Flying Through Midnight

By: John T. Halliday

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Like Jarhead, We Were Soldiers Once..., and Young, John T. Halliday's combat memoir is gripping, novelistic, and startlingly candid, taking readers through the devastating trials and hard-won victories of flying in the Vietnam War.

The year is 1970, and John T. Halliday has just landed in the middle of the Vietnam War, primed to begin his assignment with the 606 Special Operations Squadron. But there's a catch: He's stationed in a kind of no-man's-land. No one on his base flies with ID, patches, or rank. Even as Richard Nixon firmly denies reporters' charges that the U.S. has forces in Laos, Halliday realizes that from his base in Thailand, he will be flying top-secret black ops night missions over the Laotian Ho Chi Minh Trail.

A naive yet thoughtful 24-year-old, Halliday is utterly unprepared for the horrors of war. On his first mission, Halliday's aircraft dodges more than a thousand anti-aircraft shells. Nothing is as he expected, not the operations, not the way his shell-shocked fellow pilots look and act, and certainly not the squadron's daredevil, seat-of-one's-pants approach to piloting. But before long, Halliday has become one of those seasoned and shell-shocked pilots and finds himself in a desperate search for a way to elude certain death.

A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to Vietnam War literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday's writing illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.

©2005 John T. Halliday (P)2005 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"With snappy prose, machine-gun-fast dialogue, and techno-pilot speak, he recreates his forays with immediacy." (Publishers Weekly)

Flying Through Midnight

This is a gripping, moving and fascinating book. I recommend it for anyone who enjoys military history and wants to study it by living though an extremely perilous experience. The frustrations of Vietnam and sometime the irritating psychological weakness, of the author are well explained. Also there is some advice on how to be a great pilot which would also be good advice on how to be good at most if not all of life's endeavors.

Genius

Well written in so many senses. Stick with it, and it will melt your hair.

Loved it, a real must listen!!

Few books have been able to hold me the way that this book has. It would be OK if it were fiction, but the fact that it is non-fiction really drew me into the story.

Very entertaining

This is a great audiobook - a really fun listen. I'm a pilot (amateur) and even I could anticipate the causes of the failures and/or problems the aircraft and crew experienced without having to have discussions with other crew members (fuel gauges, cross-feed, etc). So, I imagine a lot of the discussions were literary devices for the benefit of educating the reader. Some of it seemed a little too over the top to be true and some was pretty hammy but none of that really takes away from the story. Also, from a historical perspective, this is a side of the war that doesn't get much press so it was very educational when coupled with some extra research.

Flying

This really captures the feeling of flying and fear we sometimes feel. They say the best stories are true ones.

A Classic True Vietnam Story

An amazing story of how it really was over there flying missions and learning how to fight the real war versus the fictional war as it was thought to be in the minds of the politicians and the military leaders. Entertaining and engrossing. One for the collection.

Puts you in the cockpit and in the minds...

Where does Flying Through Midnight rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best!

Have you listened to any of William Dufris’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This is the first one I've heard.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The story builds to a riviting finsh and a rewarding end. It gets better and better as the story unfolds. You get to know and love the characters as they face the struggle with the contradictions that faced them in the war in Viet Nam, politically and militarily. Sweat with them in the oven like atmosphere inside the planes and weep with them in the quiet moments in the solitude of their minds as they try to make sense of the events of their daily lives.

Any additional comments?

This book was not what I expected. It turned out to be more a story than history and was far more enoyable as a result. Do yourself a favor and read this book!

Best Audiobook ever!

This is simply the best audio book I have ever "read". The story is absolutely fantastic. I have gotten 5 of my friends to purchase copies, and they too were overwhelmed.

action

liked the narration . need to look into the story more. all fiction or true story

Almost like being there

I could not stop listening! This audio book takes you from the time a young, nieve "J. T." Halliday arrives to his assignment (a last minute change from orders to Vietnam) in Cambodia with the "Candlesticks" flying the C-123. What he initially anticipated to be mundane cargo missions turning into nerve rattling night illumination flights over the Ho Chi Min trail.

The book is not all about the action. It touches on the mental changes a serviceman went through during his 1-year tour "in-country" during the Vietnam war. "When you go to the BX, only look at the items on one shelf...it'll give you something to look forward to later." or the fascination of watching "bubbles" form in the plastic of a six-pack as it is stretched to the breaking point... or reading can labels.

A definite must-read!