The Old Man & the MIGs

In World War II, a fighter pilot was considered past his prime at 25, his reflexes and aggressiveness dangerously eroded. Even in Korea, the younger jet jockeys sneered over their bourbon at the middle-aged reserve officers who joined in dogfights with Red Chinese MIGs over the 38th parallel. Yet America's top MIG killer in the swirling scuffles over North Viet Nam these days is a greying, 44-year-old Air Force colonel who won his first aerial victories a generation ago against German Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs.

Last week Fighter Pilot Robin ("Old Man") Olds, commander of the Thailand-based 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, was credited with his fourth MIG kill of the Viet Nam war. That brought to 28 1/2 the total of enemy aircraft -- Hitler's and Ho's--that he has destroyed in 24 years of aerial combat. One more MIG and Olds will become the first American ace of the Viet Nam war.

"Nailed That Bastard!" It was Olds who early this year led the first fighter sweep of the war, suckering seven MIGs to their fate (TIME, Jan. 13). Flying a 1,450-m.p.h. F-4C Phantom fighter nicknamed Scat, he dropped one supersonic MIG-21 himself in that sortie, added another on May 4 while flying MIGCAP (for "combat air patrol") in a raid on the Hanoi transformer installation. A weekend ago, he and his "gibs" (guy-in-the-back-seat, or copilot) spotted 15 slower but more maneuverable MIG-17s coming up fast during a fighter-bomber raid 40 miles northeast of the Communist capital. The ensuing scramble lasted only eleven minutes ("It seemed like eight hours," says Olds) and ranged from 9,000 ft. down to a scant 100 ft. above the deck.

"It was a really vicious dogfight," recalls Olds, "sort of a general melee with our planes and theirs rolling, twisting and diving all over the place." Olds squeezed off five missiles, and two of the heat-seeking Sidewinders slammed home in enemy tail pipes. With Dawn Patrol grace, he adds: "Both pilots were able to bail out, I'm glad to say." In the second of the day's kills, Olds dived on the fleeing MIG-17 only to have a second Red fighter ambush him with blazing cannons. Scat's Sidewinder blasted the first MIG over a ridgetop, and as he wheeled for home Olds shouted over the intercom: "Nailed that bastard!" His gibs, 1st Lieut. Steve Croker, of Middletown, Del., recalls: "We were screaming back and forth at each other like a couple of excited kids."

R.A.F. Handlebars. A cautious, conservative hunter when he is in the air, Olds leads a three-squadron Phantom wing whose 60 planes have knocked out 22 of the 72 MIGs downed over North Viet Nam to date (v. 20 U.S. fighters lost in aerial combat). Tall and taut at 6 ft. 2 in. and 195 lbs., Olds weighs 10 lbs. less than he did as an All-America tackle on West Point's 1943 football team, has recently sprouted a chestnut R.A.F.-style handlebar mustache that horrified his wife, former Movie Actress Ella Raines, when she visited her husband in Hong Kong last March. Said she: "I thought your teeth were dirty."

"Everybody in the 8th Wing thinks he hung the moon," says one of Olds's aviators. "We'd follow him anywhere." To make sure they do, Olds keeps in top shape, plays squash daily on a court he built himself at Ubon. Well aware that his reaction time is bound to slow with age, Olds practices his flying skills incessantly, and 57 raids over the flak-and-fighter-fraught North have only sharpened them. "Younger guys have to think before they start a maneuver," he says. "With me, it's instinct."

Getting Behind. Son of Major General Robert Olds, an airpower pioneer along with Billy Mitchell, Olds grew up in airplanes, flew 107 missions in P-38 Lightnings and P-51 Mustangs against the Luftwaffe. Olds finds dogfighting little changed from World War II. "The main idea is still to get behind him instead of letting him get behind you. The increased speed requires much faster thinking, and the other big difference is weaponry. It was practically eyeball to eyeball with the machine guns in World War II. We can fire our missiles from 1 1/2 to two miles away, though three-quarters of a mile is average."

Olds--like most Viet Nam pilots--regrets the absence of fuselage-mounted 20-mm. cannon on the Phantoms. "Good Lord," he says, "would guns come in handy!" The reason: North Vietnamese pilots bore in close to deny U.S. pilots the long-range capability of their Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles. Olds has high respect for the MIG jockeys he confronts. "They'll be damned fine pilots if their air force survives," he says. "We'll try to see that it doesn't."

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