OVER THE BEACH – THE AIR WAR IN VIETNAM

This is the story of the air war over Hanoi and Haiphong, told for the first time, as it was lived by the Navy pilots flying off the U. S. S. Oriskany, which suffered the heaviest casualties of any aircraft carrier in the Vietnam War. 

The narrative, interwoven with the ‘voices’ of pilots, a POW, and the wife of a missing aviator, revolves around the bombing of the same bridge on the same day in 1966, 1967, and 1972. The bridge stands as a dramatic metaphor for the costs and frustrations of the air war, and the squadron itself is eventually polarised by the fliers’ attitudes toward the appalling dangers of their missions. 

The book also charts the political controversy surrounding the air war and gives an account of what happened on the ground to the North Vietnamese who, in the face of U.S. attacks, developed the deadliest anti-aircraft system ever devised and shot down 928 U.S. planes. This is a story of courage and fear, ambition and failure-an absorbing human story never told before about the Navy pilots who are America’s military elite. 

‘I read Harrison Salisbury’s book. I had been to Nam Dinh many times. There was a photograph showing a street almost destroyed. That surprised me. I hadn’t intentionally dropped any bombs on the city and I hadn’t seen anyone else do it. There was another photo showing a kid with a leg missing. I love kids; I have three of my own and to see a child with a leg torn off for any reason Christ, he hasn’t had a shot at life and. Look what has been done to him. That bothered me, it really did. I had not thought of what I was doing as killing people. If we hit a flak site, we were stopping a flak site. You didn’t even think of someone being in an enemy aeroplane. That’s a machine. This is me. 

‘It sounds terrible, I know. But the air war differed in this respect from the ground war. You go up and do it. Then you come back and sleep on clean sheets. Someone gets shot down, he just disappears. You don’t have a guy lying beside – you bleeding and all bashed up. You don’t have to look somebody in the eye and shoot them. So you think you aren’t killing anyone. But when I saw those pictures, I said, ‘Goddamn, Wyman, that little kid hasn’t even had a chance at life.’ – Lt. Dick Wyman, navy pilot aboard. the U.S.S. Oriskany quoted in Over the Beach Norton

Source: Publisher's summary printed on cover