Da Nang Diary A Forward Air Controller's Gunsight View .epub

A friend of mine, a Forward Air Controller, recently sent me the following observation:

"God invented FACs because even fighter pilots need heroes."

Tom Yarborough, of course, is one of those heroes. While the fast-movers (the fighter pilots who dropped the bombs) might have been on station for two, or five, or maybe ten minutes, Tom and his Covey FACs who flew the SOG mission known as Prairie Fire (the very term was classified, and hence seldom spoken) were there until the job was done. No matter the weather, no matter the ground fire, no matter the battle damage, no matter the fuel state, no matter what. The Prairie Fire FACs were there. Why? Because they were utterly committed to the mission and to their troops on the ground. And to their fellow FACs.

Danang Diary gets it right. The secret behind Tom's ability to recall each of his missions accurately, in spite of such distractions as enemy anti-aircraft artillery and small arms fire, nearly vertical karst terrain that poked menacingly into the low overcast, and some of the most challenging weather cycles in the world, was Tom's view of the future. He recorded audiotapes of his missions. And we are the beneficiaries of his prescience.

Tom has captured his experiences and presented them to us in such a way as to put us there. Tom's scholarship and his literary skills combine with his audio-assisted total recall to give his readers an "I was there" narrative that is genuine and, at the same time, thoughtful, well researched and written and, perhaps most importantly, candidly revealing of the psychological and emotional stresses under which the FACs labored.