Episode Details

What happens when you spend years preparing for one war—only to find yourself fighting somewhere completely different?

Today’s guest is Captain Michael Makatura, author of The Fighting Tenth: Cold War to Desert Storm.

Michael was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, grew up in a working-class family, became the first person in his family to attend college, and joined the United States Air Force after graduating. He served for seven years, including with the Fightin’ 10th, before moving into high technology and eventually retiring from that career.

The Fightin’ 10th spent years preparing for a potential conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe. Instead, they ultimately found themselves involved in Desert Storm in the Middle East.

In this conversation, we explore:

• What it was like preparing for a war that thankfully never happened
• Why preparing for uncertainty is different from predicting the future
• How training for one environment prepared the squadron to adapt to another
• The difference between the European theater they trained for and the Middle Eastern environment of Desert Storm
• Why Michael says “the value of the plan is in the planning”
• How detailed military preparation forces people to think through variables before a mission begins
• Why plans inevitably change once reality intervenes
• The importance of precision and disciplined preparation
• Michael’s experience as an executive officer rather than a pilot
• The role of maintainers, support personnel, and other people behind combat missions
• Why the people who don’t fly the aircraft are nevertheless essential to the mission
• What military leadership taught Michael about responsibility
• How the Cold War shaped the environment in which the Fightin’ 10th operated
• The possibility of nuclear confrontation during the Cold War
• Why NATO cooperation was essential to their preparation
• What happened when the Cold War environment changed
• How German reunification and the fall of the Berlin Wall changed the historical context around the squadron
• Why Michael decided to write the story decades after the events
• Why the book is about the men and women of the Fightin’ 10th, rather than simply about Michael
• How reconnecting with former squadron members led to the idea for the book
• How looking through an archive of Stars and Stripes newspapers changed Michael’s perspective
• Why he describes himself as having been like a fish that didn’t know it was wet
• The realization that the squadron had been present during major historical events including Chernobyl, Lockerbie, the Ramstein Air Show, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and German reunification
• Why people immersed in history don’t always recognize its significance while it is happening
• How more than three decades of hindsight gave Michael a new appreciation for the role his squadron played
• What military service taught him about war and the human cost of taking a life
• Why even a justified war can deeply affect the people required to fight it
• What he hopes readers will understand about the ordinary men and women who served
• Why their stories deserve to be remembered

Michael’s book is ultimately not presented as a story about one man.

It’s about a group of ordinary people who, in his words, did extraordinary things when duty called.

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📖 Michael’s Book

The Fighting Tenth: Cold War to Desert Storm

Michael explicitly identifies this as his book.

He says it can be purchased through:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Other places where books are sold

He describes the book as containing stories, humor, and experiences f