Thud Ridge

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This is a book about the fighting in the air over North Vietnam, and it is written in the language of the fighter pilots of the Air Force. There was no other way. Some of these words are not going to make much sense if you haven’t had the experience, and where that seemed to be the case I have tried to explain; others will, I hope, be clear enough from the context, from the people and places and events that I have described. I have attempted to combine a definition of some of the words we used and a general description of how we worked into an appendix “A Bit About Words.” Take a look at it if you’re puzzled about some of the aspects of fighter pilot chatter. That’s what it’s for.

The fighter pilot is a breed apart; to him, loyalty down is all important, and the men who flew against North Vietnam in aircraft designed for far different missions felt they were always under the gun of official disapproval in Washington and Hawaii. They risked their lives to the enemy, their car-reers to the politicians. Infractions of any one of the tremendous numbers of restrictions which governed every flying hour of their lives subjected them to inquiry and perhaps to censure and punishment. Yet far from being just irresponsible Gung-Ho pilots out to kill women and children—a Communist-sponsored caricature that has been sold to too many of the American people—they were quiet heroes who tried their best to deliver their bombs on military targets only, and who often paid with their lives for their humanity and their restraint.

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