ALPHA STRIKE VIETNAM – The Navy’s Air War 1964 to 1973

Nothing is more vivid, authentic, and moving than an account of war by someone who was there.

In this unique record of the Vietnam War, 22 naval aviators remember their years of flying strike operations from carriers on Yankee and Dixie Stations. The reader is taken into the ready rooms, the cockpits, on the missions, and into the minds of combat pilots immersed in the most intense air war in history.

Naval aviation's mission was "air-to-ground"—the attack role—everything from night road recon and interdiction to full-scale Alpha Strikes and dangerous Shrike ops ("chumming for SAMs"). The Alpha Strike was the ultimate: "Really unbelievable, indescribable... SAMs going up and smoke pillars climbing all over the sky; Shrikes and rockets coming down; flak bursting all over and streams of tracers threaded throughout; planes screaming down—30 aircraft in and off the target in one minute."

They took to survive in the sky over Vietnam—learning to evade deadly SAMs and flak, deliver ordnance on target, and come back—safely over the beach, "feet wet." They share very personal insights—on the fear of dying, their pride in their profession, and for a few, coping with the nightmare of a POW camp. There were frustrations as well: for many years "every target was dictated from on high—the big puzzle palace telling what wooden footbridge to hit," while denying access to important sites near Hanoi and Haiphong. Initial enthusiasm gave way to disillusionment: pilots often felt they risked their lives for the sake of a meaningless sortie count, numbers to send back to Washington. By mid-1972, one pilot said, "There was nothing worth dying for in Vietnam except the POWs."

Based on two years of extensive interviewing, Alpha Strike Vietnam is a fascinating historical documentary of the naval air war in Southeast Asia, and a realistic portrait of the attack pilot doing the job he was trained to do.

About the Author

Jeffrey L. Levinson is a 1977 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He co-owned a printing and publishing company from 1979 to 1987, earning ten statewide awards for journalistic excellence. He is also the author of a monograph on NAS Lemoore. Levinson presently lives and works in Lemoore, California.

Source: Publisher's summary printed on cover