Robin Olds | WWII, Vietnam ace, 84

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robin Olds, 84, a World War II ace fighter pilot who later commanded an Air Force wing that shot down seven MiGs over North Vietnam in the biggest air battle of the Vietnam War, died of congestive heart failure Thursday at his home in Steamboat Springs, Colo., according to the Air Force.

Gen. Olds, a former commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy, was the 44-year-old commander of the Eighth Tactical Fighter Wing, based in Thailand, when he worked out the details and executed the 1967 mission known as Operation Bolo.

In supersonic dogfights over the Red River Delta northwest of Hanoi that January, Gen. Olds shot down two MiGs and his fellow F-4C Phantom pilots downed five without losing an aircraft.

"We outflew, outshot and outfought them," Gen. Olds told the Associated Press. The dogfights "lasted no more than 12 to 14 minutes but covered at least 30 miles of that sky," he said.

Gen. Olds, who flew 152 combat missions during the Vietnam War, later shot down two more MiGs. In 1968, he received the Air Force Cross for his heroism in the destruction of the Paul Doumer Bridge near Hanoi in August 1967.

The son of Army Maj. Gen. Robert Olds, Gen. Olds was born in Honolulu and later lived in the Hampton, Va., area. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he was an all-American tackle on the football team and graduated as a second lieutenant in 1943.

Assigned to the European theater in 1944, he flew 107 combat missions in a P-38 Lightning and a P-51 Mustang and, according to the Air Force, shot down 12 aircraft.

After the war, Gen. Olds was assigned to the first jet P-80 squadron, was a member of the first jet Aerial Acrobatic Demonstration Team, and participated in the first dawn-to-dusk transcontinental round-trip flight.

In 1967, Gen. Olds was named commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo.

In 1971, he became director of aerospace safety in the Air Force Inspection and Safety Center at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, Calif. He retired two years later.

Gen. Olds was married to movie actress Ella Raines - they divorced in 1975 - and, later, Morgan Olds. He is survived by daughters Christina Olds and Susan Scott-Risner; a granddaughter; and a half-brother. - Los Angeles Times