GOING DOWNTOWN: The War Against Hanoi and Washington by Jack Broughton. A combat aviation classic. “Going Downtown” was the term American combat pilots used to denote the almost daily and invariably dangerous combat missions against the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, and its environs. To Colonel Jack Broughton, a veteran of the Korean War, former leader of the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds precision flying team, and vice commander of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing, “Going Downtown” became...

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...

In 1945 Second Lieutenant Jack Broughton graduated from West Point with the silver pilot wings of a newly commissioned member of the Army Air Corps. Nearly thirty years later, he retired as a full colonel in the United States Air Force, an entity that didn't even exist when he first learned to fly. Along the way Colonel Broughton saw duty in virtually every fighter aircraft the Air Corps and then Air Force had to offer. He experienced the birth and coming of age of the U.S. Air Force and i...

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was the outstanding aircraft in many of the Western World's air forces during the 1960s and 70s. It played a key role in the 'Cold War' and saw action in Vietnam. It first flew in 1958 and went into operation with the US Navy in 1960. During its long front-line life it flew in the roles of an interceptor, fighter-bomber and reconnaissance aircraft.Apart from giving a comprehensive overview of the Phantom's history, this book looks particularly at the exper...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING MEMOIR OF 21ST-CENTURY AIR COMBAT, BY "ONE OF THE MOST DECORATED PILOTS IN AIR FORCE HISTORY" (NEW YORK POST)151 combat missions21 hard kills on surface -to -air missile sites4 Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor1 Purple HeartFirst into a war zone, flying behind enemy lines to purposely draw fire, the wild weasels are elite fighter squadrons with the most dangerous job in the A...

“This is the most poignant Vietnam War book I have read and without any selfbravado. It ranks up there with the famous WWI trench books. One could never again glorify war after reading this book.”Hugo Trux, Marketing Director“I half-heartedly picked up Widowmaker one day and was quickly immersed into one of the most riveting real life adventures I have ever read.” The Honorable Jon Spahr, JD, Licking County Court, Ohio“I reluctantly picked up Widowmaker one day and c...

Officially the war in Laos did not exist – both North Vietnam and the USA denied they had troops there. In fact, thousands of North Vietnamese were invading the country and pouring down the Ho Chi Minh Trail on their way to the south, and the Americans were fighting a vigorous war against them from the air. The Ravens were the pilots, all volunteers, who flew through heavy groundfire to identify targets and call in air-strikes. Their mission was so secret that they were ‘sold’ their prop-d...

There were no dry runs for Seawolves in Vietnam.They put their lives on the line—every time.In the Viet Cong-infested Mekong Delta, where small SEAL teams were alwaysoutgunned and outnumbered, discovery brought swift, deadly consequences— and a radio call for backup from the United States Navy’s very best: the Seawolves. The whir of approaching rotor blades signaled their arrival as they tore through the jungle at treetop level, gunners hanging off the skids...

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...

The aeroscouts of the 1st Infantry Division had three words emblazoned on their unit patch: Low Level Hell. It was then and continues today as the perfect concise definition of what these intrepid aviators experienced as they ranged the skies of Vietnam from the Cambodian border to the Iron Triangle. The Outcasts, as they were known, flew low and slow, aerial eyes of the division in search of the enemy. Too often for longevity’s sake they found the Viet Cong and the fight was on. These you...

Based on audiotapes he recorded during the war and sent home to his family, Randy ZahnÆs Snake Pilot recounts his experiences flying AH-1 Cobra helicopters during the Vietnam War. First deployed in Vietnam in 1967 and loaded with a formidable arsenal of weaponry, the Cobra was the first helicopter designed from inception as an attack aircraft. It dramatically changed the nature of the war in Vietnam by offering the Army, for the first time, its own powerful and highly accurate weapons ...

From flying with the Screaming Eagles in Vietnam to serving with the Marines and the Royal Navy, this memoir recounts the life of a career military pilot.Sometimes it just isn't your day. Whether your helicopter comes apart in flight due to equipment failure, or another aircraft runs into you in midair, or an enemy gunner lands his rounds in exactly the right spot to take you out of the sky. That's why, after twenty-four years and more than five thousand flight hou...