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(More customer reviews)Jim Hooper's "A Hundred Feet Over Hell" is the story of his brother's Vietnam War experiences flying the O-1 Bird Dog Observation Aircraft. Bill Hooper was a Tactical Air Controller - Airborne, or a TACA. He flew this low-flying, slow-speed aircraft with the 220th Reconnaissance Aircraft Company, a unit known by their call-sign "Catkillers". In the second war of the Jet Age, the Bird Dog was a very unglamorous aircraft, but to the men on the ground, having a Bird Dog overhead was like having your own personal guardian angel. Hooper's book does an outstanding job of documenting the contributions of the Catkillers between 1968 and 1969.
"A Hundred Feet Over Hell" is a very personal story told by the men who lived the war. Hooper does an amazing job telling the story of how these aviators called in airstrikes in support of ground troops. After reading the book, the reader gains a new appreciation for the difficulty of simultaneous flying a plane; describing a target to a jet aircraft traveling four times as fast and 10,000 feet higher than you; and avoiding ground fire. American aviators were the best in this lethal business.
In the chapter "Busy Month of June", Hooper describes a Catkiller attack on a North Vietnamese Truck Convoy. "I started climbing, mentally computing where I wanted to roll in. At about eight hundred feet, I nosed over. Fixed on the windscreen of the lead truck, I armed both outboard tubes. The truck grew larger, and I could see the driver leaning forward to look up. Steaadyyy. Passing through five hundred feet, I squeezed the trigger, holding the dive for the split second it took the rockets to ignite and clear the tubes. In less time than it takes to describe, they hit. What happened next was not part of the plan."
Hooper put together this book by interviewing the men who flew with the Catkillers; and he corroborated these stories by researching various official documents such as radio logs from the various command posts associated with the Catkillers.
A minor annoyance in the book is the non-capitalization of marines, air force, and navy. In modern American military parlance, there is only one Army, one Marine Corps, one Navy, and one Air Force. Therefore, when referring to these specific American military organizations, the term is always capitalized.
Overall, "A Hundred Feet Over Hell" is a fantastic book capturing the experiences of this small set of aviators. 469 TACAs (and Air Force FACAs or Forward Air Controllers) were shot down during the Vietnam War. This book is a fitting tribute to their contributions. I highly recommend this book to any aviation enthusiast.
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A Hundred Feet Over Hell: Flying With the Men of the 220th Recon Airplane Company Over I Corps and the DMZ, Vietnam 1968-1969A 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.
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