Fly By Knights

In 2022, Col (Ret) Roger Graham published Fly By Knights: Air Force A/B/RB-26 Air Commando Missions in the Vietnam War

We are pleased to share the most recent book review from the Air Commando Journal Vol 13, Issue 1, page 49 with our readers. This book is available for purchase at https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/fly-by-knights/

So there I was, at a fairly recent air show in the Midwest…

I knew from my research that the Douglas A-26 could be an unforgiving airframe, challenging for an unskilled pilot. So when I saw one—billed as the oldest flying example—I had to climb the air stairs and look into the tandem cockpit. I was there with an aero engineer friend, and we were discussing the fact that one needed to be on his toes to fly such a great airplane, and I figured whoever was bringing this shiny, beautiful machine into exhibitions throughout the country had to have some serious multi-engine time in it to do so.

A young man—twenties-ish, dressed in a ground crew outfit with sunglasses—was suddenly at my shoulder asking if I had any questions about the A-26 and I think he was a bit surprised when I asked what the bailout procedure was for this aircraft. I figured it would be something like push the canopy open, doff your headset, and go over the wing-root to get clear of the airplane. I was instead assured that this particular aircraft never suffers any mechanical issues, so…. Needless to say, I was still curious about the fundamental operation of the A-26, which, as Fly By Knights: Air Force A/B/RB-26 Air Commando Missions in the Vietnam War (2022, McFarland & Company, Inc., 278 pp.) elucidates, demanded at least two experienced operators in those front seats to ideally prosecute these dangerous missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

I was amped when offered the chance to review this particular history.

The most famous mishap—and it is one mentioned repeatedly in the book—was the loss of a B-26 in 1964 at Eglin in a demonstration “over Range 52 (left wing separated from aircraft coming off of strafing pass).” There had occurred, however, at least two other aircraft losses in Southeast Asia during Operation Farm Gate for similar reasons in 1963. “The crews and maintenance personnel were aware of structural fatigue problems associated with heavy ordnance wing loads while taxiing over rough taxiways, and due to wing stress during pull-ups from dive-bombing passes.” The Eglin crash investigation revealed “extensive corrosion in the wing area adjacent to the engine nacelles,” and it was concluded that carrying less ordnance or limiting g-loads would no longer be adequate safety precautions. These World War II-era airframes were grounded until all 40 operational aircraft in the USAF inventory could be overhauled at the On Mark Engineering Company in Van Nuys, California.

It is the On Mark chapter, though, that I found particularly insightful. There is a long history of the federal government partnering with private industry to solve hard problems, and the B-26 overhaul is a sterling example. In the days before Lear Jet and the Cessna Citation were flying executives all over the US, On Mark was converting A-26Cs into civilian executive airplanes, upgrading instrument panels, engines, control surfaces, and other components. Of course, the wing roots were rebuilt and fortified to handle the 4–5Gs experienced in a rolling dive pull-out, to a level of sturdiness that eight wing pylons were fitted to carry more napalm and bombs above and beyond those in the internal bay.

After these upgrades, the airplanes were ferried over the Pacific to the airfield at Nakhon Phanom (NKP), Thailand to launch interdiction and other missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail (HCMT); there are at least two chapters in the work that describe the multi-leg ferry flights from the West Coast to NKP, in a World War II-era airplane with few navigational aids and a couple of historic maintenance issues. Folding up the wings and rolling the aircraft like a row of ducks into a C-5 was not an efficient option at this point in USAF history.
After new aircrews made daytime familiarization flights in-country, the missions were conducted usually at night, for two reasons—truck drivers on the HCMT did not want to be observed from the air, and the A-26 crews (callsign “Nimrod”) did not want to be seen by the anti-aircraft gun crews protecting the trail. “Due to the rugged terrain, frequent bad weather, and heavy antiaircraft defenses, the nighttime dive-bombing missions were extremely demanding,” as Chapter 3 illustrates, and above the coordination demanded within the crew, frequently other assets rolled in to prove that teamwork makes the dream work. Nimrods frequently cooperated with forward air controllers talking them onto targets from both the air and ground; other strike aircraft such as AT-28s and B-57s; and aircraft dropping flares to illuminate kill zones over the trail.

Editor Roger D. Graham has collected a number of first-hand vignettes to describe these missions to the reader from pre-brief to engine shut-down—bringing in not only the crews, but maintainers, “gun plumbers ,” and family members awaiting the Air Commandos’ return from the war. There are cameos from both Heinie Aderholt and Richard Secord here, as well as narratives on the coup against Diem and the siege of Lima Site 85, and some high-quality photographs of the people and airplanes that comprise the unit histories. Chapter 5 contains unit rosters and quarterly histories, but it is the observations in the book’s epilogue which may be most important to the modern reader. To paraphrase: there will always be a need for “significant numbers of relatively inexpensive US attack combat aircraft” for small wars—carrying heavy armament loads, filled with plenty of fuel to facilitate long loiter times over targets, and the power plants for doing it low and slow. As the SOF Truths dictate, the humans to operate these aircraft are more important than the hardware itself, and a roster of competent aircrews to handle it cannot be suddenly ginned up when the need arises.

If there is a complaint to make about this work it is a common one, but one that can be easily rectified in a second edition. Graham includes three maps in the book to orient the reader to the AOR, and they all cover a congruent area of Southeast Asia. In Chapter 2, the book describes four identifiable interdiction points on the HCMT that were monitored/serviced: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta. These were sections of the HCMT that had been bombed repeatedly to the point that the craters, etc. made truck traffic through these checkpoints hazardous to the enemy. These choke points were about 100 miles east of NKP and south of Mu Gia Pass. The tactic was to try to catch trucks driving through this area and drop ordnance or to use the 50-caliber guns to stop and destroy the vehicles.

If two of the three provided maps show both Nakon Phanom, the Mu Gia Pass, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, then Points Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta should be depicted, too, to orient the reader. But—again—an easy fix if there is a second edition in the future.

My engineer friend and I have discussed this book and the refinements made at On Mark quite a bit, and he particularly marvels at “those upgraded fat blades on the prop for clearance on bad runways and higher horsepower engines”—i.e., two Pratt & Whitney 2500-horsepower R-2800-52 water-injected upgrades. He cleared up some of the book’s technical jargon regarding those power plants, like “mag drops” and “brake mean effective pressure.” A glossary of terms might also help in the second edition, though, if you don’t have engineer friends to discuss it with you over evening cigars in the garage. I was thrilled to inform him, though, that per Bruce Kramer’s vignette in Chapter One, the standard procedure for bailing out of an A-26 was “jettisoning the canopies and bailing out over the wing. As far as I know,” Kramer relates, however, “only one person got as far as actually bailing out and he hit the horizontal stabilizer, which didn’t do him much good.”

Fly By Knights relates some exciting stories and laugh-out-loud moments as it conveys the history of a small, secret, and highly professional subculture of the Air Force. For a historian, it is disquieting that we have a shrinking window between the declassification of these exploits and the time remaining to cull the first-person accounts from the Airmen who lived them. Colonel Graham has continued to provide great service to the community by collecting these memories and making them available to an interested audience.

About the Reviewer: Scott E. McIntosh, Maj, USAF (ret.), is a former Leadership and Command instructor at Air Command and Staff College, as well as former South-Central Asia Orientation Course Director at USAF Special Operations School. He is currently a doctoral candidate within the military history program at Kansas State University.

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