Offered by Over The Blue Horizon is “SIERRA HOTEL: FLYING AIR FORCE FIGHTERS IN THE DECADE AFTER VIETNAM” by C.R. Anderegg.  

In February 1999, only a few weeks before the USAF spearheaded NATO’s Allied Force air campaign against Serbia, the author visited Gen John Jumper, the commander of US Air Forces in Europe.  Col Anderegg and Gen Jumper served together as jet forward air controllers in Southeast Asia nearly 30 years earlier and from the vantage point of 1999, they looked back to the day in February 1970 when they first controlled a laser-guided bomb strike.  In this book, the author takes us from ‘glimmers of hope’ like that one through other major improvements in the Air Force that came between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War.  Always central in the author’s account of those changes are the people who made them.  This is a very personal book by an officer who participated in the transformation he describes so vividly.  Much of his story revolves around the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis AFB, Nevada, where he served two tours as an instructor pilot specializing in guided munitions.  But he also takes a look at other ‘Fighter Mafia’ outposts in the Pentagon and elsewhere. An excerpt from the book: “Perhaps the most difficult task for a fighter pilot engaged in aerial combat was seeing his adversary.  With the advent of the jet age, this problem became more difficult as closing velocities jumped dramatically; with second generation fighters such as the F-4 and the MiG-21 flying head on at 500 knots, closing velocities became staggering.  They would come together at one mile every three seconds.  At two miles, the frontal area of a small fighter like the Mig-21 is smaller than the end of a pencil eraser; yet that distance would be closed in six seconds.” 

This 210-page, 6.75 x 9.5 inch softcover is illustrated with black/white photographs and drawings and was published by the USAF History and Museums Program in 2001.  Condition is FAIR/GOOD with moderate shelf wear to the covers.  A great read about an exremely interesting and important topic.

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