Ed Rasimus > Quotes

“Flying fighters is simply an assignment, but being a fighter pilot isn’t. Being a fighter pilot is a state-of-mind. It’s an attitude toward your job, toward the mission, toward the way you live your life. You don’t have to fly fighters to be a fighter pilot. You’ve simply got to have the attitude. There are fighter pilots driving B-52s and fighter pilots hauling trash. They may not have the flash and glamour, but they are the best they can possibly be at the job they’ve got to do. There are pilots who fly fighters and there are fighter pilots. You guys want to be fighter pilots, not pilots flying fighters. Look for the difference.” This is profound stuff for the Korat bar. It makes sense to me. I’ve thought a lot about”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“As I turned to the chapters dedicated to operations in North Vietnam, the ridiculous gave way to the absurd. I couldn’t discern whether the enemy was the North Vietnamese or the U.S. Navy. The enemy might just as easily have been the State Department or even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all seemed to have a voice in the ROE, and the tone of the voice was seldom in favor of winning the war, defeating the enemy, or even ensuring the fighter pilot’s chances of survival.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“have a high percentage of fighter pilots, but there was no telling about the new crop of retreads. It was tough for them, with very little time in the airplane and the responsibilities of rank and leadership thrust upon them. The delicate balance between flying skill and tactical judgment was difficult to learn. Learning to subordinate your own fear was even more problematic. I knew now that everyone faced it in some degree. How you dealt with it determined whether you were a fighter pilot or simply someone flying fighters. The flow of retrainees from the short courses had begun to affect our losses. Filling the squadrons throughout Southeast Asia took a lot of manpower. We were getting the bodies, but we were no longer getting the skill levels. You couldn’t prove it, of course, but things were happening that didn’t bode well for the future.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“If I didn’t fly, I wouldn’t be killed or wounded or captured. I would be alive, but I would be in that netherworld of failures and cowards. I would be disgraced without family or friends or profession. It would be a lonely world, inhabited only by that loathsome individual looking back each morning from the mirror.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“The SAM sites had been bulldozed and graded then photographed by our reconnaissance aircraft. They were off-limits while under construction but could be attacked once they were completely built. To confirm that they were actually no longer under construction, the SAM site had to be observed firing a missile at you.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“Although the fear was still in the back of my mind, I was beginning to realize that activity and interaction with the others was helping me to take each successive step in this process.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“Butterfly 44 since that day in northern Laos. Even though he flies a Pilatus Porter, that FAC clearly fills Wimpy’s definition of a fighter pilot. More important, Wimpy’s definition explains a lot about the people I see around me. It explains my own experience at Korat. When I arrived, I was, without doubt, a pilot who flew fighters. I was qualified in the aircraft, but it would have been hard to fit the description of fighter pilot that we’re talking about. I wasn’t sure whether I was a fighter pilot yet. I looked around the table and saw a group of people who all flew fighters but who weren’t all fighter pilots. Some were, some would be, and some might never make the cut. The guys from McConnell when I first arrived at Korat hadn’t been fighter pilots. Oh sure, some were, but most were pilots who flew fighters. It didn’t matter that they had been flying fighters for a longer time than most; they didn’t have the attitude that Wimpy was describing. The guys who had come from Europe and Nellis seemed to”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“We asked for a car. The clerk checked our driver’s licenses. “Sorry,” he said, “you guys are too young.” Right. Among the three of us we’ve got 226 missions over North Vietnam, three ejections, two Silver Stars, five Distinguished Flying Crosses, twenty-three Air Medals, three Purple Hearts, and we’re still too young to rent a car.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“Yossarian knew that you had to be crazy to fly combat. But you couldn’t fly combat if you were crazy. If you turned yourself in as crazy so that you couldn’t fly combat that would clearly be the act of a sane person, so you couldn’t really be crazy and you must fly combat. Yossarian knew all this and he recognized it as the “catch.” It was Catch-22.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam

“Air Force regulations required that the appropriate checklist would be open and in hand for whatever activity was taking place. In reality the books stayed in a G-suit pocket or a canvas carryall bag throughout the flight. The only time anyone ever opened up the checklist was when they were in deep shit and totally out of ideas.”
― Ed Rasimus, When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam