Quote Originally Posted by arado View Post
China could have sunk my ship, the Intrepid CVA11. at will. They did shoot down 763 F4 Phantoms and lost 13 Mig 21 doing it. They did not want to expand the war they won. They are far more powerful today. They conquered Wall Street.
The United Statesicon lost a total of 461 F-4 Phantoms during the Vietnam war. Nearly all of them to ground fire. The Phantom had a kill to loss ratio of 3.73 to 1 in air to air combat. The North Vietnamese air force was very small and the US had near complete air superiority during the war. China did not commit much of anything to the war effort in the air losing only 3 Mig 17's. The North Vietnamese lost 90 Mig 21's in air to air combat.

That the Chinese could have sunk the Intrepid at will is opinion. The fact remains they did not, nor did they make the attempt. I'm sure there were much more promising targets than an old Essex class carrier that by that time was designated as an ASW carrier (CVS-11) and had a complement of A-4 Skyhawks and A-1 Skyraiders, which were used in the ground support role. Of note, one of her Skyraider pilots managed to shoot down a Mig 17 with his propeller driving ground attack plane.

The Chinese are attempting to project power today but aside from their massive manpower remain far behind the US in both power and technology. If we stopped funding them through Wallstreet, they wouldn't last long.