China knocks-off the Thud

Spinners · February 17, 2016

Cộng Hòa Aviation FV-1 - 3rd Fighter-Bomber Regiment, Vietnam People's Air Force, 1970

When USAF and USN pilots first encountered the Cộng Hòa Aviation VP-1 fighter-bomber in small numbers in early 1968 it was thought that somehow the Vietnam People's Air Force had put back into service a handful of crashed F-105 Thunderchief aircraft but it soon emerged that at least two substantially intact F-105 aircraft had been shipped to Communist China in May 1965 following unsuccessful attacks on the Thanh Hoa 'Dragon's Jaw' bridge during the previous month. These damaged aircraft were used to reverse engineer the F-105 by the Chinese State Aircraft Factory who then supplied approximately 60 back to the Vietnam People's Air Force in the form of knock-down kits to be assembled by the newly created Cộng Hòa Aviation Company based in Hanoi. Designated as the FV-1 the Vietnamese aircraft was re-engined with an unlicensed Chinese copy of the Soviet Lyulka AL-7 turbojet rated at 22,000lbs thrust but the engine proved to be the FV-1's achilles heel being slightly down on thrust compared to the F-105's J75 but was also unreliable and requiring almost a complete rebuild after just 80 hours use. Despite this handicap the FV-1 entered service with the Vietnam People's Air Force in February 1968. The numbers in service were pitifully small however and the Cộng Hòa Aviation Company was flattened by a B-52 strike at the start of Operation Linebacker in May 1972.