Midair

July 18, 2016
In this unabashed paean, writer and entrepreneur Collins (Thunder in the Mountains) profiles his uncle Don Harten, one of the most accomplished Air Force jet pilots in the Vietnam War. Harten flew more than 300 combat missions in three different aircraft (B-52, F-105, and F-111) over North and South Vietnam from 1965 to 1972. The book’s core is an unbelievable tale of survival in which Harten and three crewmen lived through the head-on collision of two B-52s at 30,000 feet during a June 1965 typhoon over the South China Sea. Harten ejected and narrowly avoided death a dozen times before he was rescued. Collins tells his uncle’s life story competently, but he also weaves in many pages on the theory, espoused by Harten and other air-war proponents, that the U.S. could have won the war in 1965 simply by, in the words of the Gen. Curtis LeMay, bombing North Vietnam “back into the Stone Age.” Instead, Collins laments, “politicians in Washington, D.C., rather than experienced combat pilots and planners, managed the war with a heavy hand.” Collins presents this oversimplified side of a complicated, complex issue with little substantive background; the book would have been much more valuable without it.