Summary of Stephan Talty's Saving Bravo

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Iceal Gene Hambleton had ached to get away from the listless plains of Illinois his entire life. But he was born into a farming family, and his father discouraged dreaming in him and his brothers.
#2 Gene, the eldest son of Iceal Sr. , grew up to be a very different person than his father. He was funny, mischievous, and defiant, and he loved pranks. He grew up resenting his given name, Iceal, and eventually changed it to Gene.
#3 Many young Americans in the 1930s and 1940s dreamed of flight.
#4 Hayden’s obsession with flight began when he was a child. He would cut out balsa models of airplanes and fly them around his house.

Sujets

• Vietnam War

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 04 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669347965
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Stephan Talty's Saving Bravo
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Iceal Gene Hambleton had ached to get away from the listless plains of Illinois his entire life. But he was born into a farming family, and his father discouraged dreaming in him and his brothers.

#2

Gene, the eldest son of Iceal Sr. , grew up to be a very different person than his father. He was funny, mischievous, and defiant, and he loved pranks. He grew up resenting his given name, Iceal, and eventually changed it to Gene.

#3

Many young Americans in the 1930s and 1940s dreamed of flight.

#4

Hayden’s obsession with flight began when he was a child. He would cut out balsa models of airplanes and fly them around his house.

#5

Gwendolyn Mae Flessner was Gene’s wife, and she was the rock of the family. She was beautiful, and young, and very like his mother. They met at a bomb factory, and fell in love.

#6

The Air Corps was extremely selective about who they allowed to fly, and even then, they had a high mortality rate. As a result, the service hired tens of thousands of pilots, many of whom were killed on their first mission.

#7

The rivalry between the two brothers continued after the war, as Hambleton believed he was the best navigator in the entire army.

#8

After VJ Day, Gene left the Air Force and returned to Peoria. He tried selling fridges but was unsuccessful. He was lonely and always wanted his wife next to him. He reached the top echelons of his profession but his career didn’t turn out the way he’d imagined.

#9

During his time in the Air Force, Gene Hambleton was assigned to work on the Jupiter and Titan rocket families, which were designed by von Braun and deployed as a deterrent against the Soviet Union.

#10

In 1962, Hambleton was part of a team that was in charge of the missiles that could have launched nuclear war, but were instead removed from Turkey and Cuba. He returned to the states and began to climb the Air Force ziggurat. He was staff navigator for the Forty-second Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron in 1971.

#11

The next great battle between Soviet and American scientists was being waged in the skies over Vietnam. The two adversaries were testing their advanced fighters, radars, laser-guided bombs, and top-secret electronic warfare systems.

#12

Tommy Norris, despite being only 115 pounds, was a menace in high school wrestling. He made it two times to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship while at college. He wanted to be a pilot, so he joined the Navy.

#13

Norris was the only recruit to make it through the training course three times, and he did it without breaking down or asking to be released. He was always last in swimming, but he had made it.

#14

Gene Hambleton, the navigator, would awake on April 2, 1972, and prepare for the day. He would shower, shave, and eat a delicious meal before heading out. He would visit the Officers’ Club, where he would socialize with other Air Force pilots.

#15

The Air Force was full of testosterone-fueled pilots who adored zooming through the air at mach speeds, and the inkblot test was part of their attraction.

#16

The crew of the B-52 that was to bomb the NVA in Laos was short a navigator, so Hambleton had to take the seat behind the pilot and fly the mission himself.

#17

The briefing was fairly standard. The North Vietnamese had not launched an organized offensive in two full years, and the airmen felt the war was winding down. The six crew members headed to the aircraft parking ramp to wait for their plane, an EB-66C painted in jungle camo.

#18

The US Air Force developed a technique known as jinking, which was a simple but terrifying process for an Air Force pilot. First, an electronic warning buzzer would blare in your headset or your backseater would yell out the dreaded words SAM on scope! Then you had to immediately snap your gaze earthward and search for the fat white contrail of a missile rocketing your way.

#19

If you held on until the missile was almost ready to detonate, and then only snapped your hand over the missile once it was almost on you, the SAM would shoot harmlessly out into the cold ether.