F-100 Super Sabre Units of the Vietnam War, Peter E. Davies with David W Menard

F-100 Super Sabre Units of the Vietnam War, Peter E. Davies with David W Menard

The F-100 was involving the fighting in South-East Asia for ten years, from its earliest appearance in Thailand in 1961 to its final roles flying forward air control missions and controlling search and rescue missions, ending in the summer of 1971. This book covers each of these roles in turn, after starting with a brief history of the F-100 from its original development to its deployment in Thailand.

The varied roles carried out by the F-100 give this book its main interest. The F-100 was coming to the end of its time as a frontline fighter by the time it arrived in South East Asia, and so other roles soon had to be found for it. In Vietnam it was used as a ground attack aircraft, providing (sometime very) close support for ground troops under attack, as part of Wild Weasel teams going after enemy anti-aircraft defences, and to replace slower and increasingly vulnerable aircraft in the forward air control role.

The ground attack role gets the most space, taking up most of chapters two and three, with chapter two providing an overview of the aircraft's involvement while chapter three looks at the individual missions, covering weapons, tactics, the role of National Guardsmen and target areas, amongst other things. The F-100 units worked alongside other types of aircraft most of the time (including the F-105 and F-4), something that the author covers in rather more detail than is often the case in single-aircraft books. All-in-all this is an interesting read.  

Chapters
1 - Development
2 - Warhorse
3 - The Mission
4 - Wild Weasels
5 - Misty FAC

Author: Peter E. Davies with David W Menard
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2011


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