Everyone, Vincent Ayello here, founder and host of the Fighter Pilot podcast.

I don't know about you, but two of my favorite aircraft are the F4 Phantom and the A10 Wardhog.

Now which do you think would be more fun to fly?

Problem is, there are very few people who have had a chance to fly and fight both.

Well, I know someone who has.

In fact, he's written a book about it.

It's called From F4 Phantom to A10 Wardhog, Memoirs of a Cold War Fighter Pilot.

It's written by Colonel Steve Ladd, United States Air Force Retired, and Smokey joins us today via Zoom.

How you doing, Smokey?

Hey, Joe, I'm doing fine, how are you?

I'm great, thank you.

All right, so this book was a lot of fun to read, and you are quite the talented author.

What inspired it in the first place?

Inspiration was basically the fact that after I retired, I got to thinking about it,

and I knew that I had a lot of stories in me.

It was a long career, a lot of good things happened.

A lot of bad things happened, but I had a whole lot of stories and thought that I might want to

find a way to tell them.

I gave that a bit of thought, and then I thought about who I am really,

and I came to the conclusion that I'm not Chuck Yeager, and I'm not Robin Olds, and I'm not Jack Broughton.

And why would I write a book about my own heroics?

So, in essence, the genesis of the book was my idea that I could do something a little different.

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