The Warriors: Reflections of a Fighter Pilot, Test Pilot, and Veteran of the Air

The Warriors: Reflections of a Fighter Pilot, Test Pilot, and Veteran of the Air Wars over Vietnam – A Book by Robert E. Ross.

A Book Review

by J. Allen Jonz

Yucca Tree Press (www.yuccatree.com), Barbed Wire Publishing, 270 Avenida de Mesilla, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88005, 2002, 304 pages, $25.00 (hardcover).

As new generations of airmen filter into the ranks, the American experience in Southeast Asia slowly dwindles from the consciousness of the active duty force. Veterans who saw combat duty during the conflict in Vietnam are fewer in number, and as they retire, their ability to pass on lessons learned to younger troops diminishes correspondingly. The fear is that the passion and emotion that come from stories of their firsthand experiences will…

…lose something when translated into memoirs and history books. Enter retired colonel Bob Ross. In a book he waited his whole career to write, Ross masterfully describes the emotional highs and lows, likes and dislikes, and triumphs and defeats of his Air Force career.

In this account of life as a test pilot, fighter pilot, and combat commander, Ross tells his Air Force story with wit, candor, and refreshing irreverence. He brings a no-nonsense perspective to a culture he describes as beset with needless paperwork, career bureaucrats, and hangers-on at all levels of the chain of command. Both the bomber community, champions of stan-evals, and a class of pilots he describes with the phonetic spellings of the letters W and D draw Ross’s ire.

The author begins by describing his inadvertent entry into the flying community after studying engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. After joining the Air Force with the expectation of using his education and experience as a civil engineer, Ross was startled by his assignment to a position in communications and electronics. Hoping to correct the oversight, he was swiftly informed by a well-schooled personnel officer that the Air Force doesn’t make mistakes. If he did not like it, he could sign up for pilot training. So began the distinguished flying career of Robert Ross.

Ross proceeds to detail his early flying days, selection and tenure as a test pilot, and first tour in Vietnam, seamlessly weaving personal stories with descriptions of missions flown and experiences with leadership styles, both good and bad. Recalling his first tour, he reveals the interplay of fear of the unknown with a fighter-pilot-sized dose of hubris. Interspersing the recollections of tense missions flown are amusing vignettes of the downtime diversions of his fellow pilots. Ross also describes returning from Vietnam to study at an American college campus (the University of Illinois in Champagne-Urbana) during the uproar of the antiwar movement. Memories of this experience are insightful and characteristically frank (Did I waste a year dropping napalm on the wrong folks?).

Ross concludes by describing his second tour in Vietnam in a self-deprecating manner that vastly understates his heroism and valor. (Indeed, he is the kind of man whom readers would want to meet one day to hear these same stories in person.) After 438 combat missions and a total of two more takeoffs in his F-4 than he amassed landings, he came home. I enthusiastically recommend The Warriors to students of Vietnam, enthusiasts of Air Force history and culture, and any active duty member looking for a good book about actual airmen in combat.