War For The Hell Of It A Fighter Pilots View Of Vietnam Book 11 ((NEW))

Ed, "Fast Eddie," Cobleigh served two tours of duty during the Vietnam air war, logging 375 combat sorties in the F-4 Phantom fighter/bomber. In War for the Hell of It, Cobleigh shares his perspectives in a deeply personal account of a fighter pilot's life, one filled with moral ambiguity and military absurdities offset by the undeniable thrill of flying a fighter aircraft. With well-crafted prose that puts you into the Phantom's cockpit, Cobleigh vividly recounts the unexplainable loss of his wingman, the useless missions he flew, the need to trust his reflexes, eyesight, and aggressiveness, and his survival instincts in the heat of combat. He discusses the deaths of his squadron mates and the contradictions of a dirty, semi-secret war fought from beautiful, exotic Thailand. This is an unprecedented look into the state of mind of a pilot as he experiences everything from the carnage of a crash to the joy of flying through a star-studded night sky, from the illogical political agendas of Washington to his own dangerous addiction to risk. Cobleigh gives a stirring and emotional description of one man's journey into airborne hell and back, recounting the pleasures and the pain. the wins and the losses. and ultimately, the return.

Craig Werner and I discovered the power of music from a decade of interviews with hundreds of Vietnam vets. Our new book, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War shows how music helped soldiers/veterans connect to each other and to life back home and to cope with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight.

Although he combines a meticulous presentation of facts with lively human-interest vignettes that evoke the spirit of the era, author Dennis C. Kucera overlooked one golden opportunity when he prepared his book. The 31st Group fought a remarkable variety of enemies as it escorted bombers over targets such as Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia. Yet the author does nothing to shed more light on opposing aircraft, which the Americans believed were all German. Such perceptions were understandable at the time, but in fact the 31st often clashed with Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian as well as German fighters. There is a strong possibility, for example, that Mustangs of the 31st Group killed third-ranking Hungarian ace László Molnár (25 victories) on August 7, 1944, and top-ranking Romanian ace Alexandru Serbanescu (45 victories) on August 18.

Throughout early 1942, Leroy Grumman, along with his chief designers Jake Swirbul and Bill Schwendler, worked closely with the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) and experienced F4F pilots,[14] to develop the new fighter in such a way that it could counter the Zero's strengths and help gain air dominance in the Pacific Theater of Operations.[15] On 22 April 1942, Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare toured the Grumman Aircraft company and spoke with Grumman engineers, analyzing the performance of the F4F Wildcat against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero in aerial combat.[16][Note 3] BuAer's Lt Cdr A. M. Jackson [Note 4] directed Grumman's designers to mount the cockpit higher in the fuselage.[19] In addition, the forward fuselage sloped down slightly to the engine cowling, giving the Hellcat's pilot good visibility.[20]

The F6F-5 featured several improvements, including a more powerful R-2800-10W engine employing a water-injection system and housed in a slightly more streamlined engine cowling, spring-loaded control tabs on the ailerons, and an improved, clear-view windscreen, with a flat armored-glass front panel replacing the F6F-3's curved plexiglass panel and internal armor glass screen.[12][20] In addition, the rear fuselage and tail units were strengthened, and apart from some early production aircraft, most of the F6F-5s built were painted in an overall gloss sea-blue finish.[28] After the first few F6F-5s were built, the small windows behind the main canopy were deleted.[29] The F6F-5N night-fighter variant was fitted with an AN/APS-6 radar in a fairing on the outer-starboard wing. A few standard F6F-5s were also fitted with camera equipment for reconnaissance duties as the F6F-5P.[30] While all F6F-5s were capable of carrying an armament mix of one 20-mm (.79-in) M2 cannon in each of the inboard gun bays (220 rounds per gun), along with two pairs of .50-in (12.7-mm) machine guns (each with 400 rounds per gun), this configuration was only used on later F6F-5N night fighters.[31] The F6F-5 was the most common F6F variant, with 7,870 being built.[20][Note 6]

Mr. MORRIS: His memoir. And what surprised me was the book I was reading was so different than the book I saw described in many, many reviews and editorials. It didn't seem to be a mea culpa at all, more this anguished attempt to go back into the past to try to figure out what happened and why it happened.

The subject matter of her debut novel, "Interview With the Vampire," from 1973, came while mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Michelle, from leukemia. "The vampire was the perfect metaphor for the way I felt. I felt like a lost person, a person in the dark, a person who was trying to find meaning in life, trying to find context.

The Navy's fighter pilots fought the entire war in the Pacific, fromPearl Harbor to the Home Islands. In 1942, flying F4F Wildcats, theNavy fighter pilots barely held their own against the Japanese Zeros. Ahandful of heroes like O'Hare, McCuskey, and Vejtasa scored somenotable successes. The Navy contributed fighting squadrons to theGuadalcanal campaign, but did not achieve big results until late 1943,when the F4U Corsairs and F6F Hellcats arrived.

His next combat occurred with Intrepid's VF-6, on theFebruary 16-17, 1944 strike against Truk airfields on Moen, Eten, andParam Islands. The day started with a large fighter sweep, 72 Hellcats,over the Jap bases. Vraciu arrived over Moen at 13,000 foot altitudejustbefore sunrise. Amidst the anti-aircraft fire, the Hellcats begandivingtoward the airstrips for their strafing runs. Looking all around, Lt.Vraciuspotted some Zeros above and to port, which he swung toward andattacked.Using the superior maneuverability of the Hellcat at high speeds (over250 knots), he successfully gained altitude on the Zeros and chasedtheminto clouds and onto the deck. During this action he hit and set afire3 Zeros, which splashed inside Truk lagoon. He then got another aftera bit of cat-and-mouse in a cloud. The afternoon saw little air-to-airaction, as Vraciu and the other Hellcat pilots escorted bombers andtorpedo planes on their runs. That evening, when the planes hadreturned,Intrepid was hit by a torpedo and was withdrawn from combatfor repairs. 2b1af7f3a8