On Yankee Station

Combining vivid personal narrative with historical and operational analyses, this book takes a candid look at U.S. naval airpower in the Vietnam War. Authors John B. Nichols, a fighter pilot who flew some 350 missions off carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and Barrett Tillman, an award-winning aviation historian, make full use of their extensive knowledge of the subject to detail the ways in which airpower was employed in the years prior to the fall of Saigon. Confronting the conventional belief that airpower failed in Vietnam, they show that on the rare occasions when it was applied correctly, airpower was effective, but because it was most often misunderstood and misapplied, the overall results proved catastrophic.
Calling their book a cockpit view of the war with the benefit of fourteen years of hindsight, the authors impart a compelling sense of what it was like to fly from Yankee Station between 1964 and 1973 and provide important lessons for those who may become involved in future conflicts. At the same time, they add considerable facts to the permanent war record.
Nichols and Tillman begin their book with an insightful overview of the state of carrier aviation in 1964 and a definition of the restrictive rules of engagement that governed navy pilots in Vietnam for nine years. They go on to describe the tactics used in strike warfare, the airborne and surface threats, electronic countermeasures, search and rescue, and more.
In the final two chapters Nichols and Tillman demonstrate how the United States, in 1965, could have ended North Vietnamese aggression in the south through the use of airplanes with conventional weapons, and then make recommendations for avoiding the mistakes of that war in the future. Appendixes provide helpful statistical data on carrier deployments, combat sorties, and aircraft losses.
All aviators and buffs, historians, policymakers, tacticians, war garners, and Vietnam veterans will immediately recognize the significant contributions this account of the air war makes on a still controversial period in U.S. military history.



by Commander John B. Nichols and Barrett Tillman
Published by Airlife 1987 1st UK edition. 179pp illustrated, index, appendix. 16x23 fore edge bumped and scuffed, otherwise very good in price clipped d/j.




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