A Different Kind of Warfare

Flight Journal, Jun 2004 by Davisson, Budd

ONE OF OUR ALWAYS BEEN TO present a diversified editorial package that includes lots of adventure spiced with tech talk. You might say that we are a two-dimensional version of "hangar flying," where we all sit around and chat about anything to do with aviation. Our objective has never been to emphasize a specific type of aviation, e.g., military, but since our true emphasis is on human adventure, that leads us into military aviation more often than not.

It's unfortunate that much of man's history and its more memorable legends revolve around war and the warriors it creates. At the same time, this is totally understandable because war is, if nothing else, one drama after another-and we all are addicted to drama. War brings out the best and worst that mankind offers, and something about those warrior-based stories keeps us coming back to the well again and again.

In this issue, we are given glimpses of the classic mano a mano combat as well as some struggles we seldom think of as warfare.

We all recognize a classic war story when we hear it. In fact, we have seen so many documentaries and movies about D-Day that we feel as though we were actually there-though precious few of us were. Therefore, when we read accounts such as those gathered by Jim Busha in "On the Deck," we can easily visualize the surroundings and the aura of the battle and feel the intensity, as our four pilots scream across the deck in their Mustangs.

But when we read Warren Thompson's "Saved on Sunday," about survival in a desert after a stateside bailout from a flaming Corsair, we don't have the cinematic preparation stored in the theater of our minds. We don't instantly recognize the battle between Lt. Ed Zolnier and the desert because we haven't seen Mel Gibson or Tom Hanks play that particular role. Still, it's a battle nonetheless.

And then there's the war that has its final battles on our neighborhood street corners and in our school hallways-the war against drugs. The DEA gave Ted Carlson almost unprecedented access to pilots who continually engage in a cat-and-mouse form of combat above a seldom seen, always clandestine, battlefield. Twenty-four/seven, to use the vernacular, these pilots climb into their aircraft and attempt to stem an invasion that is all but invisible to those of us who aren't engaged in the battle.

Even as you read this, hundreds of pilots are tracking down hundreds of other pilots who, for the sake of money, are ruining our children's lives and doing incredible damage to our country.

Carlson chronicles this war happening in our own front yards and clearly shows that the drug trade is nothing less than terrorism for financial gain. The drug lord's goal may be to make money, but the result is a devastated nation; and that makes him a terrorist-and a target for the DEA.

Enjoy!

Budd Davisson, Editor-in-Chief