Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds by Robin OldsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I read this side-by-side with Yeager: An Autobiography: two books about fighter pilots that went from before the jet age to become WW II aces, military airmen in Vietnam and help usher in the space age. Both had careers that skipped over direct involvement in Korea with Olds somewhat stagnant in the military bureaucracy. While Yeager was in a light bomber in the south of the conflict zone, Olds was having dogfights with MiGs in the much hotter north. Both Yeager and Olds recall the incident of Jack Broughton and his career-ending strafing of a Soviet ship in Haiphong Harbor (the "Turkestan incident"). Yeager recalls toeing a line on military discipline in the court-martial but stating it came out in court complete proof the American flyers were first fired on from the ship. Olds recalls it as political This incident, and others, were for both pilots a clear beginning of disenchantment with careers in the American military. Olds also became disenchanted with his marriage to Ella Wallace Raines, an American film and television actress. She a Hollywood actress, he a fighter pilot stationed even at a time in Libya made a complex two-body problem that proved, ultimately unsolvable.
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