This is actually three seperate stories with the common theme of miitary aviation. The title story is a tale of a Navy PBY (flying boat that was actually obsolete at the start of WW II)crew in the South Pacific. Crews modified these cargo/search aircraft to bomb Japanese shipping. The dangerous long overwater flights at night, along with heavily defended targets, is an overlooked story of tenacity and heroism in naval aviation. The second story is one of a fairly new WW I British scout pilot try More...

I picked this up primarily because one of the three novellas was based on World War 1, a particular interest of mine. The stories were written over a period of 5 years and cover the Great War, the Second World War and the war on terrorism. Overall a good read, particularily The Sea Witch and The 17th Day. One of the strengths of Stephen Coonts is his attention to detail, and that shines through in the first two stories.

The Sea Witch
This is the story of a single flight undertaken in a Catalina s More...

Stephen Coonts is masterful in placing the reader in the cockpit of 3 diverse aircraft under radically different sets of circumstances. The book title The Sea Witch is from the first novella, which stars a fascinating workhorse aircraft – the giant PBY Catalina, a do-anything seaplane of World War II. A young dive-bomber pilot is asked to leave his squadron for alleged reckless behavior and ends up assigned as co-pilot in a Catalina squadron. The fact that he has never flown this aircraft appare More...

We’ve long enjoyed the military thrillers of Stephen Coonts, whose Clancy-esque tales achieve much the same levels of suspense and thrills of that famous author at easily half the page count! “Seawitch” (the book) features specifically shorter works – three novellas about warfare in the early 20th century. In “Seawitch” the novella, a bomber pilot has been demoted to being copilot of an old seaplane, painted black and pressed into service hunting for Japanese navy vessels at night. An overnight More...

This book is a 3 novella book. All written by Stephen Coonts at different times, from 1999 "The 17th Day", 2001 "Al Jihad", and 2003 "The Sea Witch". Each is unrelated and very good. Each has an airplane involved and a different time in history. I liked that they were a short read and brought the action up almost immediately with little writings on building up background. I've enjoyed Coonts' other books and had no concern I wouldn't like this one.

I liked all three stories. Mr. Coonts shows his talents in being able to describe so well the aircraft and the time period. The three stories cover WWI, WWII(Pacific Theater) and modern day Middle East. Not Mr. Coonts best work, but still pretty solid and a quick, enjoyable read (or listening on audio CD)

Three good aviation novellas. Not the best thing Coonts has written. I suspect that these were earlier stories that he had sitting about for some time, and were published on the strengths of his earlier writings.

War - what is it? These three novellas, read by Dick Hill, tell the story. I especially enjoyed the first tale, for which the book is named.

Good Read! Enjoyed the in depth descriptions of the air-crafts featured in this book.

A worthy read. Thrilling, captivating, and easy reading.

3/5 A quick read. Three short stories. Decent writing.

Interesting collection from various sources. The jacket claims this to be 3 novellas, but one is really only a long story. Still, I like the mix of World War I, World War II, and modern terrorist era. Very enjoyable, but short collection.

Even in a short story such as this you learn something about men and machines.