For as long as Mitch McCall could remember, he had wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as an Air Force pilot. In pilot training, Mitch nearly crashes a supersonic T-38. He walks away from the incident but can’t shake off the resulting phobia about landings.

The Vietnam War escalates, and Mitch volunteers for combat as a forward air controller. FACs fly single-engine Cessnas over enemy territory and look for targets for armed fighter aircraft. Mitch accepts the new dangers in a make-or-break attempt to beat his fears.

In Thailand, he is teamed with Captain James D. (J.D.) Dalton. J.D. is a few years older than Mitch—but many years more experienced in almost everything. As a teenager, J.D. had idolized the ill-fated actor, James Dean. Now, almost a decade later, J.D. still lives by some of the actor's philosophies and flies his small Cessna as if this life were just a step toward whatever comes next.

In Hanoi, famed North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap is plotting a bold operation. If successful, his armies will overrun the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh during the upcoming Tet offensive. His plan depends heavily on battle-hardened veteran Colonel Le Van Do. Le commands Battlefield C, North Vietnam’s secret operations in Laos. Battlefield C contains much of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and is patrolled from the air almost every day by Mitch and J.D.

In late January 1968, the Communist forces launch a massive offensive during the Tet truce. The fate of thousands of American Marines at Khe Sanh depends on whether Mitch discovers the secret that Colonel Le Van Do has concealed beneath the 200-foot tall trees of the Laotian jungles.

Green jungle, reddish-brown roadways, and thousands of bomb craters rushed by in a spiraling blur. Mitch’s eyes jittered, trying to find something stationary in the spinning world. A terrifying realization jolted him. The O-1 was spinning—and upside down.

Panic seized him. He’d never been in an inverted spin—and he’d never talked to anyone who had.

In the twirling scene below, he saw more flashes. His mind was too overloaded to sense which guns were firing, competing for the second kill of the morning.

Ignoring tracers, Mitch pushed the left rudder pedal against the stop. The spin accelerated—wrong rudder. He jammed his right foot against the other pedal. Spinning seemed to slow, but he wasn’t certain. Cramps stiffened his fingers, protesting against his death grip on the throttle and stick. One of J.D.’s silly sayings flashed to mind: “If it’s inevitable, relax. No sense dyin’ all tensed up.”

“We gonna bail out, Lieutenant?”

Ellison sounded less frightened than Mitch expected. “Negative!” He concealed the conclusion reached with a glance at the altimeter—they were too low for both to jump clear and deploy good chutes before slamming into the ground.

Without warning, the lawnmower-like sound of the engine ceased. The propeller began winding down.

A Certain Brotherhood tells of the courage, fears, motivations, and bonds of camaraderie shared by professional American fliers who flew in the Vietnam War.