War For the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot's View of Vietnam
Retired air force lieutenant colonel Cobleigh devotes his solid memoir to recounting his two tours of combat duty in Vietnam, flying F-4 Phantoms. His missions mixed patrolling for MiGs (he never scored a kill) and making tactical strikes, not infrequently on targets that were hard to identify, harder to hit, not worth hitting even if he got lucky, and definitely not worth losing planes and pilots for. Much of the book edgily presents the effects of the rules of engagement and other limitations imposed by Washington on generals who didn't feel enough loyalty to their men to protest. Other parts of it touch on life in the comparatively benign environment of a base in Thailand, which came, however, with ethical dilemmas about accepting the intimate hospitality of Thai hostesses. And a good part of it portrays the F-4 Phantom, one of the great fighting aircraft of the twentieth century, now fading into history and from air force rosters.Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved