Bury Us Upside Down is a strong narrative look into the minds of some of the most exceptional fighter pilots of the Vietnam War, and the daring and loyalty that had them fly into some of the most dangerous air space in the world. Structured around the saga of MIA pilot Howard K. Williams, and his family and featuring cameos by Dick Rutan (yes, that Dick Rutan), this is a moving history.

Flying in two-seat F-100F SuperSabres armed with cannons and smoke rockets, the Misties were fast FACs, forward air controllers who spotted trucks and supply depots at the base of the Ho Chi Minh trail just north of the DMZ, and directed flights of Phantoms and Thuds onto these elusive, camouflaged targets. They also became experts in tactical reconnaissance, flak suppression, and the art of coordinating the rescue of downed pilots. These rescues, with their Sandies, Jollies, and desperate race against time to find and rescue the downed pilot before NVA troops got to him, are both moments of high tension and a perfect microcosm of Vietnam in a whole, as an entire day's missions would be scrubbed and dozen of lives risked to rescue a pilot shot down while attacking a target of negligible value. That might be the Misties as a whole: for all their courage and skill, assessments by RAND and the JASON group revealed that the Trail was barely interdicted at all. In a war of attrition, the NVA were making good their losses in trucks and flak faster than the Misties could take them out. In the end, nothing mattered, except for the stories and the other pilots.