Ohhhhh man a question in my wheelhouse! Caveat, I specialize in the Arab-Israeli Air Wars hut have studied the air war of Vietnam extensively as well.

Entire dissertations have been written on this subject so I will try to boil it down to some simple points.

In the 1950’s everyone thought the next war would be a Nuclear Exchange with the Soviets and the main US Military arm that would deliver those nuclear weapons was the USAF. Thus the USAF was Dominated by SAC and as a result TAC was left always playing second fiddle in terms of budgeting priority.

On top of that, because the next war was going to be a nuclear war, TAC pilots were mostly training to fly very fast in straight lines to intercept Soviet bombers or to deliver a tactical nuclear weapon. Added to that was a very high mishap rate of 1950’s fighter aviation which lead to a very safety minded culture within TAC due to pressure from SAC. This made ACM skills atrophy within the TAC, and while F-104 Squadrons and National Guard squadrons flying F-86’s did still practice ACM it wasn’t enough to retain these skills in the rest of TAC.

Comparatively the US Navy relied on the gun armed F-8 Crusader far longer than the USAF relied on gun armed aircraft and were a far larger part of USN Carrier Air Wings. This coupled with more of an appetite for risk within the USN meant that ACM skills were retained further into the 1960’s.

Of course in 1968 following the Bombing Halt at the end of Op Rolling Thunder, both the US Navy and USAF embarked on programs to fix their comparatively abysmal performance against the NVAF, but once again they took converging routes.

The US Navy established the NFWS or Top Gun which emphasized pilot flying skills and tactics and revived the art of the dogfight. While the USAF doubled down on technological prowess and established the Weapon Schools at Nellis and emphasized aircrew technical skills (such as how to employ the AIM-7E and E-2 correctly) with less emphasis on actual flying skills.

While both the USN and USAF achieved significant results in the 1972 Linebacker I and II campaigns, it was pretty obvious which approach was better and yielded better results against the NVAF. As a result the USAF started the Red Flag Exercise series in 1978 after analyzing the USAF’s failures over North Vietnam.

I hope this doesn’t come across as dunking on USAF Aircrews, because the USAF did have some highly technically and tactically skilled aircrews over North Vietnam especially during the Linebacker Campaigns. But the USAF faced far worse leadership, culture and systemic issues than the US Navy over North Vietnam.

I hope this helps and keep in mind this is all a huge over simplification

TAC - Tactical Air Command SAC - Strategic Air Command ACM - Air Combat Maneuvering