GOING DOWNTOWN: The War Against Hanoi and Washington by Jack Broughton. A combat aviation classic. “Going Downtown” was the term American combat pilots used to denote the almost daily and invariably dangerous combat missions against the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, and its environs. To Colonel Jack Broughton, a veteran of the Korean War, former leader of the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds precision flying team, and vice commander of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing, “Going Downtown” became...

In 1945 Second Lieutenant Jack Broughton graduated from West Point with the silver pilot wings of a newly commissioned member of the Army Air Corps. Nearly thirty years later, he retired as a full colonel in the United States Air Force, an entity that didn't even exist when he first learned to fly. Along the way Colonel Broughton saw duty in virtually every fighter aircraft the Air Corps and then Air Force had to offer. He experienced the birth and coming of age of the U.S. Air Force and i...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...