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A lot of training shortfalls were brought to the forefront when the F-4 started going up against the early Migs in 'Nam.

Very little training was being devoted to ACM, "knife fighting", if you will. It was focused more on BVR (beyond visual range) missile engagements. The biggest problem with that was the ROE (rules of engagement) generally required a VID (visual identification) before you could shoot, therefore defeating the purpose of the Sparrow.

There was also a lot of ignorance and/or misunderstanding about missile envelopes and employment. The F-4 radar could only "track" out to 40 degrees off the nose and in order to keep the CW guidance illuminator on the target, the radar had to stay locked on all the way to impact. If you fired a Sparrow and let the bogey get more than 40 degrees off, the radar broke track and the missile would go stupid. That would also happen if YOU performed any maneuver that moved the bogey more than 40 degrees off. (This happened a LOT) It was simple ignorance of how the radar and the missile worked together.

For the early Navy Sparrows, they took a beating flying off of and landing on the boat. They weren't solid state so were more susceptible to internal failures. If I remember correctly the Air Force had better results with the AIM 7 because they got a little more TLC flying off the beach. There were also times when they got clearance to fire BVR because a target had been declared "hostile" and they were able to shoot them in the face before the merge. Later in the war, the Air Force also had a system to ID Migs at range and use the Sparrow for what it was designed.

There were similar problems with lack of understanding of firing envelopes for the Sidewinder, especially with the earliest versions that were deployed to SE Asia. With a small seeker head field of view and the little wings of the early "Winders", they weren't that maneuverable so they were pretty easy to defeat if the bad guy saw it coming.

When we got hold of some of the Migs (17's and 21's) exploited them, learned their weaknesses, and strong points, etc. both the Air Force and the Navy came up with their fighter weapons schools, i.e., Top Gun. The basic idea was that by teaching a couple of guys from each squadron the most effective tactics and effective use of the weapons systems, those guys could then go back to their squadrons and teach the rest of the guys.

It worked like a champ and the American kill ratio took off. It was just a matter of training to the proper threat and the learning the capabilities, strong points, weak points and your own weapons systems as well as that of your enemy.

It still works that way.