![]() The front third of the plane was emblazoned with ten-foot-high block lettering that spelled u.s. My uncle pointed out bomb bay doors and the two Hound Dog missiles attached beneath the wing on either side of the fuselage. I pounded my fist into the rubber wheel that looked small from a distance but was taller than I was. Don Harten, second from left, poses with his six-man bomber crew in front of their B-52, Parker’s Pride, at Mather AFB, Sacramento, California, April 18, 1966. Regardless, there was a time when my uncle could make an authentic claim to be king of the sky. Maybe there was some Russian MiG pilot who was better. He once told me, years hence, with matter-of-fact sincerity that he was the best fighter pilot in the world. His ego was as large as the planes he flew. He had the strength of a wrestler, the reflexes of an athlete, and the timing of a musician. At five feet nine, he was the perfect size for a plane jockey. He was Hollywood handsome and a magnet for beautiful women. The entire neighborhood would step onto their porches and walk to their lawns to catch a glimpse. I recall him on leave, roaring up to our house in the MG with his dark, wavy hair and aviator sunglasses. In addition to his motorcycle, he drove a red MG convertible with silver-spoked wheels. He was Tom Cruise before there was a Tom Cruise. My uncle was a top-gun pilot before there were top-gun pilots. ![]() He was Tom Cruise before there was Tom Cruise.” “He was a top-gun pilot before there were top-gun pilots. Don Harten posing in front of his bomb-laden F-105, dubbed the Pink Pussycat, at Takhli AFB, Thailand, 1968. I walked in awe, staring upward at the plane, which stood some ten feet above me, as though I were looking at the ceiling of some soaring cathedral.Ĭapt. Though the motorcycle’s engine no longer roared, it sat smoldering and hissing inches from my arm. He lifted me beneath the armpits and swung me to the ground. My uncle rolled to a stop under the shade of the plane’s wings, turned off the engine, stomped the kickstand into place, and dismounted. We then coasted before racing past the B-52’s nose, banking hard left and circling counterclockwise around the jet. With a twist of his wrist, my uncle gave the motorcycle one last full throttle as we approached his plane. Listen to first three chapters of Midair free here. In the distance was an entire fleet of B-52s, parked wingtip to wingtip, nose to tail - football fields full of weapons of war, bristling beneath a scorching California sun. I leaned to the right and blinked with watering eyes into the hot wind that blew tears back across the sides of my face. I clutched my uncle’s shirt, and the engine rumbled beneath me. We roared across the black tarmac that was already sending up shimmering waves of heat beneath the early morning sun. I was five years old in the summer of 1966, riding on the back of my uncle Don Harten’s Honda 500 motorcycle. My first encounter with a B-52 came at Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento. ![]() Should the end of the world be nigh, the plane and its crew can circle the skies continuously for days, weeks,or even months. It accommodates a flight crew of six, plus an entire backup team, who can fly in shifts. ![]() Within its fuselage and wings are vast reservoirs holding the equivalent of three residential swimming pools of jet fuel. It has an angular shark fin of a tail that rises four stories and slices ominously through the air. Roughly the size of a 747 with twice the number of engines, the B-52 has a slender fuselage and long wings with tips that droop nearly to the tarmac when the plane is loaded with weapons and fuel. Midair (Lyons Press) 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. ![]()
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