, The 11 Days of Christmas, published in 2002. I thought it was terrific, the way it introduced individual crewmembers of the B-52s and the commanders, and included details of the response by the North Vietnamese SAM crews. By comparison, Clashes is often clinical in its descriptions, keeps the crewmembers at arms-length, and does not mention the names of any of the aviators. Sometimes generals are not identified by name, only as the commander of 7th Air Force or a senior officer in 7th AF. The account of Rolling Thunder is somewhat monotonous. There is much attention to the hardware - radars, missiles, guns, IFF interrogators, fighters, bombers. There are descriptions of specific engagements and the tactics that were generally used by the Air Force, Navy, and North Vietnam, but they are not great attention-getters, maybe because they are void of the names of the participants. Often, it mentions that a particular aircraft was shot down, but does not say if the crew survived, was taken prisoner, was rescued, or killed. It has minimal description of the effects of the bombing - what were the targets, what was the strategy behind the bombing, and how successful was it.

My interest picked up a lot starting with chapter 5, The End of the Beginning, which reviewed the successes and failures of Rolling Thunder. This chapter has more insight and analysis, not just "this aircraft/missile/radar has these capabilities." Chapter 6, Preparing for the Next Round, gives a frank description of the Air Force's unwillingness or inability to address some of the problems of Rolling Thunder - inadequate air-to-air training, non-optimum formations (the fluid four), poor reliability of missiles, and poor radios.

Throughout the book, Michel is relentless in pointing out poor decisions made by the Air Force leadership. One might wonder, was it really that bad? But Michel provides plentiful documentation and statistics to prove his criticisms, and I don't see any rebuttals in the reviews. The truth of his criticisms is further upheld by the fact that, several years after the war, the Air Force recognized the faults and implemented specific solutions to the problems the Michel described.

Clashes is focused on the air war of U. S. Air Force and U. S. Navy fighters versus North Vietnamese MiGs, SAMs and AAA. The bombing of North Vietnam gets some attention, but mostly from the context of the air-to-air engagements. I thought a statement on Page 242 might be misleading, "... the blockade of the harbors and bombing had brought the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam to a halt..." This statement seems to neglect the role of the South Vietnamese forces, their American advisors, and aircraft of all sorts supporting them. I believe the role of the mining and bombing in North Vietnam was of secondary to the efforts inside South Vietnam. The most important factors in halting the North Vietnamese invasion were the B-52, Tacair, and AC-130 attacks on NVA troops in South Vietnam, and the South Vietnamese soldiers. According to Stephen Randolph's "Powerful and Brutal Weapons", North Vietnam was skillful and effective in mitigating the effects of the bombing in the north. They built redundant pipelines from China to supply petroleum, and they built redundant roads and used trucks to move supplies from China. The bombing of North Vietnam did have a powerful effect in causing North Vietnam to negotiate seriously for peace, both in October 1972 and January 1973. Still, I believe that Clashes is highly accurate, comprehensive, and honest in describing the air war within North Vietnam.

Training, tactics and technical reliability defined success or failure over Vietnam. Clashes walks the reader through a thorough and balanced assessment of US and North Vietamese fighter combat performance, but does not delve into details via too many names and personal anecdotes. Clashes allows the reader to participate as a student of history as it was played out.

In Vietnam, both the US Navy and Air Force were given a wake-up call that the face of air combat had changed. One service responded better and the results are there before us now as numbers on a page, but were really counted in lives. Many readers will be surpised and perhaps horrified at the magnitude of mistakes made by US air combat forces in Vietnam, which ring just as true today - some 40 years later - as we witness the face of warfare change once again.

Clashes by Marshall Michel is a very well done piece of history about a relatively specific but important slice of combat history. Although there is sufficient examination of the air to ground srtikes against the north during the Vietnam war this book is not about the overall use of airpower in Vietnam but focuses on the air to air engagements between USAF F-4's / F-105's and USN F-4's / F-8's versus North Vietnamese Mig-21's, -19's and -17's during operations Rolling Thunder and Linebacker. The author provides greatly appreciated context of what was happening in the larger war as he chronologically progresses through the air battles, and he also connects the day to day design of the bombing campaigns to the overall strategy being pursued by the White House and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The author clearly has done a large amount of research into the subject matter and he successfully draws a large number of pertinent conclusions from it. What emerges is a pretty illuminating and frankly fascinating comparison of Air Force, Navy and North Vietnamese technology and tactics, and how they all evolved and interacted throughout the long war in response to the enemy and in response to fluid domestic political and strategic influences.

Many striking facts are highlighted and explained in this book. The extremely poor performance of US air to air missiles, stark differences in USAF and USN tactics and training (and institutional flexibility), the effects of fighter design on engagements, and the particularly large impact of IFF, effective radio communications, and coordination in winning those engagements. The book ends with a quick survey of how the lessons of the Vietnam air war impacted the design and employment of the F-14, F-15 and E-3 aircraft.

Great book for anyone who wants to understand the nature, details, and consequences of the air to air war over North Vietnam. Highly recommended to military aircrews and officers, as well as aircraft and weapons systems designers and engineers.

As a last note this is another satisfying read from the Naval Institute Press, which really does seem to consistently publish very high quality, timely books.

Most histories of aerial warfare seem to focus only on the historical and personal context of the people involved. Here we are presented with a very interesting , though also at times, very troubling, narrative of the most significant air to air battles over North Vietnam which exposes very serious problems with the hardware our pilots were forced to deal with in an already very dangerous environment. It would seem that, at the very least, some American aerospace companies were providing such unreliable equipment that they were guilty of criminal negligence. An excellent and very complete history.

Clashes deals with the air war over North Vietnam, something I've had a fascination with for some time. Why, because I wanted to understand why servicemen were put into a dangerous position and what did really happen. To help answer this, Col. Michel takes on the entire air war over North Vietnam (Rolling Thunder, Linebacker I, and Linebacker II). Rather than looking at it from the cockpit view (ala Thud Ridge: F-105 Thunderchief missions over Vietnam or When Thunder Rolled), Col. Michel takes us up to the operations level and provides a good high level breakdown of many of the raids and the engagements between fighters and the North Vietnamese air defenses. The book is divided into two parts (Rolling Thunder and Linebacker) with subsections focusing on different components (both parts use equipment used, early engagements, later engagements, and summary). In each of subsection, Col. Michel does a very good job describing what is occurring and what the Americans and North Vietnamese are doing. In addition to describing engagements, Col. Michel does a great job describing the involvement of EC-121's (College Eye/Disco) and Red Crown (a naval ship controlling the fighters) and their impact on the fight. Unlike other history's, Clashes does not name the pilots involved, rather their radio call signs are used.

Parts I Loved:
Clashes gives us much information about the aircraft involved, the abilities of the men flying them (their training and tactics), and the environment they're fighting in. I loved the drawings, they do an excellent job showing the differences between a fluid four and a loose deuce. I also loved Col. Michel including the technical aspects; performance test of captured MiG's, the Command and Control aspect (often overlooked), and the power and effect of jamming.

Parts I Wish Were a Little Stronger:
Iron Hand missions were a little on the weak side. I have a love and fondness for Wild Weasels and wish that more had been brought out about their support of the missions and how they operated (I'm sorry, this was weak in comparison to the attention paid to Chaff bombers). I also wish more had been brought out about rescue missions and the work they did there.

Bottom Line
Rating wise, this is a very solid 4.5 star book. I am giving it the node to 5 for Amazon purposes, but for my personal rating I can't rate it up there with Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific by Eric Bergerud (I'm sorry, Fire in the Sky is my personal favorite or telling the story of an air war. Clashes though is right behind it!). I understand why Col. Michel focused heavily on the air-to-air engagements and for the insight he provides there this a solid 5 star book. No matter, if you want to know about the Vietnam Air War (mainly in Pack's 5 and 6), then this is the book for you.

This is simply the best book on the air war over thenorth. Here you found both technichal datas, doctrinal debate and combat history. Michel style is dry, he ocnentrates on fact rayther than personal memoir or oral history, but reading this book you will have the best picture of the actal missions over the North Vietnam. Tha autohrs follow the history of the air war both from US and DRV perspective comparing airacraft, weapons and doctrines. The book is full of detial form the advantages and disavanteges of the various aricrafts to the dreaded flight four USAF formation. He actually dispel some myths (especially adressoing the real effectiveness of the SAM defense). If you are interested in air war this book is a must.

"Clashes:Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965-1972" is the best book I have ever read on aerial combat over North Vietnam and one of the best books I have read on aerial combat in general. It provides an excellent analysis of what went right and what went wrong in the skies over North Vietnam. I was truly amazed to read how often the air to air missiles, especialliy the AIM-7 Sparrow, malfunctioned. For anyone interested in aerial combat, this excellent book is a must!

This book is an excellent account of the "corporate" deficiencies of the USAF in the late 60's and early 70's. The deficiencies of the air-to-air missiles in the Vietnam war are strikingly similar to the deficiencies of the torpedos in the USN in the first two years of WWII. Equally striking was the smug attitude of the service about the superiority of US aircraft ("The F-86 had a 13:1 kill ratio over the MiG-15. Who cares that they slaughtered the F-84s?") and the poor pilot training that occurred for both USAF and USN F-4 drivers. The MiG-21 was indeed a nasty surprise. With a higher thrust-to-weight ratio and a lower wing loading, it could both out-accelerate and out-turn F-105s and F-4s. The only American advantage was a higher clean top speed, and external ordinance stores and fuel tanks often abrogated this. The MiG-21 had poor visibility, and a short range, but was an excellent point defense interceptor that transitioned well from bomber defense to dog fighting. (As an aside to the book, with modern electronics, the MiG-21/Lancer and MiG-21/2000 are excellent low-cost fighters today, but each air-air missile will cost you as much as the airframe!) The book details both the combat adaptations that worked (jamming pods, IFF interrogators) and the effective efforts of the USN and criminal negligence of the USAF (and I write as an ex-USAF officer) to improve dog fighting capabilities between the end of Rolling Thunder in 1968 and Linebacker I/II in 1972. The Navy instituted the Top Gun school and made effective modifications to the AIM-9 Sidewinder - the Air Force made a couple of ineffective changes to the AIM-9 and some moderately good ones to the AIM-7, though much of the better performance of the latter during Linebacker was due to higher engagement altitudes resulting from the use of laser guided bombs for the strike packages. He does make the point in the end that the USAF attitude improved after Vietnam when the junior officers of that war increased in seniority and that the introduction of AWACS and trading top speed for maneuverability and visibility in the new generation of fighters cured many of the deficiencies seen in the Vietnam war. A minor objection is that the book does not refer to officers below general rank by name.

Best book yet on the air war over North Vietnam. Using a host of recently declasified information, Col. Michel has done a fabulous job of producing an even-handed look at the Air Force and Navy's failures and triumphs in SEA. A few minor technical errors (IE: follow-on SA-2 used optical TRACKING not optical guidance) do not distract from this well written book - a must have for the serious aviation buff.