Summary of Dan Hampton's The Hunter Killers

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The F-105 was a powerful and big aircraft designed to fly fast and dangerously low. It was used in a different war for completely different reasons. The pilots were tasked with obliterating the SAM sites that killed Ross Fobair three days earlier.
#2 The Thud was a well-designed and roomy plane. It was set up around a T-shaped center console. Every few seconds Vic glanced inside the cockpit and cross-checked a gauge or switch. He didn’t bother with the big attitude indicator or horizontal situation indicator in the middle console just forward of the stick.
#3 Vic flew alongside the leader, keeping an eye on the hills on the right side of the formation. As they flew through the passes, Vic felt the pure joy of flying. Suddenly, voices crackled through his helmet. Someone was hit.
#4 The first twelve Takhli jets were all from the Ace of Spades, the 563rd Tactical Fighter Squadron. They were flying against Site 7, supposedly one of the SAMs that shot down Leopard Two, the F-4C from Ubon, three days earlier.

Sujets

• Military

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 05 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669377870
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Dan Hampton's The Hunter Killers
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The F-105 was a powerful and big aircraft designed to fly fast and dangerously low. It was used in a different war for completely different reasons. The pilots were tasked with obliterating the SAM sites that killed Ross Fobair three days earlier.

#2

The Thud was a well-designed and roomy plane. It was set up around a T-shaped center console. Every few seconds Vic glanced inside the cockpit and cross-checked a gauge or switch. He didn’t bother with the big attitude indicator or horizontal situation indicator in the middle console just forward of the stick.

#3

Vic flew alongside the leader, keeping an eye on the hills on the right side of the formation. As they flew through the passes, Vic felt the pure joy of flying. Suddenly, voices crackled through his helmet. Someone was hit.

#4

The first twelve Takhli jets were all from the Ace of Spades, the 563rd Tactical Fighter Squadron. They were flying against Site 7, supposedly one of the SAMs that shot down Leopard Two, the F-4C from Ubon, three days earlier.

#5

As the other three jets approached the river, they were met with anti-aircraft fire from Yen Bai. Vic was flying Rambler One, and he was barely fifty feet above the trees. He tensed up for what was coming.

#6

The lead Thud, Vic Mancuso, was so low over the valley that his exhaust was shooting dirt rooster tails into the air. The corner of his right eye picked up the bright orange flash of Valiant’s cluster bomb attack.

#7

The Red River was in plain sight beyond Number Four’s wing. It was wide, flat, and muddy, and it stretched eastward to the green fields beyond. Rambler One bumped up slightly, then banked left.

#8

The four BLU-27s fell away and the jet kicked up slightly as the extra weight came off. In the blink of an eye, twelve canisters peeled away from the bellies of the other fighters. Vic had to pass through a U-shaped flat area between the rivers, and anti-aircraft fire was everywhere.

#9

The thrill of flying faded as he thought of the guys who went down. Dead or worse. Too far into Indian Country to be rescued. Alone. The 563rd deployed to Takhli in April 1965, from McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas.

#10

The Vietnam War was the result of the country’s tumultuous past. The French Empire had invaded Vietnam in 1858, and by the following year they had captured Saigon. French colonial hegemony managed to absorb the three Vietnamese regions of Cochinchina, Annam, and the northern province of Tonkin. Cambodia and Laos were eventually added.

#11

The French lost to the Axis in 1940, and collaborated with the Japanese throughout the war, yet they were still entitled to have their investments returned to them. The Vietnamese nationalist resistance to this notion began to spread and destabilize the entire area.

#12

The French commander surrendered in 1954, shocking the world. The American president, John F. Kennedy, brought great hope to the United States. He was handsome and sophisticated, scion of a wealthy family, with a beautiful wife and young children.

#13

In 1962, Kennedy lost face over the same island during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, had come away from a summit meeting with Kennedy believing that the president was a dilettante, unsuited or unwilling to project American power.

#14

The Cuban Missile Crisis was the high point of the crisis, when a U-2 out of McCoy Air Force Base was hit by an SA-2 above the eastern tip of Cuba. The pilot, Major Rudy Anderson of the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, a South Carolina native and Korean War veteran, was likely killed when his pressure suit was punctured by shrapnel.

#15

The American presence in Laos was important to the Central Intelligence Agency. Highly classified Lima Sites, usually airstrips built to service the agency’s private air force, popped up all over the country.

#16

By 1963, the American presence in Southeast Asia had increased greatly. The Military Assistance Command Vietnam had replaced the old Military Assistance Advisory Group, and Joint Task Force 116, which had been deployed in 1962 to fight the Pathet Lao, was fully reactivated. However, none of this slowed the northern-based National Liberation Front or prevented Viet Cong insurgents from occupying the southern half of the Mekong Delta.

#17

The American military had tried to implement the mobile combined arms warfare concept at Ap Bac, a tiny village in the Dinh Tuong province west of the Delta, in January 1963. It failed miserably, as only one of three helicopter waves made it in on time. The real victory at Ap Bac was the demonstration of the Viet Cong’s ability to stand and fight a modern, mechanized force.

#18

America’s last step into the Vietnam quagmire came on November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. He was no real veteran, but he used his influence as a congressman to become a naval officer and arrange a direct commission as a lieutenant commander.

#19

The president needed a pivot point to rally support for action in Vietnam. He found it in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the USS Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on August 2, 1964. Congress passed the Southeast Asia Resolution on August 7, giving the president authority to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia without a congressional declaration of war.

#20

The Gulf of Tonkin incident proved to be extremely valuable in proving to the public that President Johnson was not soft on communism. He had publicly run on a campaign promise of peace in Southeast Asia, but by Christmas eight aircraft carriers were being deployed to the Pacific.

#21

The first F-105 was lost in combat in January 1965, and the first American ground units waded ashore on China Beach in March 1965. North Vietnam did not surrender, nor was it overawed into negotiation.