The Vietnam War produced a quarter century of violence in faraway swamps and home-front streets, still haunting America's view of the world. Take a look back at every aspect of that turbulent era in a visual encyclopedia of over 500 extraordinary photos and alphabetized entries. The breadth of content and size of this massive illustrated volume will stun you with its completeness.
From Homer Hickam, the author of the #1 bestselling Rocket Boys, adapted into the beloved film October Sky, comes this astonishing memoir of high adventure, war, love, NASA, and his struggle for literary success. Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys and the movie adaptation October Sky have become one of the most popular stories in the world, inspiring millions to pursue a better life. But what happened to Homer after he was a West Virginia rocket boy?
The first detailed look at the CIA's clandestine operations in Laos during the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency's biggest and longest paramilitary operation was in the tiny kingdom of Laos. Hundreds of advisors and support personnel trained and led guerrilla formations across the mountainous Laotian countryside and ran smaller road-watch and agent teams that stretched from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Chinese frontier.
A groundbreaking revisionist history of the last days of the Vietnam War reveals the acts of American heroism that saved more than one hundred thousand South Vietnamese from communist revenge. In 1973 U.S. participation in the Vietnam War ended in a cease-fire and a withdrawal that included promises by President Nixon to assist the South in the event of an invasion by the North. But in early 1975, when North Vietnamese forces began a full-scale assault, Congress refused to send arms or aid.
A riveting Vietnam War story--and one of the most dramatic in aviation history--told by a New York Times bestselling author and a prominent aviation historian Every war has its "bridge"--Old North Bridge at Concord, Burnside's Bridge at Antietam, the railway bridge over Burma's River Kwai, the bridge over Germany's Rhine River at Remagen, and the bridges over Korea's Toko Ri. In Vietnam it was the bridge at Thanh Hoa, called Dragon's Jaw. For seven long years hundreds of young US airmen flew sortie after sortie against North Vietnam's formidable and strategically important bridge, dodging a heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire and enemy MiG planes.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, North Vietnam's Defense Minister, army chief, and the architect of the Viet-Minh victory over the French at Dien Bein Phu in 1954, is one of perhaps three men considered most likely to succeed President Ho Chi Minh, now almost eighty. In this first full-length study of Giap, Major O'Neill traces the intellectual, political, and military development of a major Asian Communist leader against the background of the growth of nationalism and Communism in Indochina in the 1920s and 1930s, the destruction of the colonial order in World War II, and the rise of new Asian nations in the postwar era.
The first full history of the U.S. Army Special Forces who served and fought in the Secret War in Laos. The Secret War in Laos was one of the first "Long Wars" for special operations, spanning a period of about thirteen years. It was one of the largest CIA-paramilitary operations of the time, kept out of the view of the American public until now.
"The Five O'Clock Follies" is comedy, tragedy, issues of morality, honor, duty and the total and tragic absurdity of war rolled into one piece of work. Ponder, laugh, cry, remember, and reflect on life, values, courage, politics, heroes and villains.
Winner of the Military Writers Society of America's 2017 Gold Medal for History; Finalist, 2016 Army Historical Society Distinguished Writing Award. Throughout the Vietnam War, one focal point persisted where the Viet Cong guerrillas and ARVN were not a major factor, but where the trained professionals of the North Vietnamese and U.S. armies repeatedly fought head-to-head. A Shau Valor is a thoroughly documented study of nine years of American combat operations encompassing the crucial frontier valley and a 15-mile radius around it--the most deadly killing ground of the entire Vietnam War.
It wasn't rockets or artillery that came through the skies one week during the war. It was the horrific force of nature that suddenly put both sides in awe. As an unofficial truce began, questions and emotions battled inside every air crewman's mind as they faced masses of Vietnamese civilians outside their protective base perimeters for the first time. . .
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist and the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, powerful, and controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain," from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.
This work describes U.S. Marine Corps helicopter operations, including their actions and evolution, throughout the Vietnam War. The book is divided into parts spanning the three stages of the Corps' combat deployment: "Buildup (1962-1966)," "Heavy Combat (1967-1969)," and "The Bitter End (1975)." Each part includes chapters devoted to "telling the story" of Marine helicopters from the individual to the strategic level.
During the Vietnam era, many of the U.S. Navy SEALs (SEa, Air, Land commandos) never filed for a Purple Heart unless they were severely wounded. Thomas H. Keith, Master Chief, SEAL Team 2, is living proof. He carries a piece of shrapnel behind one lung, a reminder of the day he called in 40 mm mortar fire on the enemy that was trying to catch up to his crew as the crew hauled ass out of the bush. Not only did he never report it, it was never removed - it just wasn't serious enough.
Brigadier General John C. "Doc" Bahnsen, Jr. One of America's most decorated soldiers in the Vietnam War. The ultimate warrior who engaged the enemy from nearly every type of aircraft and armored vehicle in the Army's inventory. An expert strategist who developed military tactics later adopted as doctrine. A revered leader ready to plunge into the thick of battle with his bare hands... From Fort Knox to the front lines, accounts of Doc's brilliance in time of war became the stuff of legend--stories told with reverence to this day, inspiring raw recruits and America's future leaders. Now, drawing on his own recollections and those of the men who fought beside him, Doc Bahnsen gives a full, uncensored account of his astonishing war record--and an unforgettable ground-level view of the day-to-day realities of serving one's country.
While the seventy-seven-day siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968 remains one of the most highly publicized clashes of the Vietnam War, scant attention has been paid to the first battle of Khe Sanh, also known as “the Hill Fights.” Although this harrowing combat in the spring of 1967 provided a grisly preview of the carnage to come at Khe Sanh, few are aware of the significance of the battles or even their existence. For over thirty years, virtually the only people who knew about the Hill Fights were the Marines who fought them.
The Vietnamese War was the most controversial conflict ever entered by the United States. Military and press photographers, camera-wielding soldiers, and civilians all took the opportunity to record the harrowing events of the 1960s and early '70s. NAM: A Photographic History features the images and stories documenting this tumultuous era, revealing sides of the war never seen before and shedding new light on this decades-old conflict.
As commanding and revelatory as the recent best-sellers Flags of Our Fathers and Black Hawk Down, this new volume on the Vietnam War ranges from an obscure Cambodian island in Southeast Asia to the Oval Office of the White House as it chronicles one of the most overlooked incidents and heartbreaking episodes in America's costliest foreign conflict. On May 12, 1975, barely two weeks after U.S. helicopters lifted off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, the S.S. Mayaguez was seized byCambodian forces. President Gerald Ford ordered a raid to free the ship four days later, even though American diplomacy had already successfully negotiated its release.
Between the height of the French Indochina War in the fifties and the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975, 135 photographers from all sides of the conflict are recorded as missing or having been killed. This book is a memorial to those men and women, and in many cases, it includes the last photographs they took. Horst Faas and Tim Page, two photographers who worked and were wounded in Vietnam, have gathered many thousands of pictures by those who were killed. Their photographs are their legacy.
This book is the day-by-day story of the Jumping Mustangs - 1st Ballalion, Airborne, 8th Cavalry, of the 1st Air Cavalry Division, written by the man who knows them best. 1st Air Cav Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Mertel. On 1 July 1965, at Fort Benning, Georgia, the 1st Air Cavalry Division was activated to employ newly developed techniques and tactics, providing the utmost in combat effectiveness and flexibility. After telling of the excitement at Benning over the formation of this revolutionary airmobile division, Colonel Mertel gives a vivid picture of the building of his own Jumping Mustang Battalion, the rigorous training of officers and men and, finally, the long voyage across the Pacific to Vietnam.
"During the Vietnam War, the CIA created and trained small teams of elite fighting men for reconnaissance and covert combat patrols in areas where the American military was forbidden to operate. These patrols operated in North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and even mainland China. Cryptically, they were known as FRAM 16, and their super-secret story has never before been told. . . "
Vietnam. November 1965. 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, are dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley and immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion is chopped to pieces in a similarly brutal manner. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constitute one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War and set the tone for the conflict to come. Now a major motion picture starring Mel Gibson.
This volume is the highly detailed combat history of U.S. Marine Corps units in urban combat in Hue City during the 1968 Communist Tet Offensive. The focus of the story is on small units and individual fighting men as they grapple with advancing through the unfamiliar terrain across an urban battlefield.
A monumental, encyclopedic work of immense detail concerning U.S. Army and allied forces that fought in the Vietnam War from 1962 through 1973. Extensive lists of units providing a record of every Army unit that served in Vietnam, down to and including separate companies, and also including U.S. Army aviation and riverine units. Shoulder patches and distinctive unit insignia of all divisions and battalions. Extensive maps portraying unit locations at each six-month interval. Photographs and descriptions of all major types of equipment employed in the conflict. Plus much more!