Imagine for a moment that you are an airline Captain or First Officer who is also a Vietnam aviation veteran. You’ve leveled off at cruising altitude, the autopilot is on, and it is a dark, quiet night.
You naturally start up a conversation with your left or right seater to while away the hours.
You learn that he also flew in Vietnam, and you hear his story. Sometimes the story you are hearing is the first time it’s been told, outside of his family.
There were stories told, from veteran to veteran.
After a few of these stories, you have the idea to put them in a book “someday”, and you ask your fellow crewmen if they would put their own stories to paper for you.
The years go by and a lot of these stories are sitting in a box in your garage.
There’s others that you get from your friends who know other Western Airlines Vietnam veterans with their own stories.
Thirty-seven stories and 25 or 30 years later, the book is finally published.
I’ve just described this wonderful book, Vietnam to Western Airlines.
It was loaned to me by a friend, who also happens to be a retired Western Airlines pilot.
He had been telling me about this book for some months and naturally, since Western merged with Delta in 1986, 28 years ago, I figured that this book must have been published years ago.
It came out just last year.
Virtually all of the writers will tell you how a typical mission went from takeoff to landing. You’ll hear from a B52 pilot who was involved in a midair collision with another B52, and another B52 pilot who will tell you how a typical Arc Light mission went.
There is a story involving 2 Navy A-1 pilots searching for a downed Air Force pilot. Night was coming; they were running low on fuel but didn’t want to abandon their fellow airman. The rescue involved the use of a cigarette lighter and a co-operative carrier captain, and couldn’t have been imagined by the best Hollywood screenwriter.
You’ll land at a remote Special Forces camp – so close to the Ho Chi Minh trail you could hear the convoys at night – and ferry Montagnard tribesmen in your C-7 Caribou. You’ll wonder how the Green Berets – in the middle of nowhere, always had clean, starched and creased uniforms.
Fly with a Marine in his UH-1 “Huey” on a typical mission to help besieged Khe Sanh. He brought supplies and took out the wounded and dead – for 77 days.
He learned quickly to time his ground time to 25 seconds – loading, unloading and refueling – because the North Vietnamese mortar men could reload in 32 seconds.
Learn from an Air Force FAC (Forward Air Control) pilot flying the little Cessna O2 about how he did his work – and did you know – once they arrived in-country they went to an orientation school informally named “FAC-U”?
Who says the military has no sense of humor?
Did you know that the Navy had a squadron of OV-10 pilots – called the “Black Ponies”?
You’ll read amazing stories from these pilots and others who flew F4s, F105s, F100s, A-4s, C-130s, AC-130s , even an EC-121.
I don’t want to reveal the entire book here but give you just a sample of things I learned. There are 37 fascinating stories, and the editor said that was just a sample of the Vietnam pilots who flew for Western Air Lines.
One other thing that intrigued me – even amused me.
More than one aviator quoted from a book entitled “Tactical Aerodrome Directory, South Vietnam”
Consider it like a Jeppensens for small airports and dirt strips throughout South Vietnam. You pilots who complain about certain difficult conditions in airports here just consider the warnings this book gave on various strips.
It was life and death seriousness during the war, but funny today. Just believe me, the warnings they gave for South Vietnamese airstrips don’t exist here.
If it weren’t for Bruce Cowee capturing and editing these stories, they would have been eventually lost forever. Equal thanks go to his friends who gave us their stories.
This book is one of the few that having finished, will stay in my library and not passed on to a friend. This one was loaned but I am getting a copy.
