Review: A Hundred Feet Over Hell by Jim Hooper

‘Just watch me, I’m going back down!’  Hooper chopped the throttle and crossed the controls.  These were the enemy, he kept telling himself, and this is what he was here for.  Recovering from the slip, he broke toward the bodies and cross over them at seventy-five feet.  The transition from the war films of his youth to reality came with the sight of the first crumpled figure.  Only feet away a smaller body lay face down in the grass.  He had just slaughtered a child.

(from A Hundred Feet Over Hell, page 22)

During the Vietnam War, Jim Hooper’s brother, Bill, was a Catkiller who flew missions over the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the border of North and South Vietnam.  These Catkillers flew Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs, scoping out the area assigned to them and directing the pilots responsible for dropping napalm and various bombs to hit the intended target and avoid the U.S. soldiers on the ground.  Bill Hooper learned early on that his job and that of the other Catkillers would not be easy.

‘Gentlemen, this is the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog.  It has no armor.  It carries no offensive weapons.  It is slower than the front-line fighter aircraft of the First World War.  But those of you who end up flying this aircraft in combat will log more hours in your first three months than the jet jockeys will during an entire tour in Vietnam.’  (page 19)

In A Hundred Feet Over Hell: Flying With the Men of the 220th Recon Airplane Company Over I Corps and the DMZ, Vietnam 1968-1969, Jim Hooper tells the stories of his brother and several of the men his brother flew with and worked with during his time in Vietnam.  Throughout most of the book, the men tell their stories in their own words, helping readers better understand the stress they endured as they flew these planes right over the enemy and were shot at constantly, their sense of duty, and the friendships they forged along the way.

Hooper uses a lot of military terminology, but that shouldn’t deter readers unfamiliar with the lingo.  There is a glossary in the back of the book that defines many of these terms, and while I flipped back and forth many times, eventually I just stopped trying to make sense of the acronyms and allowed myself to get lost in the book.  If you think a non-fiction military book about Vietnam is destined to be dry and boring, you’d be wrong.

Going back and forth between the pilots and some of the soldiers on the ground, several particularly intense scenes involve a handful of troops hunkered down, unable to move, and under intense fire from the Viet Cong.  Various circumstances — being shot at, the weather, the time of day — made the Catkillers’ job difficult, but despite the pressure and with the help of the men in their backseats, they saved many lives.  Hooper puts you right in the plane, and my heart pounding, I rushed through the pages to see how the missions turned out.  I don’t know how these young men — many barely out of high school — could deal with such pressure day in and day out, but they did their jobs well and with heart.

A Hundred Feet Over Hell was difficult to read at times, but it’s such an important book because it tells the true stories of these men in their own words.  In addition to intense combat scenes, Hooper includes their interactions during down time, a frantic grief-stricken search when a plane is downed, and stories about crazy things they did in the air, even inserting a bit of humor here and there.

‘Catkiller 1-2, request you divert to intercept and identify bogey.  Over.’  Thinking that Hillsboro must have confused me with a different aircraft, I asked if he understood that I was an O-1 Bird Dog capable of a max cruise of a little over one hundred knots and armed with nothing more than four white phosphorus marking rockets.  The controller confirmed that he was well aware that I was an O-1 Bird Dog and how I was armed — and then gave me an intercept course.

The bogey’s reported airspeed suggested a Russian helicopter, the presence of which was the subject of much rumor and speculation.  They were heavily armed and considerably faster than a Bird Dog.  Unless I could pop out of a cloud and ambush it with a first-pass hit, my chances of success were less than zero.  The only thing that chopper crew was likely to die from that day would be laughter at the sight of my underpowered Bird Dog chugging resolutely toward them.  (pages 148-149)

I haven’t read too many non-fiction books about Vietnam, and I never heard of the Catkillers until I picked up this one.  A Hundred Feet Over Hell is full of both action and emotion, and the first-person stories make it a must-read.  Besides hearing their stories in their own words, the pictures contributed by several of the men and featured in the middle of the book made me feel as though I knew them, and I must admit that tears were shed when I learned that a few of the men I had been reading about were killed in action.  It made me wonder what stories my father would tell about his time in Vietnam if he was alive today.  When I closed the book, I immediately thought that my dad would want to read this, and then I had a reality check and remembered that he’s been dead for over a decade and I wouldn’t be able to give him my copy.  Yes, the book really was that good.

Disclosure: I received a copy of A Hundred Feet Over Hell from Lisa Roe, Online Publicist for review purposes. I am an Amazon associate.

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