Chapter One
Old Lionheart
Robin Olds and the Eighth Tactical Fighter Wing, 1966-1967
Ubon, Thailand, October 1966
For the men of the Eighth Tactical Fighter Wing at Ubon, the summer of 1966 was a season of
bitterness. Mired in the fruitless bombing campaign known as Rolling Thunder, the Eighth Wing
pined to strike the North Vietnamese airfields, factories, and command-and-control facilities in
Hanoi, but neither the political leadership in Washington nor the local Air Force commanders in
Saigon and Ubon would hear of it.
To President Lyndon Johnson and his key advisors, the bombing of North Vietnam was primarily a
political tool, its purpose being to convince the North Vietnamese to give up their support of
the insurgency in the South. One accomplished this aim, reasoned Johnson, by attacking the
North's supply routes to the South, not by waging total war against its urban and industrial
areas. But for the U.S. military pilots this strategy proved exasperating. Rolling Thunder's
limited portfolio of targets meant that the North Vietnamese military could easily predict where
U.S. planes would attack and could concentrate ... read full excerpt from Fast Movers: Jet Pilots and the Vietnam Experience ebook
