"Airman" is brought to life through eyewitness accounts recalled from the vivid memory of someone fortunate and bold enough to have lived his dream. Referenced with declassified combat reports, war diaries, government documents and eyewitness accounts; this is a biography of an extraordinary Air Force pilot, Richard F. B. Gimmi, who began his career flying B-25s in World War II and ultimately flew the F-105 in combat over North Vietnam.
Richard Farmer Bower "Dick" Gimmi, Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1921. The Great War ended two and a half years earlier and Dick's parents, Richard and Helene Gimmi, were about to enjoy the coming wave of American postwar economic prosperity when their son came into the world. It was the cusp of the Roaring Twenties and Dick's father, Richard Farmer Bower Gimmi, was scion to a family fortune. In his youth, Dick was swept up in an era that romanticized aviation and made the airplane and the pilots who flew them the center of American popular culture.
This story, as told by his son, revolves around his dogged determination to become the fighter pilot he had aspired to be since his boyhood days growing up in the aviation-mad era of the 1920s and 30s.