By Christopher Miskimon

Within a year of graduating high school, Tom Fiegel received his draft notice. Entering the army, he was soon assigned to aviation. He arrived in Vietnam in 1970 and joined a helicopter ground crew maintaining thirty UH-1s in the 336th Assault Helicopter Company. One day, he volunteered for a flight mission to go out and repair a damaged aircraft. Tom became a crew chief on a transport helicopter soon after. Afterward came a new assignment on an armed Huey called Super Slick, performing more dangerous missions. 

This memoir puts the reader in the crew compartment of a Huey helicopter in Vietnam. The descriptions of missions are engaging, giving an authentic impression of life in a Vietnam era aviation unit. War compels a young soldier to grow up fast, and this book reveals the life of a 20-year-old manning a machine gun while skimming the treetops of South Vietnam.

Super Slick: Life and Death in a Huey Helicopter in Vietnam (Tom Feigel and Larry Weill, Stackpole Books, Essex CT, 2024, 288 pp., maps, photographs, $29.95, hardcover)

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