[hyair]

The American pilots in Vietnam met the mig -17 and found it a very capable fighter. The mig -17 was perfect for hit and run tactics - when they shut down two f-105 Thuds loaded with bombs there was a big noise in the media how such a subsonic and old plane can bring down mach 2.0 plane.
The Israeli airforce consisted of Super mysters and mirage IIIc for interception.
The Israelien pilots found the mig-17 harder to beat than the mig-19 and 21!
While the mig -17 couldn't go supersonic it
had the best turn rate of all planes in speeds up to 400 knots !
Most of of air battles are carried with speeds between 350 -550 knots.
Here the Israeliens had a clear advantage because they were trained with many training dogfights and learn to aim the pipper on the target two seconds which were enough to get a kill with the excellent
30 mm french guns.
Just like the american Thud pilots the Israelien pilots avoided turns fights and used the vertical dimention and better speed to win the battle. The results were stunning - the kill ratio of the mirage vs the mig -17 was 1:15 !!! and far better than what the american Phantoms had in Vietnam which was 1:3 against the mig -17.
In Yom kippor War in 1973 two Phantoms
killed 7 mig -17 whitin 10 minutes.

Yair