Customer Reviews

Going Downtown: The War Against Hanoi and Washington

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This book captures the true spirit of a fighter pilot and why they are such special people. His war on Hanoi, waged with one hand tied behind his back by McNamara and President Johnson needed to be told. And he told it as only a fighter pilot could. You could be reading fiction, but it's real. Where do we get men that court death and face losing friends every day. Colonel Broughton is busy telling us about his fight with Hanoi and Washington. But, what also comes through is the daily struggle of men strapping on an airplane and doing their duty against great odds. The rules of engagement are discussed and how they affected the lives of those charged with enforcing them. Colonel Broughton had over 200 missions. He is a true American hero.

I've read both this book and the predecessor "Thud Ridge" as well as several book written by Vietnam war era pilots. Col Broughton knows his stuff and tells it like it was. If you ever wondered why we failed in Vietnam ,you will understand why after reading this book. Poor leadership by Air Force Generals( one couldn't be sure whether the enemy was the N.V. or the upper level command) from 5000 miles away, telling wing commanders how to do their jobs ( and having no clue as how a tactical fighter wing works), Washington's tying their hands behind their back with target selection and restrictive rules of engagement, micromanagement from above, all added up to a winnable war that they were not allowed win( except the guys risking their butts flying to Hanoi). I heartily recommend reading this book and also Thud Ridge for some fascinating insight of this era. Also I'd recommend Phantom over Vietnam , John Trotti and PAK SIX by G.I. Basel.

This is an EXCELLENT book written by an amazing pilot about the mess that was Vietnam. So many pilots died as a result of the idiotic "Rules of Engagement" that clearly stacked the deck AGAINST our pilots. This book and "THUD RIDGE" tell the cold hard and ugly facts how Washington made our pilots fight with both hands tied behinds their backs. America would've been out of Vietnam victoriously in a few months if our soldiers had been able to what they have been trained to do, and NOT be told how to fight a war by a bunch of politicians.

Going Downtown

The title of this memoir "Going Downtown" by a veteran fighter pilot of the Korean and Viet Nam War refers to the pilot's terms for combat missions over the capital of North Vietnam, Hanoi.

Author Jack Broughton provides us ground huggers a vicarious feeling of what it is like to put on a flight suit, climbed into a cockpit and blast off straddling tons of jet fuel and racks full of ordinances. Once airborn the "fun" is just beginning. Thunderstorms, fog, cranky electro-mechanical gremlins and those pesky anti-aircraft weapons keep the adrenalin pumping. It is amazing that the author survived so many combat missions in Korea and Viet Nam - he must have had good karma.

The author makes his point repeatedly that the political consideration that resulted in restriction on the use of US Air Power in Viet Nam was detrimental to the war effort and materially contributed to the lost of planes and pilots. This issue has been debated since the end of the Viet Nam war and from my readings I believe the author is correct. Aircraft and pilots (and the whole US military presents in SVN for that matter) were "used" to somehow coerce the NVN to call off their efforts in the South and negotiate. Politicians like McNamara, Johnson, Rusk, Bundy and other were dead wrong in assuming that Ho would cave in to their gradual escalation and restrictive rules of engagement. The names on the Viet Nam memorial are mute testament to their arrogance and hubris.

I have one minor complaint concerning this book. The author and the editor must have assumes that readers would be very familiar with flying terminology - which is used quite liberally in the text. Well, I am not, and a glossary of aeronautical terms would of been very helpful - not completely necessary, but nonetheless helpful.

Like "Thud Ridge", also by Col. Broughton, "Going Downtown" reflects on the former fighter pilt's experiences driving USAF F-105's through the flack, SAM and MiG infested skies of Vietnam. Readers who missed "Thud Ridge' may remember Broughton's story appearing in the Yeagher biography - a decorated and venerable fighter-pilot, Broughton was loved by the men he led, despite the draconian restrictions placed on them by politicians. During one mission that Broughton didn't even fly on, two of his pilots received fire from a flak gun aboard a Russian freighter, and responded with their own cannon. Jaded by the experience in which his pilots were clearly in the right, Broughton removed the gun camera film from the noses of the involved F-105's, and destroyed them. A board of review composed of such noted officers as Yeager and Robin Olds cleared Broughton's men but did cite Broughton for destruction of the gun camera film, a move that effectively ended his career as a fighter pilot. Broughton hints at the incident - the "Turkestan Affair" in Thud Ridge, but apparently decided against saying any more. Having decided otherwise in "Downtown", Broughton must have decided that he didn't have enough for a new book complimenting the first. Theough "Turkestan" and its consequences take up the latter half of the book, the first part is a mixed gril, offering the USAF's painful transition to the early and crude jets, the complicated underpinnings of the Vietnam war and the cover-up over the Tonkin Gulf incident.

The problem is that much of this seems out of place here - especially the author's anecdotes about the Air Force's experineces with early jets between Korea and Vietnam. The jets, which are underpowered and have over-complicated fire-control systems kill more of their own pilots than the enemy, and some - like the F-103 and the F-107 - never make the cut at all. None of those planes ever appears in Vietnam, and certainly not in Broughton's narrative. So why does he bother here? It's as if he realized that he hadn't enough, apart from "Turkestan" that merited a new book, and quicly decided that, besides some anecdotes about the Veitnam airwar overlooked from the first book, he might as well just keep going back, and toss in soem historical background about vietnam and USAF for good measure. Concluding his survey of the famed "Century Series" fighter jets, Broughton says "something funny was happening in southeast asia." But it was nevr clear why he didn't begin with southeast asia and leave all that other stuff behind. It's important stuff, but would be of better use as something Broughton could reflecton while flying in vietnam - as more of a personal context than an historical one. Actually, Broughton sells himself short - giving equal time to all subjects when I'd prefer a whole book with him in the F-105. Considering that he flew the most pivotal missions of his career in that plane, it's incredible that my knowledge of it seems unchanged from when I first opened "Going Downtown."

Following on from Thud Ridge and complimenting Rupert Red Two, Going Down Town completes the trifecta from Jack Broughton. Following a distinguished carreer through the cold war in Germany and the Korean War, Jack exemplified the epitome of leadership. But for others who, although they may have held a higher rank, could only aspire to such an example, and the courage it demanded in a wartime setting it was a threat and when the opportunity came to exercise politics over leadership, prosecuted that opportunity with a vengeance that can only leave one questioning the calibre of leadership within the military as well as the government of the time. A must read for military aviation buffs and those interested in the history of the Vietnam war.

This is Jack Broughton's sequel to Thud Ridge. As an F-105 Thunderchief pilot during the Vietnam War, he flew many missions over North Vietnam, some of which are retold in this book (the first book does some of them as well). Often hamstrung by rules of engagement established by politicians without regard to military necessity or survival, he became disenchanted with the leadership and soon was flagged as a troublemaker. Broughton was finally court martialed for attacking ships in Haiphong harbor. They were made strictly off-limits by the politicians because some were Russian, but many mounted anti-aircraft guns and shot down American pilots. Broughton finally became so incensed at this that he strafed the ships on one mission. He was court martialed and convicted. Much later Congress overturned the conviction, but much too late to be of use to Broughton. The latter part of the book relates the story of the legal proceeding and the subsequent actions Broughton took to publicize the government's cover up of it's ineptness.

I would recommend this book for those who are interested in the air war in Vietnam. It does rather bog down towards the end in the politics, but should be considered a necessary read for those of the current generation who may not be aware of how badly the Vietnam air war was conducted by Washington.

Several years ago I read Thud Ridge, and ever since I've wanted to pick this one up to learn more about the Turkistan incident and Broughton's court martial. This is an angry book, and not only is that anger rooted in feelings of righteous indignation, but there is also something of the old hunter in there, which is a forceful force indeed. I am struck by both Broughton's can-do, gung-ho attitude and the counterpoint of Air Force and Washington politics. While I am in sympathy with Broughton's criticisms of Johnson and McNamara, I am also leery of Broughton's mindset, which is after all that of a professional soldier. There is to me something incompatible between that professional mindset and what I believe American military culture is supposed to be about. The irony, perhaps, is you can't operate complex weapons systems like the F-105 with citizen amateurs, but you also can't have a democratic country along the lines of the American model with a military as professionalized as we had then (and have today).

Strike that. You can operate F-105 wings with citizen amateurs, but you can't get citizen amateurs to follow bad policies formulated by people like McNamara and Johnson.

The type of military that fought WWII was a thing of the past by Vietnam. Broughton and the operations people at that time were more in step with that WWII mindset than the professional machine that Johnson and McNamera exploited (and in the case of the Thunderchiefs and their crews) almost completely destroyed.

Broughton's actions during the Turkestan incident amounted to mutiny, and the way the generals went after him shows he sent a shock wave behind the closed doors in the Pentagon and the Whitehouse. Now one of their best boys on the track to General was kicking loose from their control, and they were worried more were going to follow.

Broughton sacrificed his promotion to General, took an early retirement, and spent nearly two decades going through doubt and bitterness afterwards, but through his mutiny and through leaving the Air Force he crossed over from being a professional soldier to becoming an American-who-had-fought-for-his-country. I'm not sure you can call a lock-step professional soldier a true American. Could be mutiny is at the root of our political identity? Reading Melville, Hawthorne and Jefferson, one might believe so.

I've also read Ed Rasimus's books on his experiences flying Thuds and Phantoms, which provide further evidence of the corruption possible in a professional military, especially a professional military that's cynically used as it was by politicians like Johnson.

What is striking about people like Rasimus and Broughton is their combination of intelligence, expertise, aggression and boy scout naiveté. That was one heck of a cultural shift we went through between 1945 and 1965.

Although Broughton is talking about the American military in the mid-nineteen-sixties, his story has implications for understanding the cultural shifts that are influencing us today. In 1945, America was a force for pluralistic Anglo-Western culture, and it roundly defeated the infection of authoritarian, militarized Germanic culture. In great measure, the success of the American military machine was due to its pluralistic and decentralized nature, which gave it operational flexibility and a culture of common-sense that was lacking among the goose-stepping Germans. The American military was in this sense an "Anglo-western" and "democratic" military. By 1965, however, in many ways our military resembled the professional Germanic military that, twenty years earlier, the American military had destroyed. By the same token, in fifty years our business, education, and healthcare institutions have also taken on the contours of the German model....

Going Downtown is an important book, both for understanding the contortions experienced by the American military in Vietnam, and for understanding what is happening in America today.

"The Pacific Flyer" of Oceanside, CA [edition of October, 2009] has a quarter page advertisement from USAF Colonel Jack Broughton offering inscribed copies of this "Going Downtown" volume - AND - an autographed photo of this former USAF wing commander in his F-105 cockpit -- that photo is on cover of his other book "Thud Ridge" (1969).

[See also my comment on this AMAZON.com web site for the afore-mentioned "Thud Ridge" tome].

It is a good book about Vietnam War but it tells you the version of an arrogant Colonel full of anger for having ruined his career! Nice book but I just can't stand the author!