Palace Cobra: A Fighter Pilot in the Vietnam Air War

Palace Cobra follows Rasimum's second tour in Vietnam as an F-4 during the Linebacker campaigns. In the years since When Thunder Rolled, Rasimus had been an instructor pilot and personnel officer, and he wanted to get back to flying fighters while there were still fighters to fly, even if that meant facing flak and SAMs again, and wrecking his marriage in the process.

By 1972 the war had become thoroughly routinized. Bureaucratic absurdities proliferated in the air bases, which were much the same as they had been in 1966. Rasimus slotted right in, becoming a hunter-killer pilot who specialized in going after SAM sites with cluster bombs.

In Palace Cobra, Rasimus opens up a little, speculating about how the war was fought, the ability of show more airpower to force a decision, and the culture of fighter pilots in Thailand in the 1970s. It's amazing how much more gregarious and personable the war becomes when there's another person sitting in the same cockpit as you, making the same desperate prayers about flak.

Having read them back to back, I recommend both of Rasimus's books. They're similar, of course, but just difference enough it's worth reading both. show less

I thought that the author's "When Thunder Rolled" was one of the best Vietnam tour-of-duty memoirs I had read and this follow up where Rasimus relates his late-war service in 1971-1972 is a worthy successor. This is particularly when Rasimus considers how the war had changed his service (usually not for the better), as operations deteriorated into rote process and a virtual way of life (the USAF in Thailand) had become pathology.