Review: The Rescue of Bat 21

The Rescue of Bat 21 by Darrel D. Whitcomb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I decided to read the book after enjoying the Gene Hackman movie "Bat 21". The introduction clears up that this book came after and is to a great deal a response to that movie and the book it was based on. More thoroughly researched and able to divulge more details, this is a more commplete and accurate story of the late way SAR operation than the movie could have been. Yes, acronyms - there are a bundle in this work, seemingly touching every sentence in a work possibly geared at vets and other military pros. Fortunately, there is a glossary and an index to remind you where technology and operation code names were first mentioned and explained. Among the tech I never heard of before was the debilitating BLU-52 poison gas (seemingly in between tear and nerve varieties; very nasty stuff) and such things as WAAPM: "these weapons would release hundreds of bomblets that ... would not explode, but instead would extend trip wires, that when snagged by a person would explode" and other air bomblet "gravel". Wow! How did that work? Similary the air-dropped sensors and automatic guns along the persitent Ho Chi Min Trail.

The author makes an observation that some may want to apply to later excursions: "the story is also a warning about the dangers of alliances and pitfalls of coalition warfare in wars that are too drawn out, with objectives not clearly defined."

This book is also a lot about this, late period in the war when it was largely an air war of a withdrawing America and an invading North Vietname. A time when pilots had very little connection to the ground and the war at all, but the SAR missions were integral to morale: they kept would-be victims fighting and offered missions pilots and crews actually believed in.



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