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MWSA Review
Dead Men Flying describes the rapid pace at which a college “kid” is turned into a hardened combat veteran. The book’s pages reveal, with vivid descriptions, the author’s struggles through flight training, admitting failures and successes alike. Quickly maturing, the author advances his account after initial Naval Aviation flight training with his preparations for war, flying the famous and nimble A-4 Skyhawk. Then, from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam during the deadly months of 1967 the author, Mike “Mule” Mullane, in a first-person account, does the math. As missions mount and friends die, depicted with highly accurate descriptions of dodging deadly missiles while bombing targets in North Vietnam, he realizes time remaining and missions to go are longer and greater than his life’s expectancy based on pilot losses in his squadron. A brotherhood, with bonding only experienced by warriors where their very lives depend on the other, is fully revealed through the author’s somber remembrances. Fatalism becomes an overriding factor affecting his life ever after. Carrier flight operations and tactics flying the Skyhawk are real and written with precision and clarity even a non-aviator can understand. Wartime missions flown in the Skyhawk and trials experienced by their pilots are as real as any ever revealed in the written word.
Review by Tom Beard (February 2022)
Author's Synopsis
The squadron starts with twelve A-4E Skyhawks and twenty-two pilots. Seven days later the squadron was down to eight aircraft and nineteen pilots. With 200 days of combat to go, the arithmetic is inescapable. The author knows he will never see home again.
An honest, unflinching account of a college kid becoming a Naval Aviator and doing what he must to become a warrior among his squadron's brotherhood of combat pilots.
Intense real-time descriptions of combat bring he perishable art of aerial combat to life. Experience the transformed state of being where mind-body-aircraft become one, senses stretch to the horizon, time slows, and comprehension is quicker than thought.
The author flew 212 combat missions between June 1967 and January 1969.
Dead Men Flying offers the reader a vicarious experience of carrier operations and combat against the densest and most experienced defenses of their time.
ISBN/ASIN: ISBN-13 9798692604477, ASIN B098GV14MT
Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle
Review Genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Number of Pages: 393