LIKE A BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE,an email from a long-lost colleague I never knew popped up in my inbox. It was from CM. "Tony" Plattner, an Aviation Week combat reporter and aircraft evaluation pilot nearly six decades ago, who covered the Vietnam War and Cold War. I had seen his name in our digital archives, but I had never spoken with him or heard anyone on our staff-even the retirees-mention him. The reason, it turned out, is that he had stopped writing for Aviation Week by the time I was three years old.More than half a century later, the 91-year-old is back with a book that tells the fascinating story of his career at Aviation Week and the heavy price he paid to help this magazine earn the nickname "Aviation Leak." Plattner, a veteran U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot and captain in the Marine Corps Air Reserve, joined Aviation Week in 1962. One of his early assignments was to analyze the Grumman A-6A (originally A2F) Intruder, a new U.S. Navy attack aircraft.
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