OV-10 Bronco, Illustrated

By Lou Drendel

The OV-10 Bronco was born of the need for a light strike fighter that could operate in so-called “brushfire” wars worldwide. In the early 1960s, communism was on the march and a new young American President was committed to countering that emerging threat. What became known as Counter Insugency doctrine led to the “COIN” attack airplane, which became the OV-10 Bronco. Though the Bronco was used in the role of a light attacker, it’s more well-known and heroic accomplishments were as a dedicated Forward Air Controller (FAC) airplane. When I began work on this book, I imagined it would be concentrated on the FAC mission, and indeed there are a lot of combat narratives from FACs, but as I did more and more research, the Bronco emerged as a much more diverse airplane, one whose potential carried it into combat from Vietnam to Iraq, and to several government roles that did not involve combat. The Illustrated series of aircraft books are dedicated to the visual history of the airplane and there is plenty of that in this volume. As always with the Illustrated series, I try to include as much color as possible.