Chariots of the Damned: Helicopter Special Operations from Vietnam to Kosovo [Hardcover]

Mike McKinney (Author), Mike Ryan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312291183 | ISBN-13: 978-0312291181 | Publication Date: July 19, 2002 | Edition: 1st

When F-16 pilot Scott O'Grady was shot down over Bosnia, a rescue mission was launched immediately. It involved nearly 100 aircraft, but succeeded in plucking him to safety in broad daylight. The pilot of the only F-117 Stealth bomber to have ever been shot down was spirited away with equal success. The USAF's elite special Operations Group is the product of many years of hard experience, but only now is it possible to reveal how many of its most famous missions were conducted.

Major Mike McKinney and Mike Ryan investigate the origins of the Special Operations Group and the experience of early rescue missions in Vietnam. The grisly fate awaiting captured American fliers spurred the USAF to develop new weapons and tactics to fight their way through intense enemy anti-aircraft fire. Sometimes the rescue of a single man would escalate into a major military operation - one was later filmed as BAT-21 starring Gene Hackman and Danny Glover. If the ultimate Vietnam rescue mission, the Son Tay raid, was a failure, it did demonstrate how far techniques and equipment had evolved.

From disaster at Desert 1 to the Gulf War, Bosnia and the tragedy in Somalia, Chariots of the Damned takes you on an edge of the seat ride into some of the most incredible battles of recent times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The sensationally titled Chariots of the Damned: Helicopter Special Operations from Vietnam to Kosovo documents death-defying chopper-based Special Ops rescue missions. Writers Mike McKinney, an instructor pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and Mike Ryan (Warplanes of the Future) take turns writing chapters recounting both successful rescues and such notorious failures as those in Somalia and Iran, with an analysis of tactics. They also provide lots of technical information about the choppers themselves, tracing the evolution of helicopter technology over the last 30 years or so.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Low and slow, a military helicopter is vulnerable to any enemy with a rifle, and that lethal hazard to the pilot is what ties together these dozen-plus war stories. The strength author McKinney brings to his book is his military experience flying one of the machines that frequently figures in these narratives, the H-53. He and his coauthor inject much technical material about the capabilities of various models of helicopters, acronym-heavy details that may lack drama but are critical to success or disaster in combat operations. McKinney also aims to impress upon the reader the skill, nerve, and will of the pilot who flies into heavy fire. This combination of technology and courage structures the stories but, unfortunately, never quite succeeds in raising this work's literary level. Practically all the reader learns about the pilots who died is their bravery and their rank. Still, readers have much to admire in these renditions of the helicopter's role in American missions from the Son Tay raid of 1970 to recent rescue operations in the Balkans. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (July 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312291183
• ISBN-13: 978-0312291181
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,572,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of Good Old Fashion Action, July 19, 2002

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chariots of the Damned: Helicopter Special Operations from Vietnam to Kosovo (Hardcover)

Based on the title of this book you probably know what you are going to get, exciting stories of American military special operations over the past 30 years. The book delivers just that. We get basically a rundown of the major American military operations over the past 30 years with a view of how the helicopter forces have been used. The authors focus on the missions and detail out what took place, the good and the bad. The real interesting parts for me were the explanations of the Panama, Grenada and Kosovo missions, as I did not have a good understanding of the efforts that took place there.

The authors also throw in a good amount of technical information about the helicopters, the way the missions are planned and the upcoming helicopter technology. The only two issues I had with the book were I felt the authors could have given me more details - beef the book up a bit. Secondly you can really tell the difference in skill between the professional author and the military man. Overall it was a good book that was easy to read. It would be a good primer to any of the conflicts detailed in the book.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Topic, Flawed Execution, August 19, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chariots of the Damned: Helicopter Special Operations from Vietnam to Kosovo (Hardcover)

In the opening of the book, the authors state that their work will gloss over the details of the operations they discuss in the interest of providing new information about the helicopters and crews involved. A more accurate prologue would have been that they spend a little over 200 pages rehashing information already widely available and making factual errors about the very operations that form the core of their book. The most obvious mistake is stating that three ST6 operators drowned in the Grenada operation when in fact, four sailors made the ultimate sacrifice that night.

Each chapter contains similar mistakes that will be easily caught by those familiar with these operations. The book is also not particularly well written or organized and it was a challenge to force my way through its entireity. Also, one of the authors plugs his company ruthlessly throughout the chapters he wrote which is extremely out of place given the subject matter.

On a positive note, the maps and graphics in the book are outstanding, full color, glossy images that succeed in conveying each tactical situation very well.

This is definitely an area in which there is a void of material. This could have been a valuable source had the authors invested more time in research.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read for helicopter buffs and historians alike, July 23, 2002

By 

Andy Bokanev (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chariots of the Damned: Helicopter Special Operations from Vietnam to Kosovo (Hardcover)

In a world dominated by fixed-wing war story books it's great to finally see a book that recognizes all the great selfless deeds of helicopter pilots. The book covers all the major "special" missions attempted american forces with the use of the helicopter; from the first CSAR mission late in WWII to the phenominal rescue of Scott O'Grady in Bosnia in 1995.
Recommended read for anyone interested in America's Special Forces operations