Wholesale Midair by Craig K. Collins

[Globe Pequot Publishing] Midair is a true account of one of the most remarkable tales of survival in the history of aviation – a midair collision at 30,000 feet by two bomb-laden B-52s over a category 5 super typhoon above the South China Sea during the outset of the Vietnam War. 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 call