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With the escalation of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, the American military discovered it needed a new kind of helicopter to cope with the rugged environmental and combat conditions its fighting men were encountering. The need resulted in the development of the Bell UH-1 Iroquois and the Boeing-Vertol CH-47 Chinook.
Now they just needed the pilots, flight engineers, crew chiefs and gunners to man them. In a sense they were LOOKING FOR FLYBOYS.
Tom Messenger’s memoir follows his experiences as a Chinook flight engineer on missions over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It not only relates the tales of those missions during the course of the war but also his interactions with fellow soldiers and the civilian population. Tom’s stories run the gamut from recounting the dangers of battle and capturing the anguish of war to the humorous situations of daily life in the Army so familiar to anyone who has ever served.
