Vietnam Air

The story of the United States Air Force (USAF) stretches back to aerial operations prior to the First World War and looks forward to a new era of airpower in space. Fighting from Above presents a concise account of this history, offering a new perspective on how the air forces of the United States created an independent way of warfare over time.

This is the story of a pilot who flew the F-4, the F-105, the F-111, and the O-2 in defense of his country. In addition, he spent several years working on the ground with Army frontline forces as an air liaison officer, integrating airpower into the ground battle. Many people have asked what it feels like to fly jet fighters. In fact, most people have never flown in a small plane. With no relevant reference, it’s very hard to describe. They truly are missing the most incredible feeling of being airborne alone, among the clouds, looking down at the ground and feeling amazingly free.

This second book of Sea Stories continues to follow the journey of a young Midwesterner, now Marine Lieutenant, through the rigors of Naval Flight School in Pensacola, Fatherhood, and Combat as a Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam. It also provides an interesting look at his fellow pilots and crewmen, as they fight their war from under a helicopter rotorhead.

These are the details of every day events that happened during combat in Vietnam, as told to me by my husband and his comrades, many of whom I have met over the last 19 years. You will hear about how he and I have dealt with PTSD. We have been to his unit reunions every year for the last 19 years and have became good friends with the men of C/1/5, and also the wives and family members of those who were killed over 50 years ago.

Midair is a true account of one of the most remarkable tales of survival in the history of aviation - a midair collision at 30,000 feet by two bomb-laden B-52s over a category 5 super typhoon above the South China Sea during the outset of the Vietnam War.

A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to Vietnam War literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday's writing illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.

Catkiller 3-2 provides unique insights into the role of the tactical air controller, airborne (TACA) in I Corps as seen through the eyes of one of the pilots who flew low-flying, unarmed, single-engine aircraft in support of marine ground units during the Vietnam War. When Gen. William Westmoreland changed the marines' role in I Corps into a combat one, the Marines found themselves in need of more fixed wing aircraft to handle the TACA missions.

You hear them first, the whop whop sound of rotor blades chopping through the humid Vietnam air. Suddenly they appear, screaming toward the landing zone at treetop level. When one helicopter crashes in flames, the pilots in the others maintain formation and push ahead. Nothing deters these warriors, volunteers all, from flying on with the tenaciousness of zealots. Mended Wings is their story. Follow the lives of ten Purple Heart heroes as they relate the Vietnam War experience from the perspective of the helicopter cockpit.

A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, in 1973, Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a lifelong passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary circumnavigation of the globe, and in its pursuit he set several ballooning distance records, including the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1984. But the aeronautical feats that first made him an American hero had occurred a quarter of a century earlier....

In 1972, America was completing its withdrawal from the long and divisive war in Vietnam. Air power covered the departure of ground forces, and search and rescue teams from all services and Air America covered the airmen and soldiers still in the fight. Day and night these military and civilian aircrews stood alert to respond to "Mayday" calls. The rescue forces were the answer to every man's prayer, and those forces brought home airmen, sailors, marines, and soldiers downed or trapped across the breadth and depth of the entire Southeast Asia theater.

In Barren SEAD, award-winning historian James L. Young, Jr., propagates a different theory: Instead of being a sign of what the Air Force was capable of, Linebacker II was a bitter failure that starkly outlined the USAF's limitations. Furthermore, instead of the meddling of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, this defeat was brought about by Air Force leaders' refusal to develop a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) doctrine from 1953-1972.

Gerald "Jerry" Keyser and I became friends in 1966, when we were both in USAF Pilot Training. In 1970 I got out of the Air Force and Jerry stayed in. We remained friends and I followed along in awe as he went on to have the most amazing flying career I have ever seen. He flew 100 different types of airplanes, helicopters, and gliders during his 20 years in the Air Force, including a stint with NASA, and his 17 years as a test pilot for Hughes-McDonell Douglas-Boeing Helicopter Company in Arizona.