Hans Halberstadt Photography

Air to Air

I have been involved in aviation most of my life, beginning with a childhood fascination, then jumping out of airplanes right after high school.  Then as a helicopter door gunner in Viet Nam where I made my first serious photographs.  Since then I have written and illustrated many books and magazine articles on aviation.  I've had some adventures in the process -- my first ride in a fighter aircraft was a combat mission and I flew about half the mission despite never having been trained in the aircraft.  I like to say that I have flown more military aircraft badly than anybody else -- not that other people haven't flown more kinds of military aircraft, just that they were probably better at it than I.   Included here is a photograph I made at the age of 18 during a combat assault in the highlands of Viet Nam.  I've made many thousands of photographs in the almost sixty years since but I still think that one is among the best.  It's the first in the series, an H-21 putting out troops in a "hot LZ," a landing zone under fire.  We came back from that mission with a bullet hole in the helicopter.

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US Army combat aviation operations in Viet Nam
MSP00242
Stock Photograph of Military Personnel
B-52 Bomber
MSP00095
MSP01594
Solider in desert
Solider in desert
Rights-Managed Stock Photography
3533-B52
Crop-duster aircraft over rice, Willows, California
Stock Photograph of Military Personnel
Military Stock Photograph
Military Stock Photograph
MSP00098
F1170004
F15E_74
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