Hot Shots: An Oral History of Air Force Combat Pilots of the Korean War

Rating:
Summary: The Danger of Oral History
Review: As a former Department of the Air Force historian, I know full well the values and dangers of oral history. The supreme value of oral history is that it comes straight from primary sources: those who actually witnessed historical events. The supreme danger is that these accounts sometimes can involve faulty recollections or a lack of understanding of broader events. Yet, actually having written accounts based from oral interviews, I know that with proper editing and a broad scope of interview subjects, you can come up with a fascinating account.

Sadly, Hot Shots by Chancey and Forstchen falls short of the mark. This book is marketed as being "An Oral History of Air Force Combat Pilots of the Korean War." However, it is apparent from the accounts in the book that the editors interviewed a limited number and scope of pilots. The book is far too slanted towards the accounts of F-51 Mustang pilots for it to be considered a comprehensive oral history of ALL Air Force combat pilots. For instance, F-84 fighter-bombers were heavily engaged in Korea, but they get scant mention in this book.

The editors do a good job of introducing individual points of the war with background information. Sadly, however, several background chapters do not include any interviews from those periods! In addition, the editors continue to make points over and over: the horrific UN withdrawal after the Chinese invasion; American POWs being left behind at war's end. These points are valid, but they need not be repeated after their first mention. Instead of an oral history, the book seemed to become the editors' take on the Korean War.

The book itself is at its strongest when the actual pilots give their accounts.

Hot Shots is a good book for the general public with a passing interest in military history, but professional military historians will probably find little new here. Revelations of Soviet pilots flying over Mig Alley and the U.S. Navy's air combat against the Russians near Vladivostok were common knowledge amongst the Air Force historical community, at least as far back as 1996.

C. Husing ex-historian, HQ AFRES and HQ SMC, USAF

Rating:
Summary: The Danger of Oral History
Review: As a former Department of the Air Force historian, I know full well the values and dangers of oral history. The supreme value of oral history is that it comes straight from primary sources: those who actually witnessed historical events. The supreme danger is that these accounts sometimes can involve faulty recollections or a lack of understanding of broader events. Yet, actually having written accounts based from oral interviews, I know that with proper editing and a broad scope of interview subjects, you can come up with a fascinating account.

Sadly, Hot Shots by Chancey and Forstchen falls short of the mark. This book is marketed as being "An Oral History of Air Force Combat Pilots of the Korean War." However, it is apparent from the accounts in the book that the editors interviewed a limited number and scope of pilots. The book is far too slanted towards the accounts of F-51 Mustang pilots for it to be considered a comprehensive oral history of ALL Air Force combat pilots. For instance, F-84 fighter-bombers were heavily engaged in Korea, but they get scant mention in this book.

The editors do a good job of introducing individual points of the war with background information. Sadly, however, several background chapters do not include any interviews from those periods! In addition, the editors continue to make points over and over: the horrific UN withdrawal after the Chinese invasion; American POWs being left behind at war's end. These points are valid, but they need not be repeated after their first mention. Instead of an oral history, the book seemed to become the editors' take on the Korean War.

The book itself is at its strongest when the actual pilots give their accounts.

Hot Shots is a good book for the general public with a passing interest in military history, but professional military historians will probably find little new here. Revelations of Soviet pilots flying over Mig Alley and the U.S. Navy's air combat against the Russians near Vladivostok were common knowledge amongst the Air Force historical community, at least as far back as 1996.

C. Husing ex-historian, HQ AFRES and HQ SMC, USAF

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading For Air War History Nuts
Review: Chancey has found some brilliant gems and placed them on display for us. It's always interesting to hear the straight skinny from the guys who were there. Some of the pilots, though obscure to the general public, are nominally famous to students of air combat. Boots Blesse and Ralph Parr are moderately well known names and Robby Risner is very well known. Most of the rest you have never heard before, but they all have something worthwhile to say. For those of us who flew in the Air Force in the 1980s when it was fat and happy, it is a shock to read of the Air Force caught unprepared in Korea, poorly trained and poorly supplied and poorly equiped. It is depressing to discover that all the tactical lessons learned in WWII were forgotten and had to be relearned in Korea only to be forgotten again to be relearned in Vietnam. We were reinventing the wheel every war until the Fighter Weapons School came along to preserve and disseminate the tactical lessons.

Chancey's transitions between the oral histories of the fliers are interesting, though their focus tends to drift from the Korean War. The last story on our guy sitting it out in a Chinese POW camp is well worth reading for any jet jock who is likely to catch a golden BB over enemy territory. He covers all the issues a POW encounters.

It was also something of a shock to read that the US Navy brushed off an attack by Russkie fighters that was hushed up. The Russian pilots who flew for the North Koreans now openly acknowledge their role. I wonder what they know about our pilots who were taken into Russian as POWs, never to be seen again in the civilized world.

Rating:
Summary: Not Enough "Hot Shots"
Review: I was very disappointed in the coverage of the USAF role in Korea. This was the first time that jet battled jet in armed combat... and yet at least a third of the book centered on the P-51's role. F-84's were mentioned, but not one '84 pilot was included. And the final third of the book was focused on a pilot who was shot down and held captive 'til long after hostilities ended. It was a story of bravery and loneliness, but it wasn't the way to end the book and could have benefitted from a great deal of editing.

Rating:
Summary: Not Enough "Hot Shots"
Review: I was very disappointed in the coverage of the USAF role in Korea. This was the first time that jet battled jet in armed combat... and yet at least a third of the book centered on the P-51's role. F-84's were mentioned, but not one '84 pilot was included. And the final third of the book was focused on a pilot who was shot down and held captive 'til long after hostilities ended. It was a story of bravery and loneliness, but it wasn't the way to end the book and could have benefitted from a great deal of editing.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reading!
Review: I'll make it short and sweet: Excellent reading. For anyone interested in flight. Lots of stories straight from the pilots.

Rating:
Summary: Slipshod treatment for forgotten warriors.
Review: The idea was great but the execution is atrocious. The first chapter is so riddled with factual errors that the discerning reader has little confidence in the rest of the story. Why didn't the authors hire a competent military historian to check the manuscript for accuracy?

Chancey and Forstchen should recall this clinker and start over.

Rating:
Summary: Fifty Years Ago
Review: The story tellers were very interesting. I happen to know two of them. My tour in Korea was 1955/1956 flying F-86 Sabres so I could relate to the situations these men faced in the air. I did not fire an unfriendly shot but we were prepared. The tactics and are battles described by the "MIG Seekers" were taught and drilled into us @ Nellis AFB and from every flying day there after. These men paved the way for all of the future jet fighter jocks. It is hard to beleive how unprepared we were for war and the hardships everyone in the field had to endure. KEEP'EM FLYING!

Rating:
Summary: Read it all and it's good
Review: This is one of those books where you applaud the effort but deplore the execution. The need for more air war histories certainly exists, particularly as the participants are being removed by time, before first hand accounts fade. The trend in history books now seems to be "editing" such oral accounts, but as seems to be the case here it is done by those having little real knowledge of the subject matter. The Korean air war is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the development of air combat tactics with jet aircraft, and was a time when the warriors of the last war were side by side with the new breed, some of whom would fly in Vietnam. This book does not do the subject justice. Take the photos: they are poorly reproduced and often mis-captioned (F-80's labeled F-84's, F-94's labeled F-84's, etc.) It also appears that when one of the interviewees used an acronym (RTU) the editors didn't know -- or ask, apparently -- what it meant, so they made something up. "Reconaissance Technical Unit" indeed! Try "Replacement Training Unit." Further, a lot of time is spent on the exploits of the ground supporting F-51's and that's okay, but this was the first jet war. The Mig Alley battles are given short shrift and it's almost like 1952 didn't occur at all! However, I think that the story of double ace Hal Fischer's shoot down and imprisonment is worth a book in itself (hopefully by someone else) and takes up the last quarter of this book. There are precious few books out there about the Korean air war, but all of them are better than this one. Give it a pass.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: This was a good compilation of personal accounts as reported by the author. Unfortunately, I found the accounts to be a bit too short to draw me in. The exception to this was the pilot describing his experience in a Chinese POW camp - this was fascinating and warranted a whole book in itself.

The book went too quickly for me. It was a good, easy read but left me wanting more - and not in the same way that a good book should leave you wanting more. I guess I had hoped for more depth, a better feel for what it was like to be a fighter jock in the Korean War. Each account was just too abbreviated to develop the overall picture. I could have spent days talking to anyone of his sources yet instead I felt like we had a brief conversation in passing. Still, if you have a strong interest in this period, I wouldn't pass it up.