Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (38 page)

Zoo, Baghdad, 278

“Zooce” (ZSU-23–4) gun, 244

About the Author

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.)
DAN HAMPTON
flew more than 150 combat missions during his twenty years (1986–2006) as a Wild Weasel fighter pilot. For his service in the Iraq War, Kosovo conflict, first Gulf War, and elsewhere, Colonel Hampton received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor, a Purple Heart, eight Air Medals with Valor, five Meritorious Service Medals, and numerous other citations. He is a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, USN Top Gun School (TOGS), and USAF Special Operations School. A recipient of several awards for tactical innovation, Hampton pioneered air-combat tactics that are now standard, and he was named his squadron’s Instructor Pilot of the Year six times. Hampton served on the Air Combat Command staff in Langley, Virginia, during the 1999 Kosovo War and designed the NATO campaign that destroyed the Yugoslav army’s air defenses around Sarajevo. A graduate of Texas A&M University, he has published articles in
The Journal of Electronic Defense, Air Force Magazine
, and
Airpower
magazine, as well as several classified tactical works for the
USAF Fighter Weapons Review
.

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Credits

Map courtesy of the UN Cartographic Section. All other images courtesy of the author.

Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

Cover jacket photographs: F-16 © by Jeff Roberson/Getty Images; sky © by Steven Errico/Getty Images

Copyright

VIPER PILOT.
Copyright © 2012 by Ascalon, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hampton, Dan.

    Viper pilot : a memoir of air combat / Dan Hampton.

        p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-06-213035-8 1. Fighter pilots—United States—Biography. 2. F-16 (Jet fighter plane) 3. United States. Air Force—Biography. 4. Persian Gulf War, 1991—Aerial operations, American. 5. Persian Gulf War, 1991—Personal narratives, American. 6. Iraq War, 2003–2011—Aerial operations, American. 7. Iraq War, 2003–2011—Personal narratives, American. 8. Electronic warfare aircraft—United States. I. Title.

    UG626.2.H335A3 2012

    358.40092—dc23

    [B]

2012016117

Epub Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062130365

12 13 14 15 16
OV/RRD
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For help along the way with acronyms and aviation jargon, please see the glossary at the end of the book. A map of Iraq follows the glossary.