Flying from the Black Hole : The b

U.S. Air Force navigators and bombardiers have long laboured under the shadow of pilots, their contributions misunderstood or simply unknown to the public. This was especially the case with the B-52 non-pilot officer aircrews in the Vietnam War. Yet without them it would have been impossible to execute nuclear war strike plans or fly conventional bombing sorties. Here, one of their own reveals who these men were and what they did down in the ""Black Hole."" It is the only work to detail the B-52 air war in Vietnam from the perspective of a navigator-bombardier. The author offers a history of the development of bombing techniques and the evolution of bomber aircraft, focusing on the Vietnam-era B-52. Final chapters turn to the eleven-day ""Christmas War"" over Hanoi and Haiphong for an insider's view of that defining battle.