Ron Cooper served 22 years in the Air Force as an F-4 Phantom pilot and commander, flying over 300 combat missions during 18 months in Vietnam. In this conversation, Ron walks John through what it actually looked like to fly fighters out of Udorn Royal Thai Air Base with the 13th Tactical Fighter Squadron — the missions, the strategy, the frustrations of an undeclared war, and the teamwork that still defines him decades later.

Ron opens up about the four men whose words transformed a quiet farm kid who once believed he was "too stupid" to fly into a valedictorian pilot training graduate. He talks through air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, MiG CAP over the Linebacker One and Linebacker Two bombing campaigns, and being part of the May 10, 1972 rescue of Roger Locker — the downed F-4 backseater who survived 23 days on the ground in North V ...