Hmm, got me there. I was idly flipping through the dross when I saw it. The title indicated it was dedicated to the A10. To focus in, Bush senior was the president and a lot of the program was devoted to the abandonment of the A10 despite huge protests. I think the army retained it for a while longer.
I'd taken an interest in the aircraft decades ago but mostly because of the decelerative forces caused by the Gatling gun. It wasn't until now that I've learned just how massive that gun is. Furthermore, the other weaponry seemed astonishingly extensive for the era.
There was one section devoted to trying to rescue ground forces who were under heavy fire from the Taliban. They had picked weather to concentrate their attack and the helicopters relied on the A10 to make their rescue bid. It was really touch and go, very stimulating and very moving when they succeeded.
'Killer Chick' was oh, so American, but seriously attractive and nifty at what she did. It showed her picking up a mass of holes which took out her hydraulics. She was in hostile terrain and really did not want to find herself walking home. She went into full manual reversion, which in itself is an argument for Boeing's cable philosophy, but then chose to land the aircraft knowing that only two people had ever tried it before in anger. Only one survived. She of course became the second to survive. The damage showed the sheer resilience of the design.
I like to think all my interest in battle has become philosophical/theological, but it's very noticeable how quickly I can be altered. My grandfather wrote an astonishingly eloquent letter from Flanders in 1915 in which he described being caught in moonlight between fronts. He got the skin taken off his nose by a sniper. I could feel so deeply the warrior instinct that caused this highly successful son of a Dublin handyman to sign up at the outbreak.
I'm reading 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' and it was less than 100 pages in when I realised just how genetically driven we are to do battle. It's perhaps the most enlightening few pages I've ever read.