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Firefly: A Skyraider's Story About America's Secret War Over Laos

2013

Synopsis

It is 1969 and Dick Diller is on his way to flying warplanes in the Vietnam conflict. He is commissioned to fly a A-1 Skyraider in sometimes harrowing nighttime missions over Laos--surviving not only the danger of the missions he flew, but also the bureaucracy of the air force, from fitness testing to additional duties assigned, to attacking impossible-to-find targets in the dead of night--with minimal fuel supplies. At once entertaining and riveting, as well as thought-provoking, "Firefly" is the story of one man's journey in a world at war, and a day-to-day description of the fighting force that was flying a A-1 Skyraider in combat. "Firefly" contains actual transcriptions of dialogue of pilots locating a target and making a strike in northern Laos. "Firefly" is the only book to have been written about the night mission over Laos during the Vietnam conflict, and so fills a niche in the literature of the era.

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