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sleepyboi2988's review against another edition
4.0
Great insight into the pioneers of 'Fast FAC' and the battles that raged over the Trail in Vietnam.
books17's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting concept - from my general military leanings I know about FACs (Forward Air Controllers) and the role they provide, but not in Vietnam, and certainly not in a jet blasting above the ground at a few hundred kilometres an hour.
Bury Us Upside Down goes into detail about the Misty "Fast FACs" - pilot-and-backseater crews who would fly over North Vietnam, spotting trucks, anti-aircraft sites, tanks, basically anything they could and then calling in fighters to take them out. This made it an incredibly dangerous, stressful job - but one that they carried out with aplomb and bravado for the better part of two years.
The majority of the book is taken up with anecdotes and stories from this period, from a couple of dozen different pilots and crewmen. What's left is a study of the effects on those left behind - wives and children of those who were missing in action, as several Misty pilots were.
This is the kind of book I call "soft history" - anecdotal, story-based and written in a kind of pulpy, easy-to-read but not very informative way - as opposed to "hard history", which is usually more dry, with more numbers and statistics and objective analyses. I can enjoy both - usually the sweet spot is where it falls right in the middle, but this book is definitely firmly in the Soft side of the spectrum, to the point where I struggled with parts of it.
Still, an interesting subject for sure, but the book itself unfortunately - unlike the Misties - outstayed its welcome for me.
Bury Us Upside Down goes into detail about the Misty "Fast FACs" - pilot-and-backseater crews who would fly over North Vietnam, spotting trucks, anti-aircraft sites, tanks, basically anything they could and then calling in fighters to take them out. This made it an incredibly dangerous, stressful job - but one that they carried out with aplomb and bravado for the better part of two years.
The majority of the book is taken up with anecdotes and stories from this period, from a couple of dozen different pilots and crewmen. What's left is a study of the effects on those left behind - wives and children of those who were missing in action, as several Misty pilots were.
This is the kind of book I call "soft history" - anecdotal, story-based and written in a kind of pulpy, easy-to-read but not very informative way - as opposed to "hard history", which is usually more dry, with more numbers and statistics and objective analyses. I can enjoy both - usually the sweet spot is where it falls right in the middle, but this book is definitely firmly in the Soft side of the spectrum, to the point where I struggled with parts of it.
Still, an interesting subject for sure, but the book itself unfortunately - unlike the Misties - outstayed its welcome for me.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
4.0
Bury Us Upside Down is a strong narrative look into the minds of some of the most exceptional fighter pilots of the Vietnam War, and the daring and loyalty that had them fly into some of the most dangerous air space in the world. Structured around the saga of MIA pilot Howard K. Williams, and his family and featuring cameos by Dick Rutan (yes, that Dick Rutan), this is a moving history.
Flying in two-seat F-100F SuperSabres armed with cannons and smoke rockets, the Misties were fast FACs, forward air controllers who spotted trucks and supply depots at the base of the Ho Chi Minh trail just north of the DMZ, and directed flights of Phantoms and Thuds onto these elusive, camouflaged targets. They also became experts in tactical reconnaissance, flak suppression, and the art of coordinating the rescue of downed pilots. These rescues, with their Sandies, Jollies, and desperate race against time to find and rescue the downed pilot before NVA troops got to him, are both moments of high tension and a perfect microcosm of Vietnam in a whole, as an entire day's missions would be scrubbed and dozen of lives risked to rescue a pilot shot down while attacking a target of negligible value. That might be the Misties as a whole: for all their courage and skill, assessments by RAND and the JASON group revealed that the Trail was barely interdicted at all. In a war of attrition, the NVA were making good their losses in trucks and flak faster than the Misties could take them out. In the end, nothing mattered, except for the stories and the other pilots.
Flying in two-seat F-100F SuperSabres armed with cannons and smoke rockets, the Misties were fast FACs, forward air controllers who spotted trucks and supply depots at the base of the Ho Chi Minh trail just north of the DMZ, and directed flights of Phantoms and Thuds onto these elusive, camouflaged targets. They also became experts in tactical reconnaissance, flak suppression, and the art of coordinating the rescue of downed pilots. These rescues, with their Sandies, Jollies, and desperate race against time to find and rescue the downed pilot before NVA troops got to him, are both moments of high tension and a perfect microcosm of Vietnam in a whole, as an entire day's missions would be scrubbed and dozen of lives risked to rescue a pilot shot down while attacking a target of negligible value. That might be the Misties as a whole: for all their courage and skill, assessments by RAND and the JASON group revealed that the Trail was barely interdicted at all. In a war of attrition, the NVA were making good their losses in trucks and flak faster than the Misties could take them out. In the end, nothing mattered, except for the stories and the other pilots.
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