Robey Price wrote:

After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, Guy Alcala
confessed the following:

I'll take "Going Downtown" over "Thud Ridge".

I've read Thud Ridge at least 6 times, but Going Downtown only once. I
was put off with a minor detail, his description of an RF-101
shootdown in Nov 1964. He sorta kinda has the name right, Bert Walls
(IIRC) is actually Burt Waltz (currently residing near Hickam AFB)
and some of the cavalier attitude (IMO) he attributed to BW is not how
Burt remembers it.

snip

Alas I donated "Going Downtown," to my local library. Guy, unlike you
I buy lots of books, parting with them is almost unthinkable, no
qualms with GD.

I'd be sleeping in the car with the books overflowing the house if I bought
everything I read. I confess to having problems with Broughton's idiosyncratic
spelling in "GD" ('Oerlicon,' indeed), and "Thud Ridge" is better writing, but I
know the story -- I'm after the technical stuff, and "GD" provides more of that
than "TR".

As would I. Gene Basel's "Pak Six" is okay, but less informative in the areas
of interest to me..

I also like Al Lenski's "Magic 100."

Haven't found that one yet.

You've left out "Alpha Strike Vietnam," a chronological collection by year of
firsthand accounts. Kind of like "Fast Movers," but unlike most such
collections, this one concentrates on the attack pilots flying
A-1/A-4/A-6/A-7, irather than the fighters.

I enjoyed ASV, couldn't finish FM (and yet I liked Sherwood's Korean
effort "Offiecers in flight Suits."). FM suffered the same fate as GD
and now resides in a local library.

I wasn't all that impressed by it either - ISTR that Sherwood lacked aviation
background, which tended to throw jarring notes into the book that would bring me
up[ short. But I got to read the short form of Ed's 105 tour before he wrote
"WTR," plus I though the chapter on Robin Olds was pretty good (for his
personality, if not the accuracy of the facts cited).

I really enjoyed was George Marrett's "Cheating Death," combined with
Byron Hukee's http://skyraider.org/hook/ and Tilford's "The USAF
Search and Rescue in SEA," they make a good trio.

Haven't read those, but I thought Tilford's "Setup: What the Air Force did in
Vietnam and Why" was excellent. Sort of "Clashes," several echelons up.

Guy