Phantom in the Sky: A Marine’s Back Seat View of the Vietnam War

Thorsen, who joined the Marine Corps in 1966 to avoid being drafted into the Army “and possibly end up in the infantry,” offers a straightforward, detailed Vietnam War memoir. He takes the reader through Marine Corps Boot Camp and Naval and Marine Corps aviation training and into an action-filled 1968–1969 tour of duty as a radar intercept officer flying in the back seat of Navy and Marine F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber jets. Despite having “airsickness issues” and questions about the war, Thorsen flew 123 missions. He describes dozens of them, many replete with dodging enemy antiaircraft artillery and other dicey experiences. Thorsen makes good use of his letters home, in which he expressed strong feelings about the war and his role in it. To wit: “I have flown almost every mission variety they have here.... And I hate that a year of my life has to be spent in this manner. But I do it for the sake of my country, which is to say, all Americans, and that includes my relatives.” This solid reconstruction of a Marine aviator’s training and Vietnam War experiences adds an F-4 back-seater’s perspective to the expanding Vietnam War aviation memoir canon. (Mar.)