دانلود کتاب رفتن به مرکز شهر – نیروی هوایی ایالات متحده بر فراز ویتنام، لائوس و کامبوج، 1961-1975

“Roger, Nail‑43. Understood – on fire.” Air Force Captain Charles Brown didn’t need the forward air controller (FAC) to know he was on fire. He could see the glow of the fire out the exhausts of his AT‑28D! Whatever his intentions, the decision had to be fast. “I was in a burning aircraft, at night, over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos – these were not the ingredients for a good night.” It was January 27, 1968. Flying out of Nakhon Phanom (NKP) air base in Thailand in the 606th Special Operations Squadron, the mission of the AT‑28D pilots was to find and stop the North Vietnamese supply convoys moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail at night. Brown’s patrol area was the section where the trail exited North Vietnam at Mu Gia Pass and turned southeast through Laos before crossing into the mountains of northwestern South Vietnam. Arriving on station around 2015 hours that night, Brown had watched two jets miss with their bombs before the FAC, call sign “Nail‑43” flying a twin‑engine Cessna O‑2A, cleared him in hot. “I saw strings of 37mm fire in the area where I thought the FAC was holding. I was about to call him when my aircraft shook, jumped, and burst into flame.”