Military Books - Military Times

A novel approach to air war

Using a clever ruse that won’t be given away in this review, American F-4C Phantom II crews lured the North Vietnamese air force into battle and shot down seven of Hanoi’s MiG-21s with no losses.

Called Operation Bolo in real life and “Operation Toro” in this novel, the one-sided air action on Jan. 2, 1967, was a crucial moment in the era spanned by this book — roughly, the middle of the jet age, from 1955 to 1972.

Walter J. Boyne’s “Supersonic Thunder” — the second in a planned trilogy of novels about the jet era that began with last year’s “Roaring Thunder” — is fiction. Sort of.

This segment takes us from the Cold War through Vietnam, from slow jet fighters to supersonic ones, from the first jet airliner to the first jumbo jet. The story peaks near the end of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

“Thunder” is peopled with fictionalized versions of real jet pioneers — including Lou Schalk, the test pilot who made the first flight of the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane in 1963; Air Force Lt. Gen. Gordon Graham, who delivered his service’s first F-4 that same year and later was a key air commander in Vietnam; and Andrei Tupolev, the designer of most of the Soviet Union’s large civilian and military airplanes.

But the thread that holds together this book and the series is the fictitious family of American test pilot Vance Shannon. One of Shannon’s sons leads Operation Toro. The leader of the real mission, Col. Robin Olds, does not appear in this volume.

Boyne is a retired Air Force colonel, a pilot who flew in U.S. nuclear tests in the Pacific and in B-52 Stratofortress squadrons. He also is a former director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

In “Supersonic Thunder,” every event has the ring of authenticity that can come only from an expert; Boyne is considered by many to be the dean of American aviation writers.

Because he did not want to compromise on the accuracy of events covered in “Supersonic Thunder,” Boyne’s format may confuse some readers.

An introductory note from the author is unusual for a novel, despite its worthy purpose of paying tribute to the “engineers, pilots, mechanics, sales personnel, accountants and so on” who provided a foundation of support for aviation’s great pioneers. An index almost never appears in a novel and doesn’t here, but I almost wished for one.

Like the first book in the series, I found “Supersonic Thunder” to be revealing and gripping. But wouldn’t a nonfiction book have achieved Boyne’s goal of explaining a segment of the jet age?

Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age. By Walter J. Boyne. Forge Books. 367 pages. $25.95.

Robert F. Dorr, an Air Force veteran, lives in Oakton, Va. He is the author of several books, including “Air Combat,” a history of fighter pilots.