There are nearly 400 action packed pages of the true accounts from flying over 500 combat missions in North Vietnam and Laos in a Grumman OV-1 Mohawk, the armed, single-pilot, ejection-seat aircraft that was a key player in the secret war run by the CIA. This was the only Mohawk unit of four that flew only outside of South Vietnam (until the last months of the war) and the only unit flying the machine gun and rocket equipped attack versions of the Mohawk. We were almost all just 20-25 year old Army pilots in the Mohawk and we were flying in the only Mohawk unit (of five in Vietnam) that flew exclusively in North Vietnam and Laos until the last months of the fateful war. From a separate base in northern Thailand we, along with Air America, flew for six years in the CIA's Secret War in Northern Laos, up against the Chinese border and working on real-time night attacks of Chinese trucks and tanks moving across the Plain of Jars. We would find the targets--and attack, night after night after night. Our unit losses were staggering and shocking , even to us--losing more aircraft and men than all four of the other Mohawk units combined. Many of our young men ended up MIA's in Laos and North Vietnam never to be seen again--even after the war. They disappeared.

Get shot down in Laos or up along the Chinese border and you disappeared, forever.