KOVALESKI-VICTOR

LAST  MIG  KILL  OF  THE  VIETNAM  WAR

On January 12, 1973, McDonald F-4B Phantom II, BUNO 153045 of Fighter Squadron One-Hundred Sixty-One (VF-161) departed from the carrier USS Midway (CV-41) on a barrier combat air patrol, watching for enemy aircraft attempting to approach the carrier group.  Commander Victor Theodore Kovaleski was the pilot and LT James Allen Wise was the Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the rear seat.  Kovaleski orbited in a racetrack pattern ready to take on any North Vietnam MiGs that might appear.

Nearby an Air Force C-130 was operating reconnaissance drones off the North Vietnamese coast when a lone MiG-17 was detected coming from North Vietnam on an intercept route.  The MiG was flying low and Kovaleski was instructed to engage it which was then 38 miles from the C-130.  Searching the sky, he managed to get a light reflection off the MiG’s canopy and immediately closed on his target.  Kovaleski later reported, “I got a tally on the bogey at my 11 o’clock low and about four miles.  As I approached a Sidewinder firing position on the MiG-17, at a six o’clock position about a mile away, the MiG broke hard port.  To avoid overshooting, I pulled the nose vertical, rolled left, and placed myself in a lag pursuit position on the MiG-17.”  After some hard maneuvering Kovaleski continued, “The MiG lost sight of me and turned back to the right.  We pulled in behind him and shot two Sidewinders.  The first knocked a bit off his tail.  The second went right up his tailpipe, just exploding the airplane.  By the time we did that, we were right over Hai Phog Harbor.  We got out of there fast.”  Following the war, intelligence reports revealed the North Vietnam pilot ejected but his parachute did not deploy.  Kovaleski and Wise were credited with the last MiG kill of the Vietnam War.

Unfortunately, this was not Kovaleski’s last combat mission.  Two days later, while escorting an aircraft on a reconnaissance mission in the Thanh Hoa region, Kovaleski and his RIO, Ensign D. H. Plautz, were hit by 85mm antiaircraft fire.  Despite losing the left engine, then the right and most aircraft systems, and sustaining a massive fuel leak, Kovaleski was able to steer his crippled F-4B offshore for a successful ejection.  A nearby helicopter was able to observe their successful ejection and within less than fifteen minutes both men were hoisted aboard a rescue helicopter.  Their F-4B was the last aircraft lost by Midway.

               

         VF-161  F4B  PHANTON II  WITH  MIG  KILL  MARK  ON  INTAKE  SPLITTER  VANE

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)