Paul Huber was born and raised in Arizona. He was member of ROTC at Arizona State University and received his pilot training at Williams Air Force Base in Mesa. He was assigned as a weapons systems officer in the back of an F-4 Fighter Jet. In June 1967, he found himself in Cam Rahn Bay, South Vietnam with the 391^st Tactical Fighter Squadron, leaving behind a wife and two small children. He immediately began flying missions to North Vietnam at night, very frightened, but grateful he saw the tracers from the anti-aircraft fire were way off target because it was at night and they were flying near 500 knots. 

In March of 1968, he was asked to go on an alert flight into Laos to bomb an intersection on the Ho Chi Mihn trail. n the second pass, Huber’s plane’s fuel line to the port engine was hit by small arms fire, causing the engine to immediately catch fire. With fuel spilling, the fire quickly burnt through the hydraulic lines and engulfed the entire airplane. The plane went into uncontrollable barrel rolls forcing both Huber and the front-seater to carefully time their ejection out of the plane. Huber went first, then the pilot on the next roll and miraculously landed a mile apart.

Huber injured his back in the violent ejection and landed amongst boulders, further injuring his ribs, hip, and thigh. Fortunately, they had a wingman who immediately radioed for help for the downed airmen, enabling rapid cover flights to protect them from enemy capture. Within fifteen minutes, a Jolly Green Giant helicopter was on the scene with a tree penetration device to hoist them off the jungle floor. They were taken to the hospital at Da Nang, treated and released. 

Later, Huber was assigned a high-risk mission at night to North Vietnam targeting some karst caves high on sheer cliffs. It was a particularly difficult target due in part to the fact they were given gravity bombs to collapse these caves and there were anti-aircraft defenses guarding the caves. This mission would involve flying at the caves at high speed, at night, releasing the bombs at the right moment for momentum to carry the bombs to the entrance of the caves, then flying up the face of the cliff to avoid hitting it. 

Huber completed an astonishing 220 combat missions in one year in Vietnam. 

Upon his return home, and after serving at several duty stations, including three years in England, with his family, to fly the F-111A fighter-bomber, the first aircraft with ground-hugging capacities. He also attended the USAF Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB where he achieved a master’s degree from Troy State University. 

When Huber was asked about his time in Vietnam, he says, “I wouldn’t trade my experience in Vietnam for anything but I wouldn’t want to do it again either.”