First person stories of The Friday Pilots of Tucson Arizona. Lessons learned flying the old airplanes in the old Air Force, Army and Navy in peace and war. They crashed, they burned, they laughed, they cried, they soared. These pilots are the REAL DEAL. They’ve been there, done that. You’ll enjoy.

A collection of stories written by the members of the Class of 1962, the fourth class to graduate from the United States Air Force Academy - the original Red Tag Bastards - on the occasion of their 50th class reunion.

They had the most dangerous job n the Air Force. Now Bury Us Upside Down reveals the never-before-told story of the Vietnam War’s top-secret jet-fighter outfit–an all-volunteer unit composed of truly extraordinary men who flew missions from which heroes are made.In today’s wars, computers, targeting pods, lasers, and precision-guided bombs help FAC (forward air controller) pilots identify and destroy targets from safe distances. But in the search for enemy traffic on the elusive Ho...

This is a book of first-person stories written by old pilots, those who flew the old airplanes in the old air force. These are personal stories of growing up in a different America, their lives before political correctness, back when airplanes were dangerous but flying was fun.The group calls themselves the Friday Pilots. They gather at McMahon's Prime Steakhouse in Tucson, Arizona, every Friday for lunch. There are those who finished careers as generals and colonels and majors and...

From retired Air Force pilot Marshall Harrison comes a remarkable memoir of aerial warfare in Vietnam. In his third combat tour, Harrison found himself converted from the high performance world of jets to the awkward-looking OV-10 Bronco and assigned as a FAC forward air controller. A captivating tale of valor, brotherhood, and patriotism unravels in the pages of A Lonely Kind of War, Forward Air Controller, Vietnam, a posthumous release by this published author through Xlibris. Harrison i...

After spending a year in Germany as a security guard with the 50th Ordnance Company, Curtis Gay went to Viet Nam as a Private First Class. Six months later he was a Sergeant in the 25th Infantry Division and experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war. This book is his story.Curtis spent a year as a Drill Sergeant at Fort Dix, New Jersey before leaving the Army in 1968. After a long career in the electrical industry, he is retired and lives in Durham, North Carolina wi...

It was 1968 and Robert Hartley was on his first combat mission in Vietnam as copilot of a helicopter gunship. As he and his platoon leader flew over the A Shau Valley, a Chinook helicopter engulfed in flames suddenly came into view. Hartley noticed tiny black smoking objects exiting the tail ramp of the aircraft. Seconds later, he realized those objects were men escaping the flames and plunging to their deaths. It was in that moment that he silently wondered, How the hell did I get here?

"[An] intimate account of a Forward Air Controller working with the Special Forces on their secret operations in South Vietnam and Laos . . . Don't miss it!" (John Prados, author of Storm Over Leyte).Originally published in 1991, this classic work has now been revised and updated with additional photos. It is the story of how, in Vietnam, an elite group of Air Force pilots fought a secret air war in Cessna 0-2 and OV-10 Bronco prop planes—flying as low as t...

**An astonishing memoir of military courage at a remote outpost during the Vietnam War“A riveting, dead-true account in the tradition of Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers Once...and Young.”—Steven Pressfield, national bestselling author of The Lion’s Gate**In October 1969, William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret captain in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Firebase Kate held by only 27 American soldiers and 156 Montagn...

Ed Rasimus straps the reader into the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber in his engaging account of the Rolling Thunder campaign in the skies over North Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1968, more than 330 F-105s were lost—the highest loss rate in Southeast Asia—and many pilots were killed, captured, and wounded because of the Air Force’s disastrous tactics. The descriptions of Rasimus’s one hundred missions, some of the most dangerous of the conflict, will satisfy anyone addicted to...

Helicopter pilots in Vietnam kidded one another about being nothing but glorified bus drivers. But these “rotor heads” saved thousands of American lives while performing what the Army classified as the most dangerous job it had to offer. One in eighteen did not return home. Tom A. Johnson flew the UH-1 “Iroquois” — better known as the “Huey” — in the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion of the First Air Cavalry Division. From June 1967 through June 1968, he accumulated an astonishin...

Palace Cobra picks up where Ed Rasimus's critically acclaimed When Thunder Rolled left off. Now he's flying the F-4 Phantom and the attitude is still there.In the waning days of the Vietnam War, Rasimus and his fellow pilots were determined that they were not going be the last to die in a conflict their country had abandoned. They were young fighter pilots fresh from training and experienced aviators who came back to the war again and again, not f...