Amazon.com said of Flying
Through Midnight, “When John Halliday arrived at Thailand's Nakhon Phanom Air Base in 1970, he thought
the next year would bore him out of his skull. He believed his mission in the Vietnam War would be to fly cargo around Thailand.
What could be easier? A couple of nights later, Halliday found himself dodging dozens of anti-aircraft shells in an aging
cargo plane over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Flying Through Midnight is his riveting account of his top-secret black-ops assignment--one
of the most dangerous of the war.
Halliday flew slow propeller-driven
relics at night deep into guerrilla territory in the "unofficial" war in Laos. His task with the 606th Special Operations
Squadron was to help pinpoint guerrilla truck convoys for U.S. planes to bomb. Meanwhile, President Richard Nixon denied U.S.
forces were fighting in Laos. Halliday wasn't even supposed to tell his wife what he was doing. His mail and phone calls were
monitored, and soon he went from being a jittery FNG ("f---ing new guy") to a decorated war hero who logged 800
combat flight hours in Vietnam and the Gulf War. He was awarded the Air Force's Distinguished Flying Cross for one particularly
amazing feat of bravery--a nighttime crash-landing on an unlit airstrip amid soaring mountains, which saved his crew. Flying
Through Midnight does a remarkable job bringing to life Halliday's dramatic combat experiences, the foibles of his superiors,
the brutalities of war, and the colorful quirks of his fellow flyboys, including his roommate whose favorite hobby was reading
canned-food labels. There's not much here about the deeper rationale of the Vietnam War, but it's a gripping read. (Alex Roslin)”
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Publisher’s
Weekly said of Flying through Midnight, “When now-retired lieutenant colonel Halliday reported for duty
as a 24-year-old air force officer with the 606th Special Operations Squadron at a U.S.A.F. base in Thailand in 1970, he thought
he'd be hauling cargo to Thai air bases. But as the first-time author recounts in this gripping memoir, he was ordered to
fly a C-123 on top-secret nighttime combat missions instead. Assigned to an operation nicknamed "Candlesticks" for
the flares the pilots dropped to illuminate enemy targets, Halliday played his role in this hush-hush part of the Vietnam
War by bombing along the Laotian part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. With snappy prose, machine-gun-fast dialogue and techno-pilot
speak, he recreates his forays with immediacy. The heart of the book is Halliday's blow-by-blow chronicle of the amazing midnight
crash landing he made on an unlit airstrip in treacherous mountainous territory in Long Tien—no-man's-land in northern
Laos. There, he and his crew were greeted by initially suspicious U.S. forces and commanding general "Bang-Pow"
of the Royal Laotian Army. This dramatic, firsthand war story from a veteran who earned an Air Force Distinguished Flying
Cross for his actions barrels toward the heroic climax with novelistic momentum.”
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