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the Cobra into Vietnam vindicated all the hypotheses of the armed helicopter pioneers who were derided in their early experiments. The Cobra came at the right time in sufficient numbers to do a job that no other fire support means could do. LAMSON 719, if it proved any point at all, proved that the Cobra could survive under high intensity warfare while the older Huey gunship merely showed deficiencies that we knew had always existed.

But, there is another story in this volume that has perhaps not been emphasized enough, and that is the test of the "Go-Go Bird" or armed Chinook. Now, I am speaking of a frame of mind that wanted to produce a "battleship" (with all the firepower that term implies) rather than an agile "destroyer" with the agility to go in and get out. For the future, I think it is possible to reap the benefits of the latest technology in weapons systems without producing another "battleship" with its inherent disadvantages.

The story of airmobility in Vietnam is almost certainly just the first chapter of a new and dynamic Army. The glamour of airmobility has long passed, but the challenges are as great as ever. Some of the technological forecast, just dimly seen by the early planners, is now reality. If this study has served any purpose besides its bibliography, which I think is most important, it will form part of the corporate memory for those planners of the future who would like not to pay the terrible price of relearning again in combat but many costly lessons. As the poet-diplomat Paul Claudell once observed, "It is not enough to know the past, it is necessary to understand it."