North Vietnam’s Top Aerial Ace of the Vietnam War was a Menace
Colonel Tomb was supposedly a double ace of the VPAF who scored anywhere from twelve to fourteen air-to-air kills against American warplanes.
As the saying goes, “The first casualty of war is truth.” To put a less cynical and somewhat more lighthearted spin on that, fighter pilots, for all of their impressive real-life combat achievements, are still prone to exaggerations and tall tales (the most recent example of Ukraine’s apocryphal “Ghost of Kyiv“ comes to mind). The title of one song by Dick Jonas (Lt. Col., USAF, ret.), himself a former F-4 Phantom II pilot during the Vietnam War, bluntly and humorously admits, “It’s a Lie.”
Speaking of the Vietnam War, one particular story from that conflict goes to show that American fighter pilots not only spun those tall tales about their own combat exploits, but even some of the supposed achievements of their adversaries. This was embodied in the urban legend of Colonel Tomb, North Vietnamese Air Force (nowadays known as the Vietnamese People’s Air Force, VPAF).
Origins of the Colonel Tomb Story
Colonel Tomb, aka Col. Toon or Nguyen Toon, was supposedly a double ace of the VPAF who scored anywhere from twelve to fourteen air-to-air kills against American warplanes, either in a MiG-21 (NATO reporting name “Fishbed”) or a MiG-17 “Fresco” jet fighter. As described by Michael Hankins of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, writing for the From Balloons to Drones website (a publication headed up by Ross Mahoney):
“What could explain the fact that so many US aircraft were getting shot out of the sky by an allegedly inferior, third-world country’s hand-me-down air force that only had a few dozen aeroplanes to its name? There must be an amazing, inexplicable, near-mythical, born-genius dogfighter on the enemy side … Thus, was born the legend of Colonel Toon, AKA Colonel Tomb, AKA Nguyen Tomb … Toon displayed the typical fighter pilot personality characteristics of aggressiveness and independence. He utilised frequent head-on attacks and a ‘lone wolf’ style of engaging in which he refused to obey the orders of his ground controller and engaged F-4s in vertical manoeuvres, where his MiG was at an inherent disadvantage.”
Col. Tomb’s Alleged Fate
On May 10, 1972, the U.S. Navy F-4 tandem of pilot LT Randall “Duke” Cunningham and radar intercept officer (RIO) LT William P. “Willy Irish” Driscoll pulled off a remarkable feat of killing three MiG-17s in a single day. The fact that “Duke” and “Willy Irish” scored those three kills is not in dispute; indeed, both members of this dynamic duo (so to speak) were awarded the Navy Cross for this trifecta.
What is in dispute, however, is Cunningham’s claim that one of those victims was none other than Col. Tomb himself. This claim was given some additional supposed credence in the premiere episode of the 2006 series “Dogfights” on The History Channel, where “Duke” spins even more craziness into the yarn in the guise of a cockpit-to-cockpit with the mythical colonel:
“I could see a Gomer leather helmet, Gomer goggles, Gomer scarf … and his intent Gomer expression … I began to feel numb. My stomach grabbed at me in knots. There was no fear in this guy’s eyes as we zoomed some 8000 feet straight up.”
As a side note, Duke Cunningham later became a U.S. congressperson, which cynical observers would say made a perfect second career for someone prone to playing liberties with the truth!
Real-Life Counterpart(s) to Col. Tomb?
The real-world equivalent of Col. Tomb is now-retired VPAF lieutenant general Nguyễn Văn Cốc (born December 1942), a MiG-21 driver who served with the 921st Fighter Regiment during the war and was officially credited with nine kills; he held the rank of senior lieutenant when he scored his final aerial victory on December 20, 1969 (two-and-a-half years before the alleged encounter between Cunningham and “Tomb”). Tomb retired from the VPAF in 2002 with the title of chief inspector.
There is also an individual Fishbed specimen, bearing serial no. 4324, currently preserved for posterity at the Vietnam Military History Museum in Hanoi and credited with fourteen kills during the war, though apparently not all at the hands of the same individual VPAF pilot.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
Image: Shutterstock.