Fast Movers

Official navy historian John Sherwood offers an authoritative social history of the air war, focused around fourteen of these aviators—from legends like Robin Olds, Steve Ritchie, and John Nichols to lesser-known but equally heroic fighters like Roger Lerseth and Ted Sienecki.

The war in the skies above Vietnam still stands as the longest our nation has ever fought. For fourteen years American pilots dropped bombs on the Southeast Asian countryside—eventually more than eight million tons of them. In doing so, they lost over 8,588 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. They did not win the war.

Ironically, Vietnam, though one of our least popular wars, produced one of the most effective groups of warriors our nation has ever seen—men of dedication, professionalism, and courage. Sherwood draws on nearly three hundred interviews to tell stories of great pilots and great planes in the words of the men themselves. Fliers recall jets such as McDonnell Douglas's famous F-4 Phantom, "a Corvette with wings"; the F-05 Thunderchief, the workhorse of the war; the F-8 Crusader, the last of the gun fighters; and the block-nosed but revolutionary A-6 Intruder with its fully computerized attack systems, terrain mapping radar, and digital all-weather navigation system.

Fast Movers offers fascinating portraits—based on Sherwood's interviews and declassified naval archives—of Vietnam's POWs. Pilots lucky enough to suffer only broken bones and burns from the violence of 1960s-era Martin-Baker ejection seats struggled to find honorable ways to negotiate half-decade-long periods in captivity. Passive resistance, like Commander Jeremiah Denton's famous blinking of TORTURE in Morse Code, was sometimes successful, often brutally reprised.

Against all odds, the pilots spawned a culture of success in the midst of failure, frustration, and devastation. Fast Movers captures a hidden and crucial story of America's least successful war.