Robin Olds was many things to many people. To his West Point football coach he was an All American destined for the National College Football Hall of Fame. To his P-38 and P-51 wartime squadrons in WWII he was the aggressive fighter pilot who made double ace and became their commander in nine short months. For the pioneers of the jet age, he was the wingman on the first jet demo team, a racer in the Thompson Trophy race, and the only U.S. exchange officer to command an RAF squadron. In the tabloid press he was the dashing flying hero who married the glamorous movie star. For the current...

Ed Rasimus straps the reader into the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber in his engaging account of the Rolling Thunder campaign in the skies over North Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1968, more than 330 F-105s were lost-the highest loss rate in Southeast Asia-and many pilots were killed, captured, and wounded because of the Air...

Palace Cobra picks up where Ed Rasimus's critically acclaimed When Thunder Rolled left off. Now he's flying the F-4 Phantom and the attitude is still there.
In the waning days of the Vietnam War, Rasimus and his fellow pilots were determined that they were not going be the last to die in a conflict their country had abandoned. They were young fighter pilots fresh from training and experienced aviators who came back to the war again and again, not for patriotism, but for the adrenaline rush of combat. From the bathhouses and barrooms to the prison camps of North Vietnam,...