Ho Chi Bear & The Ravens

Drummed out of Vietnam, misfit American pilots had a choice: Face the music of military justice or go someplace where oddballs and rule breakers were appreciated. Dubbed the Ravens, they soon learned they could fly, fight, and drink as they pleased in a CIA-sponsored secret war. There was just one catch: They answered to General Vang Pao.

A hail of bullets whizzed past the cockpit. Fred Platt peered down at a blanket of farms and rice paddies where a unit of Viet Cong — VC, in the shorthand of the tiresome war — stood in open country pointing rifles at his small, slow, unarmed airplane, a two-seat Cessna better suited for short hops between cities than the rigors of battle. The Cessna’s thin aluminum skin might as well have been tin foil where bullets were concerned, but in spite of the obvious peril, Platt smiled and circled back toward the source of the firing to keep the enemy soldiers in view. As he did, he called in a request for approval to mark their location.

This was Platt’s job. He searched for enemy convoys and encampments and blasted them with…