A Hundred Feet Over Hell

A Hundred Feet Over Hell is the story of a handful of young pilots taking extraordinary risks to support those on the ground. Flying over Vietnam in two-seater Cessnas, they often made the difference between a soldier returning alive to his family or having the lonely sound of “Taps” played over his grave. Based on extensive interviews, and often in the men’s own words, A Hundred Feet Over Hell puts the reader in the plane as this intrepid band of U.S. Army aviators calls in fire support for the soldiers and marines of I Corps.

This new and expanded edition of the best-selling story of the US Army's 220th Reconnaissance Airplane Company adds more detail and more voices from this extraordinary unit. The Catkillers patrolled northern I Corps, the DMZ and into North Vietnam. Their unarmed and unarmored, single-engine Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs, capable of no more than 100 knots at full throttle, were the US military's last fixed wing aircraft to go into combat with its windows open. The pilots, all in their early 20s, were dedicated to supporting Marine and Army infantry units in close contact with communist forces. Calling in artillery and air strikes while flying within the effective range of range of every enemy weapon on the battlefield took a special breed of aerial warriors Of the eleven Army Bird Dog companies spread along the length of South Vietnam none flew over a more dangerous terrain than the Catkillers. They violated international treaties, disobeyed orders about minimum altitudes in a combat zone and took off in weather conditions that kept other aviation units on the ground, all to save the lives of their fellow Americans. Bullet holes in their tiny airplanes came with the job yet never stopped the young pilots taking off the next morning knowing the enemy was waiting for them.

This is an epic oral history of Vietnam's bloodiest campaign, fought for seven months in a series of battles, most of them within four miles of each other, along Route 534. Staring in October 1967, orders came down to the 2nd North Vietnamese Army Division commanding them to join with the local Viet Cong and seize the city of Danang in the Tet Offensive. After fighting for seven months in the Que Son Valley, the division was so battered that it failed to carry out its mission, with only one platoon making it inside the city limits. This is the true-life accounts of what fighting was like in that narrow, bloody valley from the veteran's own mouths, and how that saved Danang from suffering the same fate as Hue City

Koevoet! has been an global bestseller since its release over 20 years ago. This new edition goes far beyond the original in capturing the courage, fear and intensity of South Africa's deadly bush war. Never before had an outsider been given unrestricted access to Koevoet, the elite South West African Police counterinsurgency unit - also known as Operation K and officially as the South West Africa Police Counter Insurgency Unit (SWAPOL-COIN). Author Jim Hooper spent a total of five months embedded with the semi-secret and predominantly black 'Ops K', which climaxed with one of the most vicious and determined infiltrations ever mounted by the communist-backed South West Africa People s Organization (SWAPO). Crossing regularly into Angola in pursuit of the insurgents, he saw friends die next to him and was twice wounded himself. This updated edition, drawing on the recollections and diaries of the men he rode with, will fascinate yet another generation of readers. In assembling this work, Jim Hooper had the opportunity to re-connect with so many of the men who allowed this outsider to ride with them. All of which brought a new intensity and poignancy. It also reminded Jim Hooper how privileged he was to have been witness to Koevoet's war. This stunning work is a tribute to Koevoet and the legend they created. "Hooper is a careful reporter, but also a born writer; his vivid word-pictures drag you in and hold you. He skillfully conveys his initially unwelcoming reception by an operational unit; the long, frustrating grind of search operations in punishing terrain and climate; the extraordinary bush skills of the Ovambo policemen; the shock of sudden contact, and its aftermath." Martin Windrow "Jim Hooper's account of South Africa's successful "Ops K" in Namibia against South West Africa's People's Organization guerrillas should be required reading. The classic narrative is as timely today as it was twenty years ago." Charles D. Melson, Chief Historian, U.S. Marine Corps University. "This expanded edition is a skillfully woven mosaic of personal accounts from those involved and what he experienced during combat with Koevoet. The use of new material from those he rode with lays bare the realities of war, the fears and emotions that ebb and flow in the heat of combat, and the courage one finds to bring the battle to the enemy" Piet Nortje, Author of 32 Battalion "Koevoet describes in great detail the men, both black and white, and their mine-protected cross-country vehicles which were years ahead of anything in use by other western forces, the dedicated helicopter support units and the tactics used to bring an elusive guerrilla force to battle." Paul French, Author of Shadows of a Forgotten Past: To the Edge with the Rhodesian SAS and Selous Scouts.

In this raw and moving memoir, Claude Thomas describes his service in Vietnam, his subsequent emotional collapse, and his remarkable journey toward healing. At Hell's Gate is not only a gripping coming-of-age story but a spiritual travelogue from the horrors of combat to the discovery of inner peace—a journey that inspired Thomas to become a Zen monk and peace activist who travels to war-scarred regions around the world. "Everyone has their Vietnam," Thomas writes. "Everyone has their own experience of violence, calamity, or trauma." With simplicity and power, this book offers timeless teachings on how we can all find healing, and it presents practical guidance on how mindfulness and compassion can transform our lives. This expanded edition features: • Discussion questions for reading groups • A new afterword by the author reflecting on how the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are affecting soldiers—and offering advice on how to help returning soldiers to cope with their combat experiences

After Bill Banes is killed in a spectacular but mysterious car bombing in England, O'Toole volunteers to go to London to bring back his friend's remains. Before he knows it, he's involved in a many-leveled conspiracy that becomes much more complicated than the murder it initially appeared to be. O'Toole follows up on the one consistency in the sketchy chain of evidence: Bill Banes' continuing fascination with a 1978 earthquake in the western United States. From the hundred mile visibilities at the peaks of the Little Belt Mountains, to the subterranean murk of the Lombard Fault in Western Montana, he is once again up to his ears in trouble, straying far beyond his jurisdiction as an employee of Structure—the small and super-secret agency that does the jobs that are too sensitive for the CIA and the FBI—and proving yet again that no good deed goes unpunished. With the aid of Elmer Linthacum, who runs a small town Exxon station, and Becky Sparling, the loving daughter of a multimillionaire cattle rancher who has interests that go beyond his fourteen thousand acres, O'Toole manages to unravel the mystery and avoid getting sewn up—or blown up—in the process.

“Stephen L. Moore offers what will soon be ranked a major military classic... A major, first-rate, authoritative contribution to the literature of WWII.”—Leatherneck From the author of Pacific Payback comes the gripping true story of the Cactus Air Force and how this rugged crew of Dive-Bombers helped save Guadalcanal and won the war. November 1942: Japanese and American forces have been fighting for control of Guadalcanal, a small but pivotal island in Japan’s expansion through the South Pacific. Both sides have endured months of grueling battle under the worst circumstances: hellish jungles, meager rations, and tropical diseases, which have taken a severe mental and physical toll on the combatants. The Japanese call Guadalcanal Jigoku no Jima—Hell's Island. Amid a seeming stalemate, a small group of U.S. Navy dive bombers are called upon to help determine the island's fate. The men have until recently been serving in their respective squadrons aboard the USS Lexington and the USS Yorktown, fighting in the thick of the Pacific War's aerial battles. Their skills have been honed to a fine edge, even as injury and death inexorably have depleted their ranks. When their carriers are lost, many of the men end up on the USS Enterprise. Battle damage to that carrier then forces them from their home at sea to operating from Henderson Field, a small dirt-and-gravel airstrip on Guadalcanal. With some Marine and Army Air Force planes, they help form the Cactus Air Force, a motley assemblage of fliers tasked with holding the line while making dangerous flights from their jungle airfield. Pounded by daily Japanese air assaults, nightly warship bombardments, and sniper attacks from the jungle, pilots and gunners rarely last more than a few weeks before succumbing to tropical ailments, injury, exhaustion, and death. But when the Japanese launch a final offensive to take the island once and for all, these dive-bomber jocks answer the call of duty—and try to perform miracles in turning back an enemy warship armada, a host of fighter planes, and a convoy of troop transports. A remarkable story of grit, guts, and heroism, The Battle for Hell's Island reveals how command of the South Pacific, and the outcome of the Pacific War, depended on control of a single dirt airstrip—and the small group of battle-weary aviators sent to protect it with their lives.

Only the Light Moves tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old US Army pilot who volunteered to fly covert S.O.G., or Studies and Observations Group, reconnaissance missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a region that came to represent not only the United States’ war with Vietnam, but also the “secret war” with Laos and Cambodia. But this is not simply a war story; it is a love story about flying. Captain Francis A. Doherty spent every day for ten months above the jungle battlefield in a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog. The first all-metal fixed-wing aircraft ordered for and by the United States Army following the Army Air Forces' separation from it in 1947, the single-engine Bird Dog was a liaison and observation aircraft. And for this role, it was completely unarmed. It was from the cockpit of a Bird Dog that Captain Doherty observed this illusive war, perhaps searching out enemy troop movements or calling down waiting F-4 Phantoms to strike a new target. It was a war in which he followed his father’s footsteps in his dream to become a pilot, and where he learned a compassion that extended both to his comrades and the civilians caught in the middle of that terrible war. In Only the Light Moves Captain Doherty only reveals the highs and lows of his year at war in Vietnam but expands beyond his time in the conflict. He explores the emotional struggle he and his comrades faced after they returned home, reconciliations with lost faith, and the incredible impact of war on families. We are also given an insight into Francis’ subsequent journey to becoming a commercial airline pilot. His story makes no effort to glorify the violence that took the lives of so many. There are no broad stroke proclamations about the war, only a very personal, sensitive account of a terrible conflict seen through the eyes of a then young pilot in the air, illuminating the reality and the cost of when one's country decides to go to war.