Book Review by James Mason
Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds
by Robin Olds with Christina Olds and Ed Rasmus
I came across this book, knowing little about Robin Olds, and I enjoyed reading it
more than I thought I would. Robin Olds was clearly a straight talking and strongly
opinionated man who led from the front and was quite ingenious in finding ways to
achieve his aims. He was a ‘triple ace’ having been a fighter pilot in both World
War II and the Vietnam War.
He was the son of a U.S. Army Air Force major and was at West Point during World
War II. He writes on how, through his father, he knew some of the famous Army Air
Force figures such as Carl Spaatz. Keen to fly in the war, he came to the U.K. and
was based at RAF Wattisham, flying the P-38 Lightning and then the P-51 Mustang.
He recounts some amazing incidents dogfighting with German aircraft and his account
of life in England at that time is also interesting. He mentions one episode where
he visited an antique shop in London, interested in buying a suit of armour, and
the owner invites him to have tea with him in the shop. The next day he returned
to buy the armour and finds the shop completely destroyed by a bomb which killed
the owner who he had befriended. In the war, Olds became an ace in both the P-38
and P-51.
After the war, Olds went on to fly the P-80 and formed a jet aerobatic demonstration
team, he speaks highly of the P-80 and comments that the air force did not really
know how to use this new type of aircraft. He relates a harrowing incident where
he was flying an aerobatic routine and his partner stalled and crashed fatally with
Olds seeing the aircraft stall and hit the ground. He then came back to the U.K.
to RAF Tangmere where he flew the Gloster Meteor and relates an almost unbelievable
account of how he went for his first flight in the Meteor with hardly any instruction
and in what seems to have been terrible weather. If this was normal practice at the
time then it is hardly surprising that there were so many Meteor crashes.
He was then posted back to the U.S. then West Germany and then back to the Pentagon
in Washington. He writes about the strains that this placed on his marriage to the
actress Ella Raines and his family, It is quite interesting to read about the influence
that his wife had in Washington and how he coped with some of this. Robin Olds did
not seem too happy at the Pentagon and returned to active flying taking command of
the 8th Tactical Fighter wing based at Ubon in Thailand.
Olds is quite blunt in his assessment of some of his USAF colleagues in Vietnam and
I found this to be the most interesting part of the book, He flew the F-4 Phantom
and refers to the ‘GIB’ which is the guy in the back who seems to have been along
for the ride quite a bit of the time! He talks about his frustration of not having
a gun to dogfight with the MIG-17s and MIG-21s and having to get used to having only
missiles. He seemed to like the Sidewinder but is very scathing about the Sparrow
and writes about his battles with the Pentagon and defence companies to get the right
equipment. Some of his writing suggest that the North Vietnamese were the least of
his enemies. On one operation, he was desperately short of fuel and was formating
on an air refuelling tanker which then refused to give him fuel since they could
not get back to their base with the available fuel. After a heated argument, Olds
suggested that the tanker crew don their parachutes since he still had two missiles
left and if he did not receive fuel then he would pull back and fire them at the
tanker. Desperate measures but it worked and he describes one engine on the F-4 flaming
out while he was refuelling and restarting it, I guess that tells you all you need
to know about Old’s flying skills. Incredibly the tanker subsequently landed at another
USAF base, just not their own base! Around this time Olds had four kills and did
not want to become an ace since that would have meant returning to the U.S., so he
changed his personal tactics to let others in his team get the kills, thereby prolonging
his stay in theatre.
On his return to the U.S., Olds describes how he was invited to meet President Johnson
where he was quite forthright in his views on the Vietnam War and how the U.S. should
win it. Apparently this caused a stunned silence but LBJ listened to Olds and then
arranged fo him to meet his national security advisor! Olds was also told by his
commanding officer to get rid of his trademark handlebar moustache which he was happy
to do.
Altogether an interesting book especially, for me, the sections on the early introduction
of jet fighters, the Vietnam war and some of the air force strategy at the Pentagon
from the end of World War II to the late 1960s.
Publisher - St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13 978-1429929097
Cover Price: £12.99 ( paperback )
