Successor to the brilliant F-86 Sabre, the North American F-100 Super Sabre was America’s first truly supersonic jet fighter, and to this day one of the most aesthetically pleasing combat jet aircraft ever to fly. The F-100 first saw action during the Laos crisis of 1962-4 – a foretaste of things to come in neighboring Vietnam. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, with US bombing North Vietnam for the first time, the American government ordered Operation Rolling Thunder – the sustained bombing campaign commenced in 1965 against Hanoi and other strategic targets in the north. By then, though ageing in design, the F-100 equipped no fewer than 16 USAF combat wings, and was employed in Vietnam primarily in ground attack and close air support roles. The F-100’s air-to-ground sorties came to epitomize the war fought deep into South Vietnam, its pilots clocking up more combat missions than the P-51D pilots flew in World War II, this veritable jet flying combat from the first day of the conflict to the last.

Simon Atack’s spectacular new painting brings this outstanding jet aircraft to life in a dramatic recreation of an event that took place on 14 May 1965. Flying ground attacks, F-100D Super Sabres of the 416th Squadron of the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing - the ‘Silver Knights’ based at Da Nang - execute an attack on communist NVA guerrilla forces in the Bac Lieu region of South Vietnam. Having dropped their deadly cocktail of napalm and phosphor mixed with high explosive bombs right on enemy positions across the river, the F-100s continue to spray 20mm cannon fire at river craft and ground troops over a 1,000ft swathe ahead of them as they exit the area.

In the foreground Captain Don Kilgus is at full power; behind him the ‘Silver Knights’ F-100s follow at just under the speed of sound. At low-level Kilgus will hurtle along the dry creek out of the target area, before pulling the big jet into a mind-numbing high-G climb to clear the hazardous rising ground before heading home.

A superb action painting from an era that saw some of the fiercest and most dangerous flying in the history of air combat.