The book is a compilation of a bunch of A-6E (and at least one Prowler)
mishaps. I was surprised to have met or known several of the folks who were
at the controls of many of them--kind of a rush for me.

I'm just an armchair wannabe, but even *I* recognized quite a few of the
mishaps from reading Approach and other published works. IIRC (been awhile
since I read "The Intruders") Coonts also manages to sneak in the story
about an F-8 mishap that occurred during refueling in the middle of a
Transpac and ended with the pilot punching out. I seem to recall that one
from Approach as well. Am I correct on this?

I vote for more sea stories and less "Jake gets shot down and kills bad guys
with M-60's."

Heartily concur. "Flight of the Intruder" made the New York Times best
seller list because (IMHO) it was a small-but-well-told story that didn't
range much beyond the squadron. Granted, there was enough aviation-related
technospeak to make the wannabes like me happy. But it also contained the
classic elements of a good novel such as characterization and an
interesting subplot.

As Woody noted, in Coonts' later work he can't resist having his
protagonist running around the jungle with a K-Bar in his teeth. Nor can
he resist complicated, global plots that extend from the E Ring at the
Pentagon, to the offices of CINPAC in Hawaii, to the battle group underway
in the Indian Ocean to . . . you get the idea. (As you read, you can
almost hear the cheesy electronic noise they use in movies as the
characters on the screen spell out "U.S.S. Boat, Northern Pacific." I
think this is the military fiction version of "mission creep." The authors
may start out with modest and carefully-crafted novels based upon their
personal experiences (or upon good research). But when they get
successful, they often start cranking out flabby books loaded up with
filler in the form of technobabble or dialog featuring either the Secdef
and the President, or the requisite terrorist and his henchmen.