Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I guess I wasn't reading the same book as everyone else. I had seen the book and was really looking forward to reading it, when a friend mentioned that he was reading it and commented that the author was "a real whiner". He, too, is retired military so I value his opinion on such topics, but not enough to put me off another all-to-rare opportunity to get a glimpse of the "night war" carried on over Laos from Naknom Phanom (NKP). As a retired F-111 WSO and amateur historian, I have tremendous curiosity about (and respect for) how those who came before the `Vark coped with their night wars. And the reviews seemed great, comparing it to "Catch 22" and remarking about how great a movie Hollywood could make of it. SO, I borrowed my friend's book. He was right (on the bright side, Mr. Halliday escaped the war with his ego intact!). A far better book about the war from NKP was Richard Drury's "My Secret War". A far more enlightening book about flare ship operations is Frederick Nyc's "Blind Bat" (C-130s instead of C-123s, but essentially the same mission). I guess I wouldn't be so bothered by Midnight if he wove his story so that it agreed with known facts or had just cut to the chase and called it a novel. To me, it read like a bunch of "war stories" that get told around the bar after the consumption of lots of alcohol and tend to become more glorious after each retelling. Example 1 (p. 23): The night before his first mission (10 June 1970), the author reports seeing "an old janitor" stumbling around the O'Club peeing into the curtains. Turns out to be the (very upset) wing commander whose wingman was shot down and killed the day before in an A-1. I looked up this "loss" in Chris Hobson's "Vietnam Air Loses" catalog of US fixed wing losses in SEA to get more details. The most recent fatal A-1 loss from NKP had been on 21 March 1970 and the next one didn't occur until 7 October 1970. To clarify the claim (p. 24) that NKP lost an airplane "every week or so", in the year prior to the author's arrival they lost 36 aircraft (14 KIA) and during his tour they lost 14 aircraft (8 KIA). Example 2 (pp. 78-80): After explaining how the pilot of a flare ship basically drove the navigator using a Starlight scope around the sky so he could hunt for trucks, the author tells how one of the wing's senior leaders, whom he calls "Kaniver", called in numerous air strikes and claimed to have destroyed hundreds of trucks. When they finally replace Kaniver's plane on station, they discover lots of bomb craters, but no trucks. His conclusion is that this was Kaniver's fault and not the navigator with the Starlight scope-the only one who could actually see what was going on. Example 3 (Chapters 14-16): One night, they are panicked by the apparent attack of a MiG-17 fighter, that the author reports flies 600 mph, is armed with air-to-air missiles AND bombs! To make an excruciatingly long tale short, to escape the MiG they fly into a fog-enshrouded valley (complete with a dog leg!) based on the navigator's knowledge of the terrain (bad maps, you know) and stopwatch! PLEEZE--Spare me! First, IF any part of that happened, they were derelict in not knowing their opponent any better than to know that the MiG-17 had virtually no capability at night (certainly none that the reader is led to believe), and lucky beyond reason to have escaped their own breathtaking stupidity and bad judgment. Example 4 (Chapters 23-24): Another wild tale of "shooting down" an enemy helicopter by dropping tie-down chains on it. Two quick points: It is claimed that this helicopter had "two huge rotating blades" (p. 192). NO operational Russian helicopters had/have twin rotors (like the US H-46/H-47). It is claimed that after they brought it down, credit was given to an A-1 because no one wanted to admit a transport could score an aerial victory. All that hooey aside, no USAF A-1 ever scored a kill (either). Example 5: Chapter 26 relates the tale of good buddy Ralph, who was shot down while flying his O-2 with its lights on over Laos at night. The ONLY fatal loss of an NKP O-2 during the author's tour was on 12 December 1970. It apparently had a midair collision with a B-57G while both aircraft had their lights turned off. Both O-2 crewmembers (Capts Charles Griffin & Bruce Greene) apparently survived the collision, but their bodies were never recovered. Example 6: The description of the geography around of Lon Tieng (the book spells in Long Tien) in this book is outrageously exaggerated (why am I not surprised?). With descriptions of a "mile high karst wall at the end of the runway" (p. 29) and a "two thousand feet straight down" (p. 370) drop off at the other end, it's made to sound like (literally) landing in the Grand Canyon at night. There is a panoramic montage of photos of Lon Tieng in Christopher Robbins "The Ravens" that show those descriptions to be about an order of magnitude off. Lon Tieng was a legendarily "interesting" place to fly in and out of, but descriptions that sound like they're out of a science fiction movie don't help the author's credibility. Hey, look at the bright side. If Hollywood does make a movie of this fairy tale (watch it star George Clooney!), Mr. Halliday has saved the screenwriters a lot of the work they normally have to do to books like "Bat 21", "Air America", and let's face it, just about every other aviation war movie ever made, to make them inaccurate enough that the masses will be entertained. In short, this may be a whale of a tale, but it ain't history.
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