Sailors in the Sky: Memoir of a Navy Aircrewman in the Korean War

By Jack Sauter

For every bomber pilot in the Korean War, there were enlisted aircrewmen maintaining the aircraft and its equipment. One of those men was Aviation Electronics Technician Second Class Jack Sauter. AT2 Sauter was assigned to the USS Lake Champlain, part of Task Force 77. As an aircrewman, Sauter flew 21 early warning and anti-submarine (ASW) missions from the backseat of a Douglas Skyraider. When not flying, he maintained the equipment that protected his plane and its crew. This is an enlisted man's story of service in the Korean air war. There was the excitement of serving in a combat zone, but there was also the boredom and tedium with which to contend.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786401133
• ISBN13: 9780786401130
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: McFarland Publishing
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

An excellent read!

So many books have been written about the adventures of military pilots that you'd think that only commissioned officers flew. Actually, there were and are many non-commissioned flyers as well. These enlisted gunners, radio operators, navigators, flight engineers, and technicians...who were sent into the air right out of high school...had many interesting stories to tell too. Until recently, their adventures have been largely ignored. Thanks to authors like Jack Sauter, however, the story of the enlisted military aircrewman is finally seeing light of day. Sauter was a Navy enlisted man who flew as a radar operator on Douglas Skyraiders around the time of the Korean War. It is so refreshing for this modern day naval aircrewman to read an aviation book written from the long-suffering enlisted man's perspective, instead of from from the typical 'pampered' officer's perspective. Its a great book and I highly reccommend it to all my brother aircrewmen. White hats off! to Jack Sauter!