A-7 Punch Out

A-7 Punch Out Over Loas by Harry Hoffman in the February 2009 edition of Naval History. Just an article recounting an ordinary mission gone wrong in Vietnam. Nothing that changed history but grippingly and touchingly told. A wonderful story of ordinary men doing extraordinary things.

I pulled the face curtain, and as you can imagine, the wild ride in a McDonnell-Douglas Escapac II ejection seat is at least as spectacular as a Disneyland E-ticket ride. The seat worked as advertised. The memory is as one might expect: chaos, cold air, pain, G-forces, noise, and then zap - the reassuring but traumatic opening shock of the chute. The transition from all of this to a "peaceful" downward drift in a quiet, vast, open space is a memory that's etched in my brain. Another is the bizarre sight of the aircraft canopy spiraling slowly away from me toward the cloud tops far beneath my feet.