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mburnamfink 's review for:
Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs Of Legendary Ace Robin Olds
by Ed Rasimus, Robin Olds, Christina Olds
Ed Rasimus has a perfect quote about fighter pilots, and that quote fits Robin Olds to a T. This book is Olds' memories, collected into publishable shape by his daughter and Rasimus, and it is one hell of a story.
Olds with his infamous Vietnam War mustache
Olds was born to aviation nobility. His father was Army Air Forces Major General Robert Olds, and he grew up with WW1 aces over for dinner. Robin was accepted to West Point in 1940, and flight training shortly thereafter. He did everything possible to get into the war as soon as he could, making it over to Europe where he flew P-38s and P-51s, and shooting down 12 planes. Postwar, he transitioned to jets and married actual movie star Ella Raines (though the marriage was often unhappy). Raines used her influence to keep him out of Korea, but even with doldrums in the basement of the Pentagon, a football coach at West Point, and distant training commands, Olds was a fighter pilot to the bone.
In 1966 he was assigned command of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, an F-4 unit based in Thailand that flew strikes into North Vietnam. Olds was an aggressive commander, leading from the front as often as he could. He's most famous for Operation Bolo, an elaborate decoy mission that disguised a flight of F-4s as unwieldly F-105 Thuds for an ambush of North Vietnamese MiGs. In Vietnam, Olds shot down four more planes and then started letting his wingmen take all the shots, because as the first American ace of the war, he knew he'd be called back home. Olds also fiddled with his official mission count to keep flying fighters in combat, flying a total of 152, compared the official tour of 100 combat missions north.
Post-war, Olds served as commandant of cadets at the Air Force academy, and inspector general, rounding out his 30 year tour with distinction. He always advocated for aggressive conventional tactics, dogfighting and attack skills, and real readiness rather than perfect paper record-keeping. Olds retired to Colorado and passed away in 2007. I read a lot of these memoirs, and Olds is better than most, covering WW2, Vietnam, and the battle of bureaucracy, as well as lots of insight into the mind and culture of fighter pilots.
Olds with his infamous Vietnam War mustache
“Flying fighters is simply an assignment, but being a fighter pilot isn’t. Being a fighter pilot is a state-of-mind. It’s an attitude toward your job, toward the mission, toward the way you live your life. You don’t have to fly fighters to be a fighter pilot. You’ve simply got to have the attitude. There are fighter pilots driving B-52s and fighter pilots hauling trash. They may not have the flash and glamour, but they are the best they can possibly be at the job they’ve got to do. There are pilots who fly fighters and there are fighter pilots. You guys want to be fighter pilots, not pilots flying fighters. Look for the difference.”
Olds was born to aviation nobility. His father was Army Air Forces Major General Robert Olds, and he grew up with WW1 aces over for dinner. Robin was accepted to West Point in 1940, and flight training shortly thereafter. He did everything possible to get into the war as soon as he could, making it over to Europe where he flew P-38s and P-51s, and shooting down 12 planes. Postwar, he transitioned to jets and married actual movie star Ella Raines (though the marriage was often unhappy). Raines used her influence to keep him out of Korea, but even with doldrums in the basement of the Pentagon, a football coach at West Point, and distant training commands, Olds was a fighter pilot to the bone.
In 1966 he was assigned command of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, an F-4 unit based in Thailand that flew strikes into North Vietnam. Olds was an aggressive commander, leading from the front as often as he could. He's most famous for Operation Bolo, an elaborate decoy mission that disguised a flight of F-4s as unwieldly F-105 Thuds for an ambush of North Vietnamese MiGs. In Vietnam, Olds shot down four more planes and then started letting his wingmen take all the shots, because as the first American ace of the war, he knew he'd be called back home. Olds also fiddled with his official mission count to keep flying fighters in combat, flying a total of 152, compared the official tour of 100 combat missions north.
Post-war, Olds served as commandant of cadets at the Air Force academy, and inspector general, rounding out his 30 year tour with distinction. He always advocated for aggressive conventional tactics, dogfighting and attack skills, and real readiness rather than perfect paper record-keeping. Olds retired to Colorado and passed away in 2007. I read a lot of these memoirs, and Olds is better than most, covering WW2, Vietnam, and the battle of bureaucracy, as well as lots of insight into the mind and culture of fighter pilots.