7:00 p.m. Pre-Show Dogfights: Hell Over Hanoi (Run Time: 50 minutes)
Ride in the cockpit with some of the fiercest dog fighting ever seen in Vietnam. These pilots fight in a supersonic world, and split second decisions determine life or death. American F4 Phantom pilots Fred Olmsted and Dan Cherry take on the famed MiG-21--the most feared threat in the sky. First-hand accounts, rare archival footage and original shooting will supplement the remarkable computer graphics. 8:00 p.m. Lecture Brig. Gen. Dan Cherry, USAF (ret.) volunteered for combat duty in 1966 and 1971, flying over 295 missions, most of them over North Vietnam. On one of those missions in April 1972, Cherry shot down the plane of a Vietnamese aviator, Nguyen Hong My. Cherry always wondered what happened to the pilot he shot down, and recently was given the chance to meet him. Cherry and Hong My met face-to-face in Vietnam almost 36 years to the day of Cherry's shooting down Hong My's MiG-21 fighter. The two pilots appeared together on a Vietnamese TV show, toured Ho Chi Minh City, and flew to Hanoi the next day – passing over the same airspace that had once been the scene of their combat. Both speakers will be signing copies of the book, My Enemy...My Friend, after the lecture. This event is made possible by the generous support of The General Electric Company. |
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