My Enemy, My Friend: A Story of Reconciliation from the Vietnam War
by Brig. Gen. Dan Cherry, USAF (Ret.), with Fran Erickson, Aviation Heritage Park, 2009
Anyone who has studied the air war over Vietnam in detail, or who may have caught the series Dogfights on the History Channel may recall an action on April 16, 1972, in which F-4D Phantom pilot Major E. Daniel Cherry engaged in a difficult, often frustrating four-minute pursuit of an elusive MiG-21 before finally blowing off its right wing with an AIM-7 Sparrow missile.
For Dan Cherry, the most memorable postscript to the engagement was narrowly passing the enemy pilot, dangling beneath his parachute. Two things Cherry could not have foreseen at the time was that someday he would rediscover the Phantom in which he scored his victory, and that he would have it restored to its original 1972 markings as the first of a series of warplanes flown by Kentuckians to be displayed at the newly established Aviation Heritage Park in his hometown of Bowling Green. Even less likely would he have been able to foresee being invited in 2008 to appear on television in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he met Nguyen Hong My, the North Vietnamese pilot he had shot down. Perhaps more plausible than either of those developments was the fact that the two former adversaries ended up becoming good friends—that seems to have been a flyboy thing since World War I!
My Enemy, My Friend tells the story of Cherry’s and Nguyen’s encounters, in battle in 1972, and under more amiable circumstances in 2008. It is a fascinating tale of two men’s unique way of putting a war behind them, and Nguyen’s story somewhat fills in some blanks regarding that dogfight. This small but unusual book can be obtained through the Aviation Heritage Park, toward whose upkeep the price directly contributes. The only criticism one can level at it—unavoidable though that was—is that it ends with Cherry’s visit to Nguyen’s family in Hanoi and his preparations to return the hospitality. Since it was published, Nguyen has indeed come to the United States for some more memorable events in April 2009. Among other things, he met the Weapons System Officer of an RF-4C he had claimed in January 1972, lectured alongside his former adversary at the National Air and Space Museum, and while visiting Bowling Green he became the first combat pilot in history to sit in the cockpit of the very plane that had shot him down.
Originally published in the October 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
