| Author/Contributor(s): | Collins, Craig K.; Kamps, Charles T. |
| Publisher: | Lyons Press |
| Date: | 2/19/2020 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Condition: | NEW |
Authored by Craig K. Collins, the nephew of B-52 pilot Maj. Don Harten, Midair is an historically
important work that is about more than survival. Interwoven through Harten’s dramatic story of his
million-to-one struggle against near-certain death is a previously unexamined look at how America
had developed an aerial battle plan that would likely have ended the Vietnam conflict in under a
month during the late winter of 1965. Instead, the country’s war planners and politicians veered
off course and into a bloody eight-year quagmire.
Harten was on the February 1965 top-secret mission – a massive B-52 bombing raid of railways, supply depots, and airfields in and around Hanoi – that was called off in mid-flight. That mission and battle plan was mothballed until Dec. 18, 1972, when it was dusted off and dubbed Linebacker II, effectively ending the war within a week. Over 120 B-52s bombed Hanoi-area military installations for eight consecutive days. As a result of the heavy bombing, the North Vietnamese declared a truce, attended peace talks in Paris in early January and signed the Paris Peace Accords, ending hostilities in Vietnam on Jan. 27, 1973.
It is the gripping tale of a young Air Force officer’s first combat mission that instantly pulls the reader in and never lets up.