This book contains the most complete history of the South Vietnamese Air
Force that surviving records and accounts can convey. In many ways, this
is an American story; since VNAF was organized, trained, equipped, and
attained its maximum strength under the tutelage of the US military. In
view of numbers of aircraft, the South Vietnamese Air Force emerged as
the fourth largest Air Force in the world-behind Communist China, the
United States, and the Soviet Union. This is not a political history of
the Vietnam War; rather it is the story of the transition of the VNAF
from an under-trained and ill-equipped French Air Force auxiliary unit
to a size during its 20-year life span, so large that it was almost
incapable of sustaining itself with sufficient numbers of trained
personnel and support materials. This is an up-dated version of the book
by this same name and author published in 1988, which now features an
abundance of color photographs and new incites of the air force's role
in that war that have settled with time.