Rolling Thunder is an historical novel about the decisive role politics played during the Vietnam War. Its characters range from men in the field to the Pentagon and the White House. Fighter pilots and Special Forces warriors try to do their best but are hampered by President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and their staff members who despise the military. Only one aging USAF general, who fought in Korea and WWII, is on their side. His clashes with his Commander in Chief, Lyndon Jo...

Mark Berent's first two novels of three extraordinary men in the midst of the Vietnam conflict, Rolling Thunder and Steel Tiger, met with widespread critical acclaim. The New York Times Book Review called Rolling Thunder an "unusually arresting book" and named it one of its "Notable Books' of 1989. The Washington Post Book World praised Steel Tiger as "a real tour de force," calling Berent "an experienced warrior who can artfully spin gripping, compelling tales of his craft."In Phan...

It is with good reason that Mark Berent has consistently received this kind of praise. Berent, himself a highly decorated pilot, has seen his share of action, having served in the Air Force for more than twenty years and survived three tours of Vietnam. In his three previous novels, all a part of the continuing saga that Kirkus Reviews has called "one of the best of the Vietnam experience with vivid intensity. Berent's remarkable storytelling places the reader directly into the heat of the...

In Storm Flight, the intense conclusion to Berent's Wings of War saga, the action is touched off by a daring raid on the Son Tay prisoner-of-war camp that reveals some startling information. With American prisoners in terrible jeopardy and crucial national secrets in danger of being discovered, the characters we have met in Berent's earlier books are put to the ultimate test. They must call upon all their skill, leadership, guts, and strength to complete their missions.As always, B...

The weather, the built-in hazards of night refueling, target identification, and the mountains hiding in the dark are all enemies- and of course, there's the enemy, too. These pilots have a saying, "And if the big guns don't get you, the black karst will." But then back on top in the moonlight, a man finds brief moments to think his own thoughts before cracking a low ceiling back at home base.

Five months after we left them in Rolling Thunder, Steel Tiger brings back USAF Major Court Bannister, Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Wolf Lochert, and USAF First Lieutenant Toby Parker, now scattered to their new posts: Bannister in Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Wolf Lochert at Lang Tri, Republic of Vietnam, carrying out covert operations in Laos, and Toby Parker, in the pilot training program at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas where he has a severe alcoho...

We were college freshmen who built a stockcar and raced it on flat dirt tracks. We had no training, no introduction or safety briefs. We learned the hard way how it was in the Minnesota Stock Car Racing Association in those early days. What does Pretty Don't Win suggest? Not what you think. Read on.

Until the day a friendly FAC presented us combat pilots with a mascot, all any of us knew about snakes was that they were slimy creatures that could poison you, eat you, twist your bones, or crush you at their leisure. But that was before we came to know and love our squadron's resident reptile, whose name was ... RAMROD

In January of 1973 we in the Defense Attaché Office in the American Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, found ourselves in an unusual situation. In Vietnam, all US forces were ordered to cease fighting and that included air assets as well as the ground troops. Yet we had authorized air support until August 15. This article is about what occurred during that time.

As the Vietnam war interdiction campaign spread to North Vietnam, Laos, and eventually Cambodia, the slow moving FACs in their small prop planes began to encounter intense ground fire. It was then, in 1967, that the jet FACs began to take over in high threat areas. A former commander of the famed 8th Tac Fighter Wing Wolf FACs poignantly reminisces about these men and the mission.

"The Graduate" is a short story about a retired fighter pilot who, at 74, went back to college, Cowboy College, that is.

This is a hilarious tale of an Air Force combat fighter pilot in Vietnam who goes out on patrol with a special forces team he has supported many times from the air. Seeing the pilot is having a hard time keeping up, one of the Chinese mercenaries called Nungs, says to the team leader, "Let's kill the Dai Uy." Dai Uy is Vietnamese for captain.Read on to see what happened.