By December 1972, the Paris Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War had fallen apart. With Congress preparing to cut off all funding for the war, President Richard Nixon had to act quickly to pressure the North Vietnamese into signing a peace agreement. He ordered the massive bombing of Hanoi for the first time by America's big stick, the Strategic Air Command's B-52s. But instead of being overwhelmed, the North Vietnamese SAM missile crews initially shattered the B-52 force. For eleven days the air battle swung back and forth, moving from what appeared to be a certain US victory, to what appeared to be a North Vietnamese victory to the ultimate ambiguous denouement. Marshall Michel has used hundreds of formerly classified documents from both American and Vietnamese archives and interviews with dozens of Americans and Vietnamese who participated at all levels to tell, for the first time, the dramatic story of this critical battle in the war. Moving from the White House to the B-52 cockpits to the missile sites and POW camps of Hanoi, this is a gripping tale of heroism and incompetence in a battle whose political and military legacy is still a matter of controversy.