The Hunter Killers: The Extraordinary Story of the First Wild Weasels, the Band of Maverick Aviators Who Flew the Most Dangerous

A GRIPPING CLASSIC. Exhaustively researched, The Hunter Killers puts you directly into a Wild Weasel fighter cockpit during the Vietnam War. Dan Hampton lets you feel it for yourself as no one else could.Colonel LEO THORSNESS, Wild Weasel pilot and Medal of Honor recipientAt the height of the Cold War, Americas most elite aviators bravely volunteered for a covert program aimed at eliminating an impossible new threat. Half never returned. All became legends. From New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton comes one of the most extraordinary untold stories of aviation history.Vietnam, 1965: On July 24 a USAF F4 Phantom jet was suddenly blown from the sky by a mysterious and lethal weapona Soviet SA2 surfacetoair missile (SAM), launched by Russian advisors to North Vietnam. Three days later, six F105 Thunderchiefs were brought down trying to avenge the Phantom. More tragic losses followed, establishing the enemys SAMs as the deadliest antiaircraft threat in history and dramatically turning the tables of Cold War air superiority in favor of Soviet technology.Stunned and desperately searching for answers, the Pentagon ordered a top secret program called Wild Weasel I to counter the SAM problemfast. So it came to be that a small group of maverick fighter pilots and Electronic Warfare Officers volunteered to fly behind enemy lines and into the teeth of the threat. To most it seemed a suicide missionbut they beat the door down to join. Those who survived the 50 percent casualty rate would revolutionize warfare forever.You gotta be sh*#@ing me! This immortal phrase was uttered by Captain Jack Donovan when the Wild Weasel concept was first explained to him. You want me to fly in the back of a little tiny fighter aircraft with a crazy fighter pilot who thinks hes invincible, home in on a SAM site in North Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me?Based on unprecedented firsthand interviews with Wild Weasel veterans and previously unseen personal papers and declassified documents from both sides of the conflict, as well as Dan Hamptons own experience as a highly decorated F16 Wild Weasel pilot, The Hunter Killers is a gripping, cockpitlevel chronicle of the firstgeneration Weasels, the remarkable band of aviators who faced headon the advanced Soviet missile technology that was decimating fellow American pilots over the skies of Vietnam.