Zalin Grant - Over the Beach: The Air War in Vietnam

Although Over the Beach somehow seems to get its arms around all the major issues of the air war in North Vietnam... the story comes together in the character studies of the men who flew.

Adm. James Bond Stockdale, USN (Ret.), Wall Street Journal

First rate.... History as it should be: well-rounded, human, understandable, exciting and moving.... Grant puts living flesh on historical bones through exceptionally candid interviews with the pilots.... The interviews are poignant.... The detailed descriptions of the unbelievable physical force and the danger of aircraft and pilot launching from a carrier are finely wrought, some of the best such descriptions to be found anywhere.

Kirkus Reviews

As a Time correspondent, Grant frequently visited the fighter pilots who flew missions over North Vietnam from the carrier Oriskany, and interviewed many of them anew after the war. The material he collected, combined with diligent research and considerable journalistic talent, comprises a first-class account of an important aspect of the war that has not received major attention. The pilots are portrayed in a dimensional way rarely found in war literature, and Grant conveys vividly what it was like to live through intense anti-aircraft fire, dogfights with MIGs, downing and rescue (as well as downing and capture) and psychic burnout. This is more than an air-combat book, however: the author follows the course of disagreements between the high command and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara over the usefulness of the air war, the reaction of the pilots to charges of bombing civilian areas, the struggle of a pilots widow to confirm that he has been killed and then to reconcile herself to his death.

Publishers Weekly

In this sympathetic and penetrating history the pilots of a fighter squadron aboard the U.S.S. Oriskany battle the internal politics of their unit, their own doubts about the Vietnam War, and fears for their safety, while acting like fighter jocks, all bravado and hard living. Laced through this diverse, personality-filled work are the words of wives and many of the pilots themselves and the authors telling assessment of the bombing policy, which was tentative and ineffective despite the courage and skill of the men who carried it out.... This is a valuable examination of the Navys bombing of the North, with less emphasis on hardware than a pilot might wish, but biting and insightful. A gem.

Library Journal

To Frank McCulloch

M Y FIRST WORDS of thanks go to those who are not often mentioned in these pages, although their role was of primary importancethe officers and men of the United States Air Force. As a journalist covering the war, I put myself in their capable hands countless times. I remember the C-130 pilot who landed us under rocket fire at Khe Sanh as calmly as if he were flying the Washington-New York shuttle. Also the forward air controller who, on his final mission over the DMZ, in a flimsy Cessna, decided to bend the rules and show me the effects of the bombing on the southern panhandle, giving me the distinction of being perhaps the only journalist of the war to fly over North Vietnam in combat. (After we landed he asked my impressions. I could sum them up in one word: Terrifying.) Some of my more pleasurable hours in Saigon were spent in the company of the Seventh Air Forces public affairs officer, Colonel Bill McGinty, who was as witty as he was effective, and his deputy, George Weiss. I met pilots such as Robbie Risner and James Kasler, who flew north and were later shot down and held prisoner, truly remarkable men of courage and dedication.

But this is a book about the war as seen from the perspective of a naval air squadron, and so my gratitude must be directed specifically to the following former officers of the United States Navy. Several of them, such as Wynne Foster, who lost an arm in combat but successfully fought to remain on active duty, and Richard Mullen, who was a prisoner of war, do not appear in this story, but all of them made an invaluable contribution to my understanding of the air war: Robert (Rick) Adams, Jerry Breasted, Ronald Coalson, Patrick Crahan, Leabert Fernandez, Wynne Foster, John Hellman, John Iarrobino, John MacDonald, Richard Mullen, James Nunn, Robert Punches, Charles Rice, C. A. L. Swanson, Charles Tinker, Demetrio Verich, Richard Wyman. My thanks to Marilyn Elkins and Nell Swanson, wives of naval aviators, both pacific by nature but as honest and brave as any warrior. Anna C. Urband of the Pentagons magazine and book branch responded quickly and effectively to my numerous requests. Captain Gary Hackanson, commanding officer of the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, graciously took me on a personal tour of the base. My thanks to Dr. Wayne Thompson of the Office of Air Force History and to Mr. Wes Pryce of the Naval Historical Center for giving a reading to this work and making suggestions. Responsibility for everything written here is, of course, mine alone.

I would also like to express my appreciation to a few confirmed civilians who were professionally or personally helpful: Starling Lawrence and Jeannie Luciano of W. W. Norton & Company; Peter Shepherd of Harold Ober Associates; in Paris, Annie and Jacques Belaiche, Philippe Muller, Deborah Palmer, Sultana Belaiche; also, my mother, Barbara Smith Grant, wife of the late Thurman B. Grant, who served with the most decorated infantry regiment of World War Two; Thurma Dean and David Smith; and a friend from our sunny days in Spain, Sally Ann Palmer.

Janice and Wallace Terry deserve the medal of friendship with three gold stars.

The day I finished this book, Claude, who not only sparkles with intelligence and cheerfulness but is usually the soul of modesty, was fishing for a compliment, and she asked in the French approximation of my Southern accent, Do you zhink I have helpt? The answer is yes, I do, mon amour. Je te remercie infiniment.

Z ALIN G RANT
Paris

T HE SKIPPER raised his binoculars and saw the USS Oriskany on the horizon. The aircraft carrier looked massive in his glasses, although he knew it to be one of the smallest of the fleet. The skipper was a big man, barechested and hairy. He wore faded blue shorts. A white cloth covered his head from the sun. He watched as the Oriskany approached another vessel from astern, an ammo supply ship. From where he stood near the deckhouse, the skipper could see that many of his thirty-five-man crew were working on their tans or swimming off the port side. He finished his cigarette and went below to get a radar fix on the Oriskany. On the way, he told the first mate to make ready to depart.

Moscow had sent the skipper to spy on the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. This was his second tour on Yankee Station, as the Americans called that locus of the gulf where they waged their imperialist air war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The Gidrofon, a one hundred and fifty-foot trawler, could do but thirteen knots, less than half the speed of the three aircraft carriers and thirty support ships that made up Task Force Seventy-Seven. Yet the skipper had no trouble keeping close watch on the Americans. The Gidrofon pretended to be making hydrographic surveysa cover story that neither the Russians nor the Americans took seriously. The trawler was equipped with the most advanced electronics the Soviet Union could provide.