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Sierra Hotel
Book by Anderegg, C. R.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 20, 2017
Excellent depiction of the evolution of Fighter training and tactics.
April 29, 2020
Sierra Hotel is a compelling, concise look at the evolution of the USAF fighter force, like the title says, after Vietnam. To explain the reasons for the changes needed, the first few chapters summarize the role and results of the fighter in Vietnam. This primarily covers the various lessons learned, tasks and tactics used with the Phantom F-4.
Author Anderegg was a pilot of this era and does a good job of keeping the story well balanced, not too technical, but enough to let you feel the stick and hear the lingo in your headset. I particularly enjoyed the flying procedures of the Phantom, such as take off and landing.
As a teenager in St Louis, Missouri, home of McDonnell Douglas, during the later 1960s, new F-4s would roll off the assembly line and take their first flight over my high school. The roar from the afterburner assisted takeoffs would suspend class for a few minutes as you couldn’t hear the person next to you. They usually took off in threes, one after the other. One day during math class, thank you, we listened to 12 pass overhead, taking up a good chunk of time. Even our usually focused math teacher was amused as each time we started to proceed another rumble would approach. They were always quite the sight going over the school. Then once home, it wasn’t over, our house was in the landing flight path, going only a few hundred feet overhead, air brakes shrieking. So I have an affinity for the big bird.
The Phantom, originally designed as an interceptor of Soviet planes, filled a jack-of-all-trades role in Vietnam, the old -a weapon right for one war, might not be for the next. Anderegg looks at the aircraft, weapons systems and training that evolved to fill all the roles for which the F-4 was previously responsible. The F-15 Eagle, A-10 Thunderbolt-Warthog and F16 Falcon-Viper, are all covered as well as the new look at ‘real life’ aggressor training, and the major influence of the Laser Guided Bomb and various airborne radar.
There is a lot of history and information packed into this under 200 entertaining pages making this a Sierra Hotel Goodread.
Author Anderegg was a pilot of this era and does a good job of keeping the story well balanced, not too technical, but enough to let you feel the stick and hear the lingo in your headset. I particularly enjoyed the flying procedures of the Phantom, such as take off and landing.
As a teenager in St Louis, Missouri, home of McDonnell Douglas, during the later 1960s, new F-4s would roll off the assembly line and take their first flight over my high school. The roar from the afterburner assisted takeoffs would suspend class for a few minutes as you couldn’t hear the person next to you. They usually took off in threes, one after the other. One day during math class, thank you, we listened to 12 pass overhead, taking up a good chunk of time. Even our usually focused math teacher was amused as each time we started to proceed another rumble would approach. They were always quite the sight going over the school. Then once home, it wasn’t over, our house was in the landing flight path, going only a few hundred feet overhead, air brakes shrieking. So I have an affinity for the big bird.
The Phantom, originally designed as an interceptor of Soviet planes, filled a jack-of-all-trades role in Vietnam, the old -a weapon right for one war, might not be for the next. Anderegg looks at the aircraft, weapons systems and training that evolved to fill all the roles for which the F-4 was previously responsible. The F-15 Eagle, A-10 Thunderbolt-Warthog and F16 Falcon-Viper, are all covered as well as the new look at ‘real life’ aggressor training, and the major influence of the Laser Guided Bomb and various airborne radar.
There is a lot of history and information packed into this under 200 entertaining pages making this a Sierra Hotel Goodread.
October 24, 2013
Actual rating: 2.5 stars.
Interesting Air Force history by a fighter pilot who straddled two eras: flying F-4s in Vietnam, then F-15s and F-16s during the fighter mafia years afterward. The point of his book is to show how neglected the fighter business was during the early years of Vietnam, with inadequate training, lousy weapons, WWII tactics, and poorly-designed jets, then to contrast that time with the boom years that followed, when aggressive and smart fighter pilots were finally able to engage leaders' attentions and improve training, weapons, tactics, and airplanes.
As a fighter pilot who came into the business during the boom years, right after the introduction of the F-15, I always felt lucky in my timing. I was aware of the problems associated with the tactics, training, and aircraft earlier generations of fighter pilots had to endure, and thankful I started flying fighters in an era when fellow fighter pilots were in charge and could make sensible decisions. Anderegg's history expanded my knowledge and confirmed what I had always felt.
Anderegg was one or two year groups ahead of my own, and he flew with and knew several notable fighter pilots who were becoming the new generation of USAF leaders when I started flying the F-15. It's always interesting to get a glimpse of your leaders back when they were young sierra hotel fighter jocks themselves.
I downgraded what would have been a 3 or 3.5 star rating to 2.5 stars because the Kindle ebook version I bought is so screwed up it verges on FUBAR. It's as if no one cared, or even bothered to look at it before making it available to readers. The pagination is total chaos, with footnotes interspersed throughout the text, often inserted in the middle of sentences, variously at the top or middle sections of pages … you have to hunt for the end of the footnote and the beginning of the sentence the footnote interrupted. There are no page breaks between chapters; one will come to an end at the top or middle of a page and the next will start one line below. The book is supposed to be heavily illustrated with diagrams showing the various types of combat formations flown by USAF fighters, pre- and post-Vietnam, as well as diagrams explaining tactical turns, radar search patterns, and missile envelopes. Not a single illustration made it into the Kindle version in the form it was intended … instead they have all been replaced with meaningless pencil profile drawings of F-4s and MiG-21s. I'm an experienced fighter pilot and didn't need the illustrations to begin with, but I can imagine the frustration a non-pilot reader might feel: how does this stupid side view of an F-4 show me what a delayed 90-degree turn is supposed to look like? How does it show me what a Vietnam-era welded wing formation looked like?
The lack of formatting and the screwed up illustrations made the ebook version an effort to read, and I do not recommend interested readers take that route … go find a printed copy, and check the illustrations first to make sure you're not just getting a printout of the messed up ebook.
Interesting Air Force history by a fighter pilot who straddled two eras: flying F-4s in Vietnam, then F-15s and F-16s during the fighter mafia years afterward. The point of his book is to show how neglected the fighter business was during the early years of Vietnam, with inadequate training, lousy weapons, WWII tactics, and poorly-designed jets, then to contrast that time with the boom years that followed, when aggressive and smart fighter pilots were finally able to engage leaders' attentions and improve training, weapons, tactics, and airplanes.
As a fighter pilot who came into the business during the boom years, right after the introduction of the F-15, I always felt lucky in my timing. I was aware of the problems associated with the tactics, training, and aircraft earlier generations of fighter pilots had to endure, and thankful I started flying fighters in an era when fellow fighter pilots were in charge and could make sensible decisions. Anderegg's history expanded my knowledge and confirmed what I had always felt.
Anderegg was one or two year groups ahead of my own, and he flew with and knew several notable fighter pilots who were becoming the new generation of USAF leaders when I started flying the F-15. It's always interesting to get a glimpse of your leaders back when they were young sierra hotel fighter jocks themselves.
I downgraded what would have been a 3 or 3.5 star rating to 2.5 stars because the Kindle ebook version I bought is so screwed up it verges on FUBAR. It's as if no one cared, or even bothered to look at it before making it available to readers. The pagination is total chaos, with footnotes interspersed throughout the text, often inserted in the middle of sentences, variously at the top or middle sections of pages … you have to hunt for the end of the footnote and the beginning of the sentence the footnote interrupted. There are no page breaks between chapters; one will come to an end at the top or middle of a page and the next will start one line below. The book is supposed to be heavily illustrated with diagrams showing the various types of combat formations flown by USAF fighters, pre- and post-Vietnam, as well as diagrams explaining tactical turns, radar search patterns, and missile envelopes. Not a single illustration made it into the Kindle version in the form it was intended … instead they have all been replaced with meaningless pencil profile drawings of F-4s and MiG-21s. I'm an experienced fighter pilot and didn't need the illustrations to begin with, but I can imagine the frustration a non-pilot reader might feel: how does this stupid side view of an F-4 show me what a delayed 90-degree turn is supposed to look like? How does it show me what a Vietnam-era welded wing formation looked like?
The lack of formatting and the screwed up illustrations made the ebook version an effort to read, and I do not recommend interested readers take that route … go find a printed copy, and check the illustrations first to make sure you're not just getting a printout of the messed up ebook.
January 17, 2015
Sierra Hotel is an invaluable account of the astonishing and tireless efforts that Captains and Majors produce, away from the spotlight.
The writer tells the story of those men that didn't like the way the air force was working and decided to do something about it. He reaffirms, through classic pilot story telling, the common understanding that organisations chamge from the inside and the "perpetrators" are always those closer to the bottom of the pyramid.
Those who serve will enjoy the historical account and will probably feel like some of the stories they will read are happening around them.
Those who love the Air Foece, will love the inside stories.
Great book overall.
The writer tells the story of those men that didn't like the way the air force was working and decided to do something about it. He reaffirms, through classic pilot story telling, the common understanding that organisations chamge from the inside and the "perpetrators" are always those closer to the bottom of the pyramid.
Those who serve will enjoy the historical account and will probably feel like some of the stories they will read are happening around them.
Those who love the Air Foece, will love the inside stories.
Great book overall.
June 23, 2024
I can’t say enough good things about Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade After Vietnam by C. R. Anderegg. If your interests extend to fighter aircraft capabilities, tactics, and weapon systems, this book is essential reading. Although the title emphasizes the Decade After Vietnam, there is considerable detail throughout the book, especially in the first few chapters, on the fighter deficiencies made evident in that conflict and offered in comparison to the new developments. In details specific to fighters, Anderegg is much more detailed than Brian Laslie in Air Power’s Lost Cause: the American Air Wars of Vietnam. The two books are complementary. A huge benefit is Anderegg’s account of the evolving Air Force “company culture” during and after the Vietnam conflict. His is an insider’s view of what may be the most important outcome for the USAF from Vietnam. This book gets one of my very, very, rare five-star ratings. I usually reserve such an accolade for a book that is life changing. But for me, it’s a retrospective view of a road not taken, barely.
April 13, 2016
I had the pleasure to fly fighters with Colonel Anderegg in the Philippines after the time this book was written.
For anyone who is interested in the world of fighters, especially in the post-Vietnam era, this is a well written and easy to follow book -- enjoy!
For anyone who is interested in the world of fighters, especially in the post-Vietnam era, this is a well written and easy to follow book -- enjoy!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews