Using archival photographs sourced directly from Vietnam, specially commissioned diagrams and combat accounts from veterans, István Toperczer reveals how the MiG-21 defended Vietnam between 1966 and 1968. One of the most successful communist jet fighters ever built, the MiG-21 "Fishbed" was involved in a series of deadly duels with American fighters over North Vietnam as the USAF and US Navy ramped up strike missions during Operation Rolling Thunder, culminating in the destruction of over 70 US aircraft for the loss of 35 "Fishbeds." Having honed their skills on the subsonic MiG-17, pilots of the Vietnam People's Air Force received their first examples of the legendary MiG-21 supersonic fighter in 1966. Soon thrown into combat over North Vietnam, the guided-missile-equipped MiG-21 proved a deadly opponent for the American crews striking at targets deep into communist territory. Although the communist pilots initially struggled to come to terms with the fighter’s air search radar and weapons systems, the ceaseless cycle of combat operations quickly honed their skills. The best fighter then available to the VPAF, more than 200 MiG-21s (of various sub-types) were supplied to the North Vietnamese. In this study, leading VPAF authority István Toperczer analyzes the tactics used by the MiG-21 pilots over the bitter fighting in North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder. The highspeed ‘hit and run’ attacks employed by the communist pilots proved to be very successful, with both R-3S air-to-air missiles and heavy-caliber cannon inflicting a rising toll on American jets. Using first-hand accounts from MiG-21 pilots, battlescene artwork, combat ribbon diagrams, and armament views, the author details the important role played by the "Fishbed" in the defense of North Vietnam.

In late January 1968, some 84,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops launched a country-wide general offensive in South Vietnam, mounting simultaneous assaults on 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and five of the six autonomous cities (including the capital city of Saigon). The longest and bloodiest battle occurred in Hue, the most venerated place in Vietnam. The bitter fighting that raged there for more than three weeks drew the attention of the world. Hue was the ancient capital of Vietnam, and as such, had been previously avoided by both sides; it had not seen any serious fighting prior to 1968. All that changed on the night of January 31 that year when four North Vietnamese battalions and supporting Viet Cong units simultaneously attacked and occupied both parts of the city straddling the Perfume River. The Communist forces dug in and prepared to defend their hold on the city. US Marines and South Vietnamese soldiers were ordered to clear the city, supported by US Army artillery and troops. A brutal urban battle ensued as combat raged from house to house and door to door. It was a bloody fight and resulted in large-scale destruction of Hue. Eventually, the Marines and the South Vietnamese forces retook Hue, but it turned out to be one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Tet Offensive, and led to a sea change in US policy in Vietnam.

Vietnam veteran Don Yost explores the pain and rage of his experience as a correspondent near Mai Laid in 1968, transforming it through writing to a elegaic and powerful memoir, imbued with a significant message for our time.

The true story of the fierce band of women who battled Washington - and Hanoi - to bring their husbands home from the jungles of Vietnam. On 12 February, 1973, one hundred and sixteen men who, just six years earlier, had been high flying Navy and Air Force pilots, shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. These American servicemen had endured years of brutal torture, kept shackled and starving in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-laden prisons, the worst of which was The Hanoi Hilton. Months later, the first Vietnam POWs to return home would learn that their rescuers were their wives, a group of women that included Jane Denton, Sybil Stockdale, Louise Mulligan, Andrea Rander, Phyllis Galanti, and Helene Knapp. These women, who formed The National League of Families, would never have called themselves 'feminists', but they had become the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands' freedom - and to account for missing military men - by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a savvy media campaign, conducting covert meetings with antiwar activists, and most astonishingly, helping to code secret letters to their imprisoned husbands. In a page-turning work of narrative non-fiction, Heath Hardage Lee tells the story of these remarkable women for the first time. The League of Wives is certain to be on everyone's must-read list.

From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism 'Absolutely spectacular' - France Info 'Scathing and clever' - Le Temps 19 October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option - a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants - but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found. In this gripping and shocking novel, Eric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians, bankers and titans of industry who all had a vested interest in France's prolonged presence in lands far from Paris. Skilfully skewering the guilty, Vuillard shows us how key players in conflicts throughout history often have a motivation even deeper and darker than nationalism and political ideology-greed. As well as bringing scenes from the battlefields to life, Vuillard looks beyond this visceral reality on the ground to the cold calculations of the boardroom elite with the power to turn a military win or loss into their financial gain. Short, sharp and brutal, An Honourable Exit is a journey behind closed doors to witness how history is really made.

Fifty-five years in the writing, these collected poems trace the development of a committed poet from an early age. Many deal with the author's encounter with the Vietnam War and its endless consequences. Others range from family and friends to nature and the environment to the blessings and absurdities of the human condition. Ehrhart's poems are contemplative yet accessible, with no special gears required.

Cold War Friendships explores the plight of the Asian ally of the American wars in Korea and Vietnam. Enlisted into proxy warfare, this figure is not a friend but a "friendly," a wartime convenience enlisted to serve a superpower. It is through this deeply unequal relation, however, that the Cold War friendly secures her own integrity and insists upon her place in the neocolonial imperium. This study reads a set of highly enterprising wartime subjects who make their way to the US via difficult attachments. American forces ventured into newly postcolonial Korea and Vietnam, both plunged into civil wars, to draw the dividing line of the Cold War. The strange success of containment and militarization in Korea unraveled in Vietnam, but the friendly marks the significant continuity between these hot wars. In both cases, the friendly justified the fight: she was also a political necessity who redeployed cold war alliances, and, remarkably, made her way to America. As subjects in process-and indeed, proto-Americans-these figures are prime literary subjects, whose processes of becoming are on full display in Asian American novels and testimonies of these wars. Literary writings on both of these conflicts are presently burgeoning, and Cold War Friendships performs close analyses of key texts whose stylistic constraints and contradictions-shot through with political and historical nuance-present complex gestures of alliance.

As a first lieutenant in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, U.S. Army pilot David Porter was section leader in an Aerial Scout platoon in Vietnam. Their mission was to conduct reconnaissance in OH-6 aircraft (a.k.a. Light Observation Helicopter or "Loach") near the Cambodian border. Finding and engaging the enemy at low altitude in coordination with an AH-1 Cobra gunship circling above, these units developed a remarkable method of fighting the Viet Cong: Hunter-Killer Operations. The tactic had great local success but died with the war. Few today are aware of the hazards these pilots faced during times of intense combat. Porter's vivid memoir recounts the internal workings of a legendary air cavalry troop, in-the-cockpit combat actions, and the men who were key players on this perilous battleground.

There were no dry runs for Seawolves in Vietnam.
They put their lives on the line—every time.

In the Viet Cong-infested Mekong Delta, where small SEAL teams were always outgunned and outnumbered, discovery brought swift, deadly consequences— and a radio call for backup from the United States Navy’s very best: the Seawolves. The whir of approaching rotor blades signaled their arrival as they tore through the jungle at treetop level, gunners hanging off the skids, shooting M-60s, raining down their lethal mix of high explosives and incendiary death.

Seawolf Dan Kelly describes the origins of this extraordinary outfit. Put through a training program unlike any other, these men emerged to perform unparalleled feats of courage. The stories of these elite warriors capture America’s real heroes in all their guts and glory, and demonstrate why the Seawolves are known as the most successful and most decorated unit in the Vietnam War.

What was it like to live through the only war America lost in the twentieth century? Firebase Tan Tru answers that question by describing one man's adventures fighting in Vietnam's Mekong Delta during the peak of the war in 1969. A unique feature of this story is that it focuses upon that rare enlisted man who was already a college graduate, struggling to cope not only with the authoritarian rigidity of America's Army but also the horror and madness of the war itself. It describes both harrowing nearly fatal clashes in combat and the numerous surreal experiences encountered in that foreign land. If you are curious about how a bizarre war like Vietnam changes a thoughtful young man into cynicism and skepticism, then Firebase Tan Tru is a book you need to read. It provides insights into the personal psychology of both America's Vietnam era officers and the enlisted men they lead as well as our Vietnamese allies and our Vietnamese enemies.

Through its remarkable service during the war in Southeast Asia, the Skyraider became legendary. It served with distinction in the hands of U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and South Vietnamese Air Force pilots, who took the war to the enemy, often at low altitude and in the face of devastating antiaircraft fire. And it suffered heavy losses. The Skyraiders versatility and the mettle of its pilots were unmatched. This book takes not only a look at an old airplane, but at the warriors who flew and maintained the machine they called the Spad. This volume captures the essence of combat in the Spad, and explains the broad range of Spad operations. The text, which is rich with the narratives of Spad pilots and ground crew, is complemented by over 300 original photographs, seventy emblems, and detailed listings of every Skyraider that flew in the war, and the colorful units to which they were assigned. This fascinating volume is a must for aviation enthusiasts, history buffs, and modelers alike.

The U.S. Marine Corps' Combined Action Program (CAP) in Vietnam was an enlightened gesture of strategic dissent. Recognizing that search-and-destroy operations were immoral and self-defeating and that the best hope for victory was "winning hearts and minds," the Corps stationed squads of Marines, augmented by Navy corpsmen, in the countryside to train and patrol alongside village self-defense units called Popular Forces. Corporal Edward F. Palm became a combined-action Marine in 1967. His memoir recounts his experiences fighting with the South Vietnamese, his readjustment to life after the war, and the circumstances that prompted him to join the Corps in the first place. A one-time aspiring photojournalist, Palm includes photographs he took while serving, along with an epilogue describing what he and his former sergeant found during their 2002 return to Vietnam.

The Vietnam War actually began in December 1946 with a struggle between the communists and the French for possession of the country. Vietnam's strategic position in Southeast Asia along with veiled economic concerns and a political agenda led to the involvement of other countries, including the United States. Written by an officer in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, this poignant memoir seeks to clarify the nuances of South Vietnam's defeat. From the age of 12, Van Nguyen Duong watched as the conflict affected his home, family, village and friends. He discusses not only the day-to-day hardships he endured from forced relocation and eventual imprisonment but also the anguish caused by the illusive reality of Vietnamese independence.The various political forces at work in Vietnam, the hardships suffered by RVNAF soldiers after the 1975 U.S. withdrawal from Saigon, and the effect of reunification on the Vietnamese people are also discussed. An appendix contains a summary of the Eleven Point Program Accords of January 1962.

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction. The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968, "an instantly recognizable classic of military history" (Christian Science Monitor), was published to massive critical acclaim and became a New York Times bestseller. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam's intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front's presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and inter-views with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over twenty-four days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.

Hundreds of Americans from the town of Stamford, Connecticut, fought in the Vietnam War. Of those, 29 did not return. These men and women came from all corners of the town. They were white and black, poor and wealthy. Some had not finished high school; others had graduate degrees. They served as grunts and helicopter pilots, battlefield surgeons and nurses, combat engineers and mine sweepers. Greeted with indifference and sometimes hostility upon their return home, they learned to suppress their memories in a nation fraught with political, economic and racial tensions. Now in their late 60s and 70s, these veterans have begun to tell their stories, which have been collected and recorded in this book.

North and South Vietnamese youths had very different experiences of growing up during the Vietnamese War. The book gives a unique perspective on the conflict through the prism of adult-youth relations. By studying these relations, including educational systems, social organizations, and texts created by and for children during the war, Olga Dror analyzes how the two societies dealt with their wartime experience and strove to shape their futures. She examines the socialization and politicization of Vietnamese children and teenagers, contrasting the North's highly centralized agenda of indoctrination with the South, which had no such policy, and explores the results of these varied approaches. By considering the influence of Western culture on the youth of the South and of socialist culture on the youth of the North, we learn how the youth cultures of both Vietnams diverged from their prewar paths and from each other.

"A wonderfully written book that takes the reader to a strange time and place." --Eric M. Bergerud, author of "Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning"

• Thoughtful, action-packed memoir of one American soldier's combat tour in Vietnam in 1970
• Begins with a tense ambush patrol and doesn't let up through a year of hair-raising night watches, soggy humps through the jungle, and deadly encounters with the North Vietnamese
• Author served as a rifleman--as well as a machine gunner, tunnel rat, and demolitions man--with the U.S. Army's 25th "Tropic Lightning" Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division
• Notable events include the Cambodian incursion

Beginning as a young boy, Jules takes you through the unique process of becoming a Naval Aviator, engages you into his experiences as a brand new pilot in a combat squadron and, finally becoming a flying warrior. Having survived two combat cruises aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk from 1966-1968, compiling 332 career carrier take offs and landings, being shot at daily by enemy fire while completing 200 combat missions over Vietnam, he clearly shares the views of the aviators who flew along with him on these missions while fighting this unpopular war. Jules was awarded the Nation's Distinguished Flying Cross, 21 Air Medals, and many other accolades. After reading this book the reader will have a new understanding and appreciation about the Warriors who protect not only their comrades in arms, but the defense of the nation as well.

At the end of October 1969, 5,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars surrounded a force of 150 American soldiers and their South Vietnamese allies at a firebase in a far-flung corner of Vietnam. The situation was desperate and, despite initial attempts to resupply the base, soon became untenable. It was fight on and meet near-certain death or capture--or attempt an escape. Led by a pair of no-nonsense Special Forces soldiers, the Americans and their allies chose escape, which was a harrowing five-hour experience conducted across two and a half miles of enemy-infested ground in the dark of night. This story of against-all-odds bravery is also a cautionary tale about the perils of Richard Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, which produced the precarious situation at Fire Support Base Kate.

In the spring of 1954, after eight years of bitter fighting, the war in Vietnam between the French and the communist-led Vietminh came to a head. With French forces reeling, the United States planned to intervene militarily to shore-up the anti-communist position. Turning to its allies for support, first and foremost Great Britain, the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to create what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called a "united action" coalition. In the event, Winston Churchill's Conservative government refused to back the plan. Fearing that US-led intervention could trigger a wider war in which the United Kingdom would be the first target for Soviet nuclear attack, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was determined to act as Indochina peacemaker - even at the cost of damage to the Anglo-American "special relationship". In this important study, Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones revisit a Cold War episode in which British diplomacy played a vital role in settling a crucial question of international war and peace. Eden's diplomatic triumph at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina is often overshadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis which led to his political downfall. This book, however, recalls an earlier Eden: a skilled and experienced international diplomatist at the height of his powers who may well have prevented a localised Cold War crisis escalating into a general Third World War.

Elbridge Durbrow served as the third United States ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam from 1957 to 1961. His relationships with Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and members of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon helped to shape his tenure in office, which ultimately concluded with his decision to end his support for the Vietnamese leader as well as turn away from the American military representatives who had earned Ngo Dinh Diem's trust. This triangular relationship between three competing entities was mired in clashes of ego and personality that often interfered with the American decision making process. Durbrow and his embassy staff, rather than work with the Vietnamese leadership, chose to focus on the negative and reported to Washington only those items that reinforced this perspective. They created an atmosphere of distrust and anxiety that neither the Americans nor Vietnamese could overcome in the 1960s and helped to create the conditions for greater United States involvement in Southeast Asia.

Eleven high school friends in idyllic North Adams, Massachusetts, enlisted to serve in Vietnam-one stayed behind to protest the war. All were from patriotic, working-class families, all members of the class of 1965 at Saint Joseph's School. Dennis Pregent was one of them. He and his classmates joined up-most right out of school, some before graduating-and endured the war's most vicious years. Seven served in the Army, three in the Marine Corps, and one in the Navy. After fighting in a faraway place, they saw the trajectories of their lives dramatically altered. One died in combat, another paralyzed, and several still suffer from debilitating conditions five decades later. Inspired by his 50th high school reunion, Pregent located his classmates, rekindled friendships, and-together, over hours of interviews-they remembered the war years.

Any time Vietnam veterans get together--whether it's two or twenty of them--war stories follow. The tales they relate about the paddies, the jungles, the highlands, the waterways, and the airways provide the vets a greater understanding of the war they survived and gives nonparticipants a glimpse into the dangerous intensity of firefights, the often hilarious responses to inexplicable situations, and the strong bonds only they can share. These stories from soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have never been captured or compiled in a meaningful way--until now. These stories are the "real meat" of the Vietnam experience. In brief narratives, the veterans themselves relate the valor, hardship, fear, and humor of the war in Vietnam.

The combatants in the three Vietnam wars from 1945 to 1975 employed widely contrasting supply methods. This fascinating book reveals that basic traditional techniques proved superior to expensive state of the art systems. During the Indochina or French' war, France's initial use of wheeled transport and finally air supply proved vulnerable given the terrain, climate and communist adaptability . The colonial power gave up the unequal struggle after the catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu. To stem the advance of Communism throughout the region, the Americans stepped in to support the pro-Western South Vietnam regime and threw vast quantities of manpower and money at the problem. The cost became increasingly unpopular at home. General Giap's and Ho Chi Minh's ruthless use of coolies most famously on the Ho Chi Minh Trail proved resistant to carpet-bombing and Agent Orange defoliation. The outcome of the final war between the Communist North Vietnam and the corrupt Southern leadership, now with minimal US support, was almost a forgone conclusion. The Author is superbly qualified to examine these three wars from the logistic perspective. His conclusions make for compelling reading and will be instructive to acting practitioners and enquiring minds.