This is a unique story, previously untold. The Vietnam War saw the US pulled into a major regional conflict of asymmetric warfare where the forward controller flying a light plane became a vital component . – Very Highly Recommended
NAME: Catkiller 3-2, An Army Pilot Flying for the Marines in the Vietnam War FILE: R2737 AUTHOR: Raymond G Caryl PUBLISHER: Naval Institute Press BINDING: hard back PAGES: 239 PRICE: US$29.95 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: Vietnam War, Indo China, SE Asia, Cold War, Vietcong, NVA, light aircraft, low flying, air observation, land forces co-operation, artillery spotting, forward controller, light ground attack, asymmetric warfare.
ISBN: 978-1-68247-352-8
IMAGE: B2737.jpg BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.com/y7sarrdb LINKS: DESCRIPTION: This is a unique story, previously untold. The Vietnam War saw the US pulled into a major regional conflict of asymmetric warfare where the forward controller flying a light plane became a vital component . - Very Highly Recommended The Vietnam War was really a major regional campaign of the Cold War. As with the Korean War, communists supported by China and Russia sought to annex a neighbouring non-Communist State. The US was drawn progressively into this war with assets designed for a very different war against a major nuclear-armed enemy. For a democracy, it is almost a given that the war it prepares to fight is not the one it ends up fighting. The US military ended WWII and went almost immediately into the Cold War with the Soviet Union as the principle enemy. That presupposed a war with the threat of a heavy nuclear exchange or a war where the conventional forces were supported with battlefield nuclear weapons against the much larger force of Soviet armour and artillery. The battlefield was conceived as Europe and the North Atlantic. Overwhelming force had to be countered by overwhelming force. As a result, the US military developed a mind set where huge quantities of supplies and munitions had to be transported to the war zone, together with a very large land forces component, supported by carrier groups offshore and where the first priority was to establish air superiority across the battlefield. Inevitably that made the principle air weapons supersonic fighters and bombers in large numbers. The US approach to Vietnam was wildly different from the highly successful British war in Malaya and Indonesia. In the aftermath of WWII, the British were exhausted but had to pull together the resources to fight the Communist domino plan to mop up former colonies. Some will argue that had Britain controlled a massive military resource, such as that available to the US in Vietnam, they might have used similar tactics. However, the British decided to use hearts and minds programmes to win over the local population and defend it against the infiltrators. The active component of the plan was to use special forces and helicopters, with also a relatively large force of 'bush' aircraft in the army co-operation role. Larger forces were held ready to be deployed when the special forces had marked a concentration of enemy troops. In Vietnam the US forces employed growing numbers of helicopters, including gunships, but they were short of light aircraft and pilots for the army co-operation role. This was particularly important as the US came to rely heavily on fire bases, where artillery was concentrated on higher ground to cover 360 degrees around each fire base. The author was a US Army forward controller flying a light aircraft and was re-assigned to the US Marine Corps which was to be deployed alongside the Army but lacked light aircraft for forward control missions. In this book he has written an engaging account of his war in Vietnam, flying for the USMC. In the process he has provided many new insights in a war which had a major impact on US society and the ways in which the military came to adapt. A book that deserves a wide readership