On Sun, 14 Mar 2004 19:46:45 GMT, "Gord Beaman" )
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

New book still on track for this fall release. Title is still to be
determined.

Ed Rasimus

I entirely agree with smh here re Thunder. ...and I sincerely
hope that the lack of chest thumping which was evident in Thunder
carries over to this book. It's one of the huge automatic
turnoffs to me and it isn't needed, your clear readable sometimes
self depreciating descriptions of events make the chest beating
unnecessary.

Well, Gord, I can't be the young naive lieutenant again. I don't get
into chest thumping, but I was six years older and on a second tour,
so there's going to be a different perspective.

The concept is to look at a war gone on too long and which no one
wants to win. Why do people go to combat under those conditions? By
the time we had been fighting the same war, from the same bases,
against the same targets for nearly eight years, there had risen a
strange cult of "fighter pilotry" with excesses of ritual, drinking
and sex. There's some of that, a lot of flying missions, and some more
interesting personalities. To tickle your fancy, here's the
introduction:

"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of
it."

At Fredricksburg, December 1862
Gen. Robert Edward Lee, CSA

Introduction:

There is a fascination to war. It should not be entered lightly and
once begun, should be waged to conclusion as quickly as possible. Once
the threat to the nation, the challenge to world peace, the objective
of public policy is met, the war should end. That would be the ideal
solution in an ideal world, but we only recognize the loss of the
ideal long after the moment for effective action has passed. That was
the problem with the air war over North Vietnam.

We had entered the war with resolution and patriotism. We overcame our
fears and fought bravely for our nation, doing that which was asked of
us and subjugating our questioning of policy, method, tactics and
strategy. We were the offspring of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation,"
a combination of George Cohen's Yankee Doodle Dandy and John Wayne's
over-sized heroism that couldn't be beaten. We knew we were right and
we knew we would prevail. But, that was at the beginning.

When the air war started, no one thought it would last indefinitely.
Certainly no one could have overlaid a series of starts and stops
linking American political campaigns to the application of tactical
air power. In '65, '66 and '67, we went to North Vietnam delivering
good capitalist iron on the evil communists and suffering incredible
losses. It was bearable because we knew that our leadership sought
victory and the American people supported us. But, by 1968, it had
become apparent that election victory for populist politicians on the
home front was more important than victory in the war in Southeast
Asia. That's when President Lyndon Johnson added one more stop to the
sequence and announced an indefinite cessation of the air campaign
against North Vietnam.

From 1968 until the spring of 1972, we entered a period that Robert E.
Lee couldn't have begun to comprehend. We weren't there to win and we
didn't seem to want to lose. Fighter pilots went because it was the
thing to do. It had become a career move, absolutely required for
promotion and conferring the authority to swagger and pontificate to
others who either had not yet been to the war or those who had been
earlier. A culture of combat grew that leaned much more toward the
fondness for war than the need to aggressively pursue victory. We
fought to fight and with the most deadly targets suspended, it became
simply a routine excursion expected of those who wore wings. While the
ground troops facing the hell of jungle combat in the South still
maintained a clear picture of the terrible nature of war, the fighter
pilots in Thailand built a world on the machismo of it.

Thailand became a place for those who hadn't made the cut as a fighter
pilot when they graduated from pilot training to get quickly
credentialed. Bomber drivers and trash-haulers, training commandoes
and desk jockeys went through the pipeline that turned them into
instant heroes. The catch was that the war had become
institutionalized. It simply droned on and with any real objectives
gone, the daily pattern became one of finding a use for the sorties
with the rest of the day dedicated to designing new ways to
demonstrate that somehow, those assigned to fly fighters were
something special. Industries grew up to support the adrenaline
addiction of near-combat as a third world nation tried to cope with
the cultural overlay of tens of thousands of testosterone pumped
American men flooding their country. We brought our society with us
and once removed from the constraints of home, family, parents and
civilization we ran amok.

If there was sex in America, there would be sex in Southeast Asia, but
without a senior generation to scold us at our excesses. If there were
drugs in America, there would be drugs in the Far East, which was a
lot closer to the source. If there was racial conflict in America, we
could pack our racism and regionalism and red-neck attitudes and live
out the entire range of ethnic stereotypes without a need for
solutions or consideration. Yes, we could package all that was coming
apart in America in the late '60s and concentrate it for
reconstitution in Thailand. And, of course, there was drinking. You've
got to drink to relieve the stress of combat. It's been a tradition as
long as there has been aerial warfare. Nearness to possible death
provided a reason for excesses.

Then came April of 1972 and with the Paris Peace Talks bogged down
once again, a president who had been elected to correct the mistakes
of the Johnson administration saw his Vietnamization policy coming
apart. It was time to finish the job and force the recalcitrant
Communists back to the bargaining table. The Linebacker campaign
resumed the bombing of the North and after three and a half years of
relative security behind a political cease-fire, the targets of the
enemy's heartland were again on the daily list. The defenses had the
opportunity to concentrate and focus on the attackers and our
technology had attempted to counter each technological advance. With
the Linebacker campaign, we would again face serious threat and
hopefully this time we would have the intent of winning.

I told the story of my first combat tour in the F-105 during 1966 in
When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot Over North Vietnam. This is the
story of my return to combat in the summer of 1972, once again at
Korat and once again flying to the same heavily defended targets in
Route Pack VI, the valley of the Red River in and around the capital
of Hanoi. The mind numbing terror of first combat had long receded.
Now, it was a question of what we had become and whether I had "grown
too fond of it."

This is as much a sociological view as a combat memoir. There was
certainly more than enough combat to go around, but it is also the
story of personalities and interactions, excesses and idiosyncrasies.
It's a look at the microcosm of America's finest, taken out of the
society that had forsaken the war and placed, for better or for worse,
at the cutting edge of the nation's policy sword. Here's the Woodstock
generation coming face-to-face with Apocalypse Now. It isn't
necessarily good or bad. It simply is the way it is. And, the way I
remember it.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8