In the early morning hours of 10th May 1972, US Navy F-4 Phantom pilot Curt Dose and his backseater, Jim McDevitt, streaked towards North Vietnam with a powerful Alpha strike formation. Their target was the port city of Haiphong.

Suddenly, Dose and Hawkins received a radio call that there were bandits about. Dose quickly engaged a MiG-21. He got good tone on his Sidewinder missile and fired. Dose watched as the missile made a final quick adjustment then buried itself in the MiGs tail pipe. They went full afterburner, screaming out of the area at Mach 1.2, streaking over Kep airfield and on towards the coast.

Meanwhile, a massive strike force of US Air Force fighters and bombers moved into North Vietnam, led by Oyster Flight. Pilots Bob Lodge, John Markle, and Steve Ritchie entered a swirling dogfight with enemy MiGs. They each claimed an enemy fighter, but flight lead, Bob Lodge, was lost to a marauding MiG-19.

Later that day, another US Navy strike force entered the fray. F-4 Phantom pilot Matt Connelly and his radar intercept officer Tom Blonski streaked in to rescue an A-7 from the MiG-17 on its tail. Another Phantom crew, with pilot Steve Shoemaker and his backseater Keith Crenshaw, arrived on scene just in time to rescue a fellow Phantom crew from another lethal MiG-17.

The dogfight over the Hai Duong rail yard was one of the most costly engagements of the entire war for the North Vietnamese. Matt Connelly killed two MiGs, Steve Shoemaker killed one and Randy Cunningham claimed three, a total of six communist fighters. It was with this fight that Cunningham became the first ace of the Vietnam War.