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 Hellish Vortex Between Breakfast and Dinner Jun 27, 2008
I'm a WWII buff and originally saw this reviewed in the WWII magazine recently (June 2008). It's definitely different in that is is very detailed and technical in the moment-by-moment descriptions of what flying a P-51 fighter (mainly as bomber escort) was like, and also in describing day-to-day life for this young pilot in war-time England. The author Richard Baughn was a decorated P-51 pilot, and he states that what he set out to do was write a book about what it was really like. The book is a fictional account of a 19 year old pilot. It succeeds on both the fictional and the historical level, containing interesting characters, fast action, and a not small amount of action with the ladies.
One aspect of this different book is it makes you very aware of how extremely hazardous every mission was for all the airmen (fighter and bomber crews alike), with a much higher casualty rate than for any other service. The hazards posed by flying in bad weather, collisions, and various other accidents added greatly to the casualty rate. One final interesting point - from the description on the book it sounds like they lived on SPAM througout the war. Makes you want a nice SPAM sandwich.
The other side of the picture Jun 08, 2008
This is one of the best fiction books I have read on the air corps since Len Deighton's "Goodbye Mickey Mouse". I had heard of Marines having had a couple of weeks of basic training in WW II and being given "training" on the 19-day sail to Guadalcanal, but I did not know that pilots had sometimes had very little training. Thank goodness this pilot read the manual on P-51's on the boat ride to England. With only a couple hours in the P-51, his instructor put him in the cockpit and said basically, "Go solo". And then he was sent to a unit and certified as combat ready. You get the feeling that too many kids were treated this way and became cannon fodder. I had never seen the statistics that the Army Air Force had the highest percentage of fatalities of any of the services in WW II. My eight uncles and cousins, who fought in WW II, always felt the air force had the best deal, but after reading this book, I realize how little the sacrifice of 155,000 airmen has been acknowledged.
Hellish Vortex Mar 13, 2008
Simply a great book authored by a qualified individual. Very enjoyable read which gave one an insight to life in the fast lane during WWII. I could read it again.
The Hellish Vortex:Between Breakfast and Dinner Jan 09, 2008
Colonel Bud Anderson, who shot down 16 ü German aircraft in WWII and became a famous test pilot after the war, has read The Hellish Vortex. He said it was an enjoyable read that gives you a realistic view of the air war from the cockpit of a P-51 and excellent insight into the political and interservice politics that affected the air war. Colonel Anderson authored the very popular To Fly and Fight.
Chaos Between Two Covers: A Fighter Pilot's View of Europe, 1944-45 Dec 20, 2007
War memoirs and novels play a important role in bringing home the realities of combat, both to the casual reader and to the serious student of war. That is particularly true of of the all-important human experience of combat since historical accounts by their very nature impose an degree of order and predictability to an inherently chaotic and unpredictable process. That is notably true of war in the air, where the episodic nature of combat and the difficulty of measuring victory and defeat have frustrated historians, memoirists and novelists alike. The book under review is an exception.
In Hellish Vortex, Richard Baughn chronicles the experience of a young US Army Air Forces P-51 pilot in the intense air battles that broke the back of the Luftwaffe between early February 1944 and late December 1945. Clearly largely autobiographical -- the author's career closely parallels that of his protagonist, Lieutenant Robb Baines -- Voretx captures the essence of aerial combat as well as any account of which I am aware, fictional or otherwise. In literary polish and drama it is the equal of Pierre Clostermann's autobiographical The Big Show, by the Royal Air Forces' top-scoring WWII European ace; in straightforward recounting of the tactical and operational realities of the fighter pilot's air war it replaces Robert S. Johnson's (with Martin Caidin)Thunderbolt as the gold standard. It is far superior in literary merit and factual accuracy to the German autobiographies by Adolph Galland and Heinz Knocke. It is similarly superior to Japanese Naval aviator Saburo Sakai's Samurai, in my view the best Axis air memoir of the war.
Before proceeding, a few words about myself. Much too young for World War II, I saw combat as an Air Force rescue helicopter pilot flying long-range rescue missions over North Vietnam and Laos in 1965-66 and retuned to Southeast Asia for a second tour in 1975. I am, however, old enought to have flown reciprocating engine miliary aircraft and to have known my share of Baughan's contemporaries, Air Force "old leather" who earned their bones flying against Imperial Japan and the Luftwaffe. I am also a military historian who has researched and taught World War II (at Ohio State) for many years.
With that as preamble, Baughn has it right. He knows his pilots, airplanes and flying inside out and it shows. His account of a partial-panel extreme attitude recovery in foul English weather on his initial P-51 checkout (remember, it was a single-seat fighter) made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and that is only the beginning. No "knights of the sunlit sky" here: Baines and his squadron mates suffer as much from flack and the weather as from enemy fighters... although those take their cuts as well. The result is bitterly won victory.
Baines and his squadron mates come alive in their hopes, fears and frustrations. The empty, aching sense of loss at having flown a wingman into the ground, inadvertently but perhaps avoidably, while strafing a heavily-defended Luftwaffe airfield; the anguish of seeing the fireball of a runway collision between two young replacement pilots at the end of an otherwise brilliantly executed squadron recovery in marginal weather; the English girlfriends; the black-marketeering mess sergeant who makes himself and his English purveyor of black market eggs wealthy. It's all there.
Best of all, the story is accurately framed historically. In a clever device that works remarkably well, Baughn's protagonist "flash-forwards" to his experience as a student at Armed Forces Command and Staff College in the mid-1950s where, now a major, he writes his research paper on the defeat of the Luftwaffe as essential prelude to the destruction of the Third Reich. Although brief -- and not without a degree of malice (justified in my view ) aimed at air power's detractors -- it is the best single account of the end game of the strategic air war over Europe.
Compellingly written, Hellish Vortex is intellectually honest and historically accurate. The next time I teach World War II it's a required text.
John F. Guilmartin, Jr.
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