Welcome to Asp One

• John's first book,  Phantom Over Vietnam, was published in 1984 by Presidio Press at Novato, CA, the world's preeminent producer of military books. While it is no longer in print from the initial publisher, Presidio Press,  I have prepared in electronic and print forms, both available at Amazon Kindle.

• Here's what Walter J. Boyne of the Smithsonian National Air Museum in Washington , DC  wrote of it in the fore piece of the Time/Life edition of the book:

WINGS OF WAR

Capturing the grit as well as the glory of air combat, Phantom over Vietnam is the most genuine picture of life in a Marine fighter squadron yet written. In relating the details of his two tours in a McDonnell F-4 Phantom, John Trotti paints a vivid picture of the stress of delivering ordnance in a hard—and ultimately pointless—war against elusive North Vietnamese forces. As he does so, he reveals how his own personality was transformed as he matured and came eventually to have a deeper understanding of the war and of his generation.

A stylish writer, Trotti portrays both the art and technique of flying, carrying the reader with him into the cockpit. He is a master of both the engineering and the aesthetics of flying, and he brings life to the routine procedures of a combat mission, so that the reader understands why each switch is thrown, why each knot of airspeed is gained, and how each maneuver is executed. Whether the mission is scrambling to assist 'troops in contact," dive bombing at night in a dark Laotian valley, or easing the probe into a refueling basket while the instrument panel gauges flicker on zero, Trotti coolly combines all the operational factors in a swift, flowing narrative. In doing so, he represents the best technical description of war flying to come out of Vietnam.

In many ways, Trotti's admiration for his airplane is a metaphor for his feelings about the military society in which he lives. He admires the Phantom's capabilities. It is fast, powerful, and able to carry a vast amount of ordnance. But he also is candid about its limitations, for it gulped fuel, left dark trails of smoke, and needed lots of maintenance. Similarly, he portrays his admiration for his fellow pilots, all of whom risked their lives as he did, and for the efforts of the United States to bolster a weak and sometimes difficult ally. At the same time, he doesn't hesitate to point out the shortcomings of our government in establishing ridiculous rules of engagement that made combat more costly and less effective than it could have been.

TIME

TIME-LIFE BOOKS INC.. ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA 22314

Trotti returned to the United States after his first combat tour and served as an instructor. When he went back to Vietnam, he found that he had changed, and so had the environment. He was shocked to find that "dope had become a major, perhaps the major, factor in unit performance in Vietnam, and provided the backdrop for the polarization at home." During his second tour he became more deeply aware of the problems of the Vietnamese people, just as he became disillusioned with the trend of the Marines to meet the Department of Defense demands for a paperwork measurement of hooches blown up, trenches strafed, or bodies counted.

John Trotti served for twelve years as a Marine fighter pilot. He left the military to take up his current career as a writer and editor. 

He is also the author of Marine Air: First to Fight. 

Published in 1986, Marine Air was John's second book for Presidio Press. While it is several decades out of date, it  is still a nice (and accurate) picture of a time of transition for the Corps. Better still John did the book in conjunction with  the late George Hall, the world's foremost aviation photographer.

Phantoms from Vietnam, Adult Fiction, 90,000 words.

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Shot down on a night mission against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Marine F-4 pilot, Gordon Talbott returns home after three years in captivity a pariah, no longer fit for continued military service, estranged from his family, and at odds with radically changed societal norms.

Overwhelmed by the seeming hopelessness of his situation and obsessed by the MIA status of his F-4 back-seater for whom he feels responsible, Gordon descends into a maelstrom of drunken despair.

Fiends help him reclaim his pride and purpose, t

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A Teaser

Phantom from Vietnam Book 1 Laos

Chapter One  Xepon

The Phantom's nose was already below the horizon when the flak began. 

"You idiot," Gordon spoke absently into the intercom," stand by for a ram." He was still several seconds away from rolling wings-level on final track, yet the guns were already firing, rippling the blackness with speckles of light. 

Viewed from the side, tracers appear as a visual stream of Morse code, but nose-on it's a different story. They grow from minute pinpricks into glowing globs of streaking fire, bobbing and dancing against a murky canvas. 

As long as you can see some motion, they’ll miss you, he told himself, but the moment the globes steady up it means you're on a collision course ... and that's what Gordon was seeing at this moment. Not that he hadn't seen it before -- it happened every night here at Xepon--but being hosed down by flak was something you don't ever get used to, and Gordon felt his balls squirm, as if by doing so they could get out of the way. 

"420. two-thou to go." Alex Firestone, Gordon's Radar Intercept Officer in the rear cockpit intoned evenly as the Phantom slashed through the moonless sky, its arcing path straining to intercept that exact point above the ground from which to sling a raft of six 500-pound bombs against the truck park at the intersection of Route 9A and 3 -- mainlines of the Ho Chi Minh Trail here in Laos. 

Though the projectiles and the plane were closing at over two thousand feet per second, their meeting seemed to take forever. 

To begin the run, Gordon had banked the Phantom over 90 degrees, allowing the nose to carve its way down until it reached the point where for every foot forward it plunged a foot down. 

As he wrenched the plane back to wings-level a half second short of release--gunsight pipper spiked on the target—Gordon watched the balls of light bobble once ... then twice before diverging to either side of the canopy in staccato streaks. But for Gordon’s mission-mind intent on piercing the darkness for the hint of metal or glass, there was only the pipper dancing a livid jitterbug in the murky void. 

"450, standby," Firestone’s voice painted itself into the chaotic scene.

In the searing flash of lightning above the Assam range, the world leaped out of the darkness in a momentary tableau. Hills ... gullies ... roadbed ... pockmarks ... and jungle ... all in a grayish-blue monochrome. 

"Standby!" 

A last flick to correct for a slight drift ... a pause ... 

"Mark!" 

The Phantom shimmied slightly as a train of six bombs rippled from its centerline rack. Gordon brought the stick back smoothly, coaxing the twenty-ton monster into a climb. "One more run and we can head for the barn," he sighed aloud, but in some deep recess of his being he thought, or maybe not. 

It started with a mild thump just as the nose carved through the horizon, and for an instant that was all. Gordon had no sooner begun to grapple with the possibility that his overstressed senses were hallucinating than a heavy rumble and flash enveloped the aircraft. 

Immediately the dash panel went berserk, its madness punctuated by the pulsing red flashes of the fire warning lights in the center of the console. As quickly as they had come on the lights went out. The cockpit went pitch black. Outside his Phantom painted a roaring swath of yellow gore into the inky nightscape  

Instinctively, Gordon reached for the Ram Air Turbine handle to deploy the emergency air-driven generator, but before he could reach it the control stick went slack in his hand. The plane was finished, and in one continuous motion he released the stick and grasped the ejection handle on the front of the seat between his knees. Pulling sharply up he heaved back, burrowing his helmet into the headrest. 

There was an immediate blast of air as the rear canopy separated, followed by a loud report. Firestone’s seat vanished on a pillar of flame leaving Gordon alone in the dying shambles of what until the moment before had stood at the pinnacle of human technology. 

"I'm ready, goddamn it," he yelled into the ripping slipstream, as if the act could bypass the one-second seat sequencing delay. Gordon could feel himself grow ancient in that mechanically proscribed eternity, captive to a vision of individual grains of sand tumbling down through an empty tube.

It was a near thing. 

A blinding flash and he was cast tumbling into a yawning vortex. You idiot, he thought contemptuously, a helpless bit of flotsam in the unseen maelstrom that whipped and tore into him. 

“What a stupid way to die.” It was Zom, his somewhat alter ego--keeper of his rational thoughts--speaking to him as if this was all his fault. . 

He heard the sharp snap as the drogue chute came taut, tearing him from the ejection seat, followed by the rustling sound of the parachute sliding into the slipstream.

Damn but this is taking forever, he thought, as milliseconds that seemed like eons dragged by as the escape system’s automatic processes took effect.

Through a conscious effort of will he mustered his forces to greet oblivion with a warrior's dignity, a posture humiliatingly stripped from him by the painful snap of the parachute’s opening-shock. He compressed deeply into his torso harness’ webbing stunned, breath driven from him. 

What do I do now? his mind asked in a semi panic as he fought to bring himself back to the present, straining to release the long-memorized emergency procedures from his terror’s grip. 

“Withdraw the lanyard from the seatpack,” Zom advised, the words forming before Gordon’s eyes. 

Yes, yes, I know, but which side? He tore frantically at the fabric, but with the gloves on, he had no sense of feel. The violent upward surge of ejection had slammed his tinted visor down, reducing his visibility effectively to nil. 

Time was resetting itself to normal as he struggled to complete his landing preparations. 

At last, he found the snap-ring. 

“Attach the lanyard to the torso harness and release the ...” 

Zom’s recitation came too late. 

Gordon felt something lightly brush his leg, followed by a slight tug on the risers as the chute snagged the upper branches of a tree. 

He dashed soundly against the trunk once ... twice, then more gently, coming to rest twenty feet above the ground. 

For a moment all was silent as he swung rhythmically back and forth in the darkness. Then without warning the branch snapped, sending him crashing to the cobbled ground.

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