Restored print. This film, produced by Fairchild-Hiller-Republic for the US Air Force, offers a unique look inside F-105 "Thunderchief" ("The Thud!") fighter-bomber operations when the air campaign against North Vietnamese supply lines was ramping up into to high gear. Secretary of State Robert McNamara gives the broad outline of the Thud's primary mission in a series of strategic briefings: to strangle the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the strategic supply line from North to South Vietnam, through Cambodia and Laos, that was showing a quantum increase in activity and importance. You'll see exciting color footage of F-105s, F-4s, F-100s and other aircraft hitting bridges, supply depots convoys and other key targets along the Trail, and carrying out tactical operations in the South in conjunction with air mobile units. You'll see F -105 mission briefings, base operations, midair refueling, maintenance, and up close scenes of everyday pilot life on an extremely active forward base, working "Twenty-Five Hour Days." It's amazing how this film takes us back to the midset of this important phase of the Vietnam air war. A true window on the past..