US Navy and Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawk Units of the Vietnam War 1963-1973

Description

The Skyhawk was involved in Vietnam from the very beginning, including the first offensive operations in 1963 into Laos, and the Pierce Arrow operations immediately following the Tonkin Gulf Incident of August 1964. Navy and Marine Corps A-4s quickly established a presence in south-east Asia participating in thousands of sorties against the entrenched communist forces in the South and the heavily defended targets in North Vietnam. A-4 pilots also struck targets along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, working with ground-based and airborne forward air controllers to interdict the flood of supplies to communist forces in the south. This book will include many first-hand accounts from the pilots who flew one of the greatest attack aircraft ever built and will provide an insightful account of some of the most thrilling aerial combats that took place during Vietnam.

Peter Mersky has written a dozen books and 100 magazine articles on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviation. He also wrote the ground-breaking Israeli Fighter Aces (Phalanx/Specialty Press, 1997). His articles have appeared in Wings of Fame, International Airpower Review, and Air Enthusiast as well as U.S. magazines. He served for 16 years as assistant editor and then editor of Approach, the aviation safety magazine for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. This book would be his fourth title for Osprey. Jim Laurier is a native of New England and lives in New Hampshire. He attended Paier School of Art in Hamden, Connecticut, from 1974-78, and since he graduated with honours, he has been working professionally in the field of Fine Art and Illustration. He has been commissioned to paint for the US Air Force and has aviation paintings on permanent display at the Pentagon.

"There were high hopes for the latest in the Osprey Combat Aircraft series... The hopes were met. Peter Mersky wrote an outstanding book that will be on the must-have list of all A-4 fans." --A-4 Skyhawk Association's Quarterly Magazine "In this endeavor Peter Mersky has produced a superlative and readable volume enlivened by terrific first-person accounts which aptly capture the drama of aerial warfare, especially when it involved deadly opposition from enemy ground fire and surface to air missiles... There is an abundance of courageous Naval Aviators who manned Skyhawks during the protracted hostilities in Southeast Asia. This book constitutes a special salute to them and the A-4s they flew in the line of fire. Strongly recommended!" --Association of Naval Aviation (Fall 2007) "Peter Mersky has put together tons of information of the planes, pilots, deployments, accomplishments and losses...eight chapters of riveting reading, focused on the jet's most intense period of action, from the Gulf of Tonkin confrontation to the final missions in 1973." --CRASH Casey, The Marine Corps Aviation Association (March 2008) "[This] A-4 titles does more than justice to this most impressive of combat aircraft. Peter Mersky's is a nother of those names whose appearance on a book cover immediately inspires confidence in its contents and this volume is no exception...Mersky has fone a very fine job indeed of documenting the often harrowing story of the A-4 in Vietnam. His exhaustive coverage details both Marine Corps and Navy operations, again using first-hand accounts to lend weight to the account." --Paul Eden, Scale Aircraft Modeling (Vol 4, No 4, June 2008) "...brought back a few memories for this reviewer and makes for a 'must have' read; one that I know you will find as engrossing as I did." --Scott Van Aken, modelingmadness.com (May 2007)