Oh and a comment of the guns of the era.
Yes they were very lethal, pretty much if you hit something, its torn to pieces. The cannon in the Thunderchief and the F-4E (or gunpods in the C/D) have a rate of fire of 6,000 rpm, and the Soviet NR-23, Gsh-23, and NR-30 are nasty nasty rounds.
Combine this with the fact that in fighters of the era, that there is little to no "empty space", if you hit, its something important. Also design choices play a role. For some reason in the early and mid "jet era" they stopped using self sealing fuel tanks (weight I guess), and the cockpit visibility is extremely poor in most aircraft allowing for alot of "blind bounces".
I have watched a gun camera clip during Vietnam of a Thud killing a MiG-17F with its gun. A single 0.75 burst, hitting right on the spine of the aircraft where the trailing edge of the wings meet the fuselage, and it literally looked like a buzz saw hit the plane. I couldn't count the number of hit flashes, but the burst seperated both wings, the rear fuselage, and the horizontal/vertical stabilizers as one piece, with countless other hits spread over the aircraft. Very very scary.
