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A U.S. Navy fighter pilot, Voris was an Ace in World War II and was awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses, 11 Air Medals, three Presidential Unit Citations and the Purple Heart. In 1946, Adm. Chester Nimitz decided to create a special naval aviation team to increase sailor morale -- and recruitment. He chose Capt. Voris to lead the team. Voris liked the name of a night club he saw advertised in a magazine, and named the team after the establishment: the Blue Angels. He recruited several pilots and got them off the ground quickly: the team put on its first air show on June 15, 1946, and it quickly became known for its spectacular aerobatic stunts. "You fly as close together as a couple of feet," Voris once said. "Every once in a while you do a little bump and so forth. People ask me, 'How close do they fly?' And I'll say if we hit each other, it's too close and if we don't, we're too far apart." He retired from the Navy in 1963, and went on to be NASA's spokesman during the Apollo moon missions. "Butch" Voris died August 9 at his home in Monterey, Calif. He was 85. From This is True for 7 August 2005 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Robert Coram List Price: $16.99 Amazon Price: $11.55 Editorial Review: A great American hero-a 20th-century warrior and military strategist who lived outside the spotlight but whose work has been enormously influential-is brought brilliantly to life in this acclaimed biography. John Boyd was the finest fighter pilot in American history. From the proving ground of the Korean War, he went on to win notoriety as the instructor who defeated-in less than 40 seconds-every pilot who challenged him. But what made Boyd a man for the ages was what happened after he left the cockpit. He transformed the way military aircraft-in particular the F-15 and F-16-were designed with his revolutionary Energy-Maneuverability Theory. Boyd dedicated his later years to a radical theory of conflict that was largely ignored during Boyd's lifetime, but that is now widely considered to be the most influential thinking about conflict since Sun Tzu's The Art of War.  By: Jack Broughton List Price: $26.95 Amazon Price: $17.79 Editorial Review: In 1945 Second Lieutenant Jack Broughton graduated from West Point with the silver pilot wings of a newly commissioned member of the Army Air Corps. Nearly thirty years later, he retired as a full colonel in the United States Air Force, an entity that didn't even exist when he first learned to fly. Along the way Colonel Broughton saw duty in virtually every fighter aircraft the Air Corps and then Air Force had to offer. He experienced the birth and coming of age of the U.S. Air Force and its bloodying in combat in Korea and Vietnam. In this, his third book, Broughton offers readers what is virtually a biography of the U. S. Air Force as it was experienced by one of its finest combat leaders. From his initial duty in postwar Germany as part of the American occupation, to air-to-air combat in Korea, to his command of the Thunderbirds and two combat tours in Vietnam, Broughton describes what it is to meet the enemy in the air--and to fly some of the best-known aircraft in combat. By the bestselling author of Thud Ridge and Going Downtown.  By: Jim Stockdale List Price: $15.95 Amazon Price: $10.85 Editorial Review: Vice Admiral Stockdale was on active duty in the navy for thirty-seven years. As a fighter pilot operating from an aircraft carrier, he was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965. As the senior naval officer among the prisoners of war in Hanoi for seven and a half years, he was tortured fifteen times, put in leg irons for two years, and confined in solitary for four years. This experience was the crucible for his philosophical thought on issues of character, leadership, integrity, personal and public virtue, and ethics. Much of his philosophy is drawn from the stoic philosophers, especially Epictetus, whom he had read before his capture. The selections in this volume converge around the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity—lessons just as valid for the challenges of present-day life as they were for the author's Vietnam experience.  By: Pat Conroy List Price: $15.00 Amazon Price: $10.20 Editorial Review: Step into the powerhouse life of Bull Meecham. He’s all Marine-fighter pilot, king of the clouds, and absolute ruler of his family. Lillian is his wife—beautiful, southern-bred, with a core of velvet steel. Without her cool head, her kids would be in real trouble. Ben is the oldest, a born athlete whose best never satisfies the big man. Ben’s got to stand up, even fight back, against a father who doesn’t give in—not to his men, not to his wife, and certainly not to his son. Bull Meecham is undoubtedly Pat Conroy's most explosive character— a man you should hate, but a man you will love.A tyrannical father, a military "ace" brutalize his family and particularly his oldest son, interpreting humanity as weakness in this unsparing novel. Tragedy is the outcome. Robert Duvall's performance of the title character in the film adaptation is p  By: Ed Rasimus List Price: $7.99 Amazon Price: $7.99 Editorial Review: Picking up where his acclaimed When Thunder Rolled left off, Palace Cobra is the story of Ed Rasimus’s return to Vietnam to fight a war that many Americans tried to forget… When F-105 pilot Ed Rasimus completed his 100 missions over Vietnam, he returned stateside to a normal life: sitting at a desk and teaching student pilots. Two years later, he volunteered to go for a second tour of duty. Determined not to die in a losing cause, and relentlessly searching for that next adrenaline rush, Rasimus and the other F-4 Phantom pilots continued the ferocious air war in the North—dodging SAMs and gunning for MiGs—and routinely cheated death. When America finally got serious about ending the war, Rasimus and the other pilots put it all on the line, pounding Hanoi with everything they had, and flying above POW camps to let the troops know they were not alone. Gripping, earnest, and unforgettable, Rasimus’s combat memoir is, in the end, a heartfelt tribute to those who never made it back. |
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