Hi.

 

Another vote here for Ernest Gann's Fate is the Hunter.

 

For me it shares equal first with Bob Mason's Chickenhawk though as this is about flying helicopters with the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam it's probably not going to be to your taste. However, it's still worth bearing in mind as the author implies a strong disenchantment with (politically motivated) military action. His an equally strong love of flying is clear on every page.

 

I'll also recommend Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham, particularly if you like the post-apocalyptic genre.

 

Mort Mason's Flying the Alaska Wild amused me and does what it says on the label... Alaskan bush flying. Sadly it seems to be out of print so you'd have to go second-hand. I wasn't so impressed by his second offering, The Alaska Bush Pilot Chronicles.

 

Regards,

D

 

Yeah like Dave Morgan said, Chickenhawk by Robert Mason is a great book about his experiences as a Huey pilot in Nam.

Mason's website is here (including the first 4 chapters of the book)- http://www.robertcmason.com/

 

I asked him in 2011 if he'd like to answer questions about his time as a Huey pilot in Vietnam that I could post in forums and he kindly emailed me back with-

"Hi Mick. Sure, send me some questions.

Best,

Robert Mason"

 

and below is our e-mail question-answer session (I've never met him) which I've also posted in the Few Good Men forum where I'm known as Poor Old Spike (POS). (The cuss-word asterisks are Avsims, not mine or Masons)

 

Incidentally, also see youtube vid of Mason -

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

(POS)- Hi Mr. Mason, Thanks for kindly agreeing to answer some chatty questions, I've just read Chickenhawk again for the second time (the first was about 20 years ago). Incidentally I'm 62 and spent 1965/ 66 working in a boring warehouse here in England while you were having fun in Vietnam..

Okay here goes-

 

When you joined the army to be taught to fly helos at no financial cost to yourself (smart move), Nam hadn't yet flared up bigtime, but suppose the war was raging, would you still have joined up knowing you were going to get sent there and shot at?

Incidentally,about how many other Cav/Prospector pilots joined just to be taught how to fly?

 

(RM)- It probably wouldn't have made any difference. I remember seeing a Newsweek magazine which showed a helicopter crewchief in Vietnam (1962) with a couple of captured VC. I recall thinking how advanced we were compared to the Vietnamese. How dangerous could it be? I think that goes for most of my comrades. You just can't see the danger when your of a certain age. Until you get there.

 

 

(POS)- When you got to Nam and began getting shot at, did you ever think "What the hell have I got myself into?", and feel any resentment towards yourself, the Army and the world in general, or did you take it philosophically and just decide to ride out your tour without complaining?

 

(RM)- I complained all the time. I was the worse team player you can imagine. I did the job, but I b*tched the whole way.

 

 

(POS)- How did Patience, her parents and your parents feel about the Army sending you into harms way? I mean, there must have been Army helo pilots flying in different parts of the world and even within the US homeland, so why weren't you assigned to somewhere like that instead of Nam?

 

(RM)- Patience was for our foray into Vietnam while I was against it, politically speaking. She later changed her mind when I started sending her letters.

 

 

(POS)- For about half (?) your year-long tour, you and most of your Cav pilot colleagues were without chest protectors, yet other units (Prospectors) always had more than enough.

Didn't you or your Cav mates ever get mad and feel like raising hell about the shortage, as obviously it was caused by some incompetent admin foulup.

 

(RM)- We complained, but it's difficult to know to whom to complain in an organization the size of the US Army. Besides, we didn't know other units had them until we were assigned to them later.

 

 

(POS)- Why didn't your superior officers do something to put it right? (Personally I'd have been so mad I'd have been in a permanent state of near-mutiny and done stuff like leaking the story to the media and continually bellyaching to the brass).

I'd have even somehow made my own chest protector (a slab of thick steel) hung around my neck and buttoned under my flight suit. I might even have put another slab under a cushion to sit on.

 

(RM)- They did try to get us the armor. The officers who could've gotten the armor were met with a wall of bureaucracy that claimed the stuff was just lost in the vast supply line and would turn up any day. So, the belief that the chest protectors were on the way, just delayed, kept us going. Besides, it's a war, right? I thought armored helmets would be smart, too, but they were never made. These days [2011] the helos are armored quite well, but a Huey wouldn't get off the ground with the armor they carry on a Blackhawk, for example.

 

(POS)- Presumably not all pilots were married with children, so looking back, do you think they were the ones who handled combat stress better?

I mean, married guys such as yourself must have had the huge extra worry of staying alive for your family.

(I remember when my elderly mother was alive, I used to be extra careful while cycling to work in case I got trashed in a road accident because always at the back of my mind was the thought that I had to stay alive for her. When she died, I felt that heavy 'must stay alive' burden lifted from my shoulders)

 

(RM)- I don't think that was the case. I think everyone, single or otherwise, had family they would not like to abandon by dying prematurely.

 

 

(POS)- What was your personal life philosophy during your time in Nam? Was it christian-based, scientology-based, hindu-based or whatever?

How about your pilot mates, what was their philo outlook too?

 

(RM)- We had the usual mix of religious and agnostics. I was, and am, clueless about higher powers, etc. I did offer up some pleas for help when I was in the middle of some sh*t. Foxhole religion, I guess.

 

 

(POS)- You were offered a switch to gunships in the Prospectors, but you preferred staying with unarmed slicks, any particular reason? At least with guns you could have given Charlie some payback instead of just sitting and passively taking it in slicks.

 

(RM)- The reason we wanted (Resler) to stay with slicks was for purely superstitious reasons. There was no logic in this decision, of course. We just had survived doing what we did, and didn't want to change it. Probably we were safer in the slick job because we were very good at it with lots of experience by the time we got to the Blue Stars (Prospectors). Don't change horses mid-stream?

 

 

(POS)- You were only in your 20's, so looking back do you think your lack of life experience added to the stress?

I mean, suppose you were sent to Nam as a mature 40-plus years of age, do you think you'd have handled it better?

If you could reach back through time to Nam and give that young kid called Bob Mason any fatherly advice, what would it be?

 

(RM)- No, as a matter of fact, the older guys seemed to suffer more (I'm too old for this sh*t). Cpt Morris, for example, was a nervous wreck about the tight formation flying, the night formation flying, the refueling chaos, etc. And he died of a bullet in the heart. It didn't matter. Certainly that was a demonstration to us that it didn't matter how cool or how stressed you were taking all this sh*t, bullets are the great equalizers. The key to your reaction to stress was whether you cared or not. I cared, I paid.

Best wishes,

Robert Mason

My favorites that are not specific to any type of aviation are the following.

 

Chicken Hawk (Mentioned above) - Robert Mason

 

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe

 

We Seven - Written by the Mercury astronauts

 

Yeager - Chuck Yeager

 

Press On - Chuck Yeager

 

Edwards AFB - Ted Huetter

 

The Art of Flying - Robert Buck

 

Weather Flying - Robert Buck

 

Test Pilots: The Frontiersmen of Flight - Richard Hallion

 

The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Panco Barnes - Lauren Kessler

 

And of course a bunch of books on military a/c by Janes

 

Unfortunately, there are many other great books I have read on general aviation back in the 80's and 90's but the names and authors escape me now.

Highest Duty: My Search For What Really Matters by Captain Sully! It is very good!

Also Greatest Flying Stories Ever Told. I got this at Barnes and Nobles.

Some fiction suggestions.

 

"The Hunters" and "Cassada" by James Salter. Both about USAF fighter pilots.The first is set in Korea, the second in Europe in the 1960's. "The Hunters" was made into a preposterous movie (great flying scenes, though), which had just about no relation to the book except for the setting and the names of some characters. "Cassada" is, among other things, an attempt to show why it's sometimes the best pilots, as well as the worst, who get killed. Salter's "Burning the Days" is a good autobiography, too. He flew F-86's in Korea.

 

"Guard of Honor" by James Gould Cozzens. Set on a USAAF base in Florida in 1943. It's more about the military as an organization than about flying, but there is some flying. Unlike most WWII novels, it has no combat except for some brief discussions by some of the characters. It got a Pulitzer Prize. Today, Cozzens has pretty much been forgotten. Too bad, as he was a fine writer, though he's far from being everyone's taste.

One not mentioned but is a fantastic book.

 

"Clear Left, I'll have the Chicken" by Captain Kevin Garrison

 

Fate is The Hunter is as awesome as it gets and Band of Brothers is another Gann Classic

A new book that I'm reading now is "Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic" by Joe Jackson. It's a great history of the early days of flight and really gets into the actual flights, flight physics, why accidents occurred, etc. more than I expected. Great narrative history and biography too.

Charles Kingsford Smith and those magnificent Men by Peter Fitzsimmons. YSSY is named after Kingsford Smith.