The story of the air war in Vietnam is really story of the "fast movers", men who flew the jet fighters and fought in the MiG and SAM infested skies of North Vietnam. In this book, the author John Sherwood, an official historian with the U.S. Navy, draws on more than 300 revealing interviews with these courageous pilots and crews, offering an in-the-cockpit perspective on the Vietnam experience never before possible. He profiles fourteen aviators, including such MiG killers as Robin Olds, Steve Ritchie, and John "Pirate" Nichols, and captures the heroism and sacrifice of this truly elite group of air warriors. From flying through walls of flak in Operation Rolling Thunder to how it feels to shoot down a MiG to the crushing ordeal of capture and imprisonment in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," every aspect of air combat in Vietnam comes powerfully to life. Fast Movers celebrates these men and their aircraft, chronicling an aspect of the Vietnam conflict too long overlooked.

Fast Movers

History

Sherwood, John Darrell

Military

St. Martin's Paperbacks

The United States Air Force fought as a truly independent service for the first time during the Korean War. Ruling the skies in many celebrated aerial battles, even against the advanced Soviet MiG-15, American fighter pilots reigned supreme. Yet they also destroyed virtually every major town and city in North Korea, demolished its entire crop irrigation system and killed close to one million civilians. The self-confidence and willingness to take risks which defined the lives of these men became a trademark of the fighter pilot culture, what author John Darrell Sherwood here refers to as the flight suit attitude. In Officers in Flight Suits, John Darrell Sherwood takes a closer look at the flight suit officer's life by drawing on memoirs, diaries, letters, novels, unit records, and personal papers as well as interviews with over fifty veterans who served in the Air Force in Korea. Tracing their lives from their training to the flight suit culture they developed, the author demonstrates how their unique lifestyle affected their performance in battle and their attitudes toward others, particularly women, in their off-duty activities.

Officers in Flight Suits: The Story of American Air Force Fighter Pilots in the Korean War

Asia

NYU Press

This book focuses on the three prongs of the naval trident that President Nixon wielded during the final years of the Vietnam War: naval air power, naval bombardment, and mine warfare. For much of this period, Navy aircraft sought to hamper the flow of supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos—a huge investment in air power resources that ultimately proved fruitless. After North Vietnam’s invasion of the South in 1972, however, Navy tactical aviation, as well as naval bombardment, proved critical not only in blunting the offensive but also in persuading North Vietnam to arrive at a peace agreement in Paris in 1973. For the first time in the war, the Navy was also authorized to close Haiphong Harbor and North Vietnam's other ports with naval mines—an operation that still stands out as a textbook example of how mine warfare can inflict a major economic and psychological blow on the enemy with minimal casualties for either side. Thus, naval power was indispensible to ending America's longest war.

Nixon's Trident: Naval Power in Southeast Asia, 1968-1972 (The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War)

Navy, Department Of The

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Nixon's Trident: Naval Power in Southeast Asia, 1968-1972

Naval History Heritage and Command

United States Department of the Navy

Military Bookshop

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Books by Sherwood, John Darrell