Hogs in the Sand: A Gulf War A-10 Pilot’s Combat Journal by Buck Wyndham is the author’s very personal account of taking the A-10 Warthog into battle. The A-10 entered service in 1976 but did not see combat until 1991 during the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm.
Buck Wyndham had dreamed of flying the A-10 from the first time he saw one. He joined the Air Force and was assigned the A-10. He kept extensive journals throughout his training and deployment to Saudi Arabia and missions flown during the war. Buck gives you a day to day, play-by-play account of life in the cockpit and on the ground.
He puts everything out there in the open, hope, fear, anxiety, triumph, success, and defeat, in engaging and wonderfully written form. I found myself laughing and pulling for him in his quest to win over the girl of his dreams from a guy who (according to Buck) isn’t even a pilot, just a back seater in an F-15E.
Having read and listened to many a book on air to air combat, I found it fascinating to hear the air to ground perspective.
From the book: “I am awed by my destructive power. With a small squeeze of the gun trigger under my right index finger, I can rip the turret off a thirty-ton battle tank and throw it 200 feet across the desert, while the rest of the tank burns in an explosion of white-hot, burning phosphorescence. But the cold, morbid reality of it does not exist from where I sit and watch it happen. There’s no dramatic chord. No deafening explosion. No screams suddenly stifled. The soundtrack of a pilot’s war is mostly silent.”
More information and some great photos are on the author’s website at www.hogsinthesand.com.
The #1 Best Seller in Persian Gulf War History
