The Rescue of Bat 21

The Rescue of Bat 21
Author: Darrell D Whitcomb
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2014-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612515835

When his electronic warfare plane--call sign Bat 21--was shot down on 2 April 1972, fifty-three-year-old Air Force navigator Iceal “Gene” Hambleton parachuted into the middle of a North Vietnamese invasion force and set off the biggest and most controversial air rescue effort of the Vietnam War. Now, after twenty-five years of official secrecy, the story of that dangerous and costly rescue is revealed for the first time by a decorated Air Force pilot and Vietnam veteran. Involving personnel from all services, including the Coast Guard, the unorthodox rescue operation claimed the lives of eleven soldiers and airmen, destroyed or damaged several aircraft, and put hundreds of airmen, a secret commando unit, and a South Vietnamese infantry division at risk. The book also examines the thorny debates arising from an operation that balanced one man’s life against mounting U.S. and South Vietnamese casualties and material losses, the operation’s impact on one of the most critical battles of the war, and the role played by search and rescue as America disengaged from that war.

Wilderness Rescue Pilot

Wilderness Rescue Pilot
Author: Patrick Perish
Publisher: Bellwether Media
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2015-01-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1681030195

When people are stranded in remote locations, itÕs time to call in the wilderness rescue pilots. These gutsy flyers often travel around rough terrain and in severe weather to find people in danger. One small mistake could send their aircraft crashing to the ground! Find out more about these brave pilots in this exciting title for reluctant readers.

Flight Facts for Private Pilots

Flight Facts for Private Pilots
Author: Merrill E. Tower
Publisher: Tab Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 1960
Genre: Aeronautics
ISBN:

Profusely illustrated coverage of the fundamentals of flying, for the student and private pilot.

Rescue Pilot

Rescue Pilot
Author: Dan McKinnon
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2002
Genre: Helicopter pilots
ISBN: 9780071391191

Naval aviator Dan McKinnon recounts the dramatic at-sea rescues conducted during his anything-but-peaceful peacetime service in the US Navy from 1956-1959. Rescue accounts include an ejected test-pilot; a crew member washed overboard their air carrier flight deck; and an amazing mission in the Red China Seas. The long shipboard assignments common to Navy history of time period are also portrayed along with details of flight training and survival training.

Miracle in the Andes

Miracle in the Andes
Author: Nando Parrado
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2007-05-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 140009769X

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A harrowing, moving memoir of the 1972 plane crash that left its survivors stranded on a glacier in the Andes—and one man’s quest to lead them all home—now in a special edition for 2022, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the crash, featuring a new introduction by the author “In straightforward, staggeringly honest prose, Nando Parrado tells us what it took—and what it actually felt like—to survive high in the Andes for seventy-two days after having been given up for dead.”—Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild “In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.” Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team to Chile had crashed deep in the Andes, killing many of his teammates, his mother, and his sister. Stranded with the few remaining survivors on a lifeless glacier and thinking constantly of his father’s grief, Parrado resolved that he could not simply wait to die. So Parrado, an ordinary young man with no particular disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snowcapped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to save his friends’ lives as well as his own. Decades after the disaster, Parrado tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes, a first-person account of the crash and its aftermath, is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure; it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.

Rescuing Downed Aircrews

Rescuing Downed Aircrews
Author: Christopher A. Mouton
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This report describes research to quantify the "rescuability window" of downed aircrews to assist the U.S. Air Force's reassessment of its personnel recovery force structure.