Secret Mission to Bangkok, first published in 1960, is a Cold War thriller set in Thailand. Colonel Hugh North, the hero of a number of books by author Van Wyck Mason, is on a security mission to shadow a leading rocket scientist who is returning to Bangkok in an attempt to locate his missing wife. The scientist’s importance and intimate knowledge of the U.S. missile program make it imperative that he does not fall into the hands of Soviet spies, already aware of their arrival. Along the way, North encounters beautiful women and some of Bangkok’s kingpins. F. Van Wyck Mason (1901-1978) published more than 60 books in his long career, including Colonel Hugh North thrillers, mysteries and science fiction.
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Morgan Robertson (1861-1915) was a well-known American author whose novel "Futility" (1898), about an unsinkable ship called the "Titan," bears a striking similarity to the real-life fate of the "Titanic."
The Reds would give a spire off the Kremlin to lay hands on Dr. Hans Bracht, America's foremost missile genius. And here he was on a Bangkok-bound plane with only G-2's Colonel North to guard him. The plane's passenger list made North sweat: MARY HOLLBERG, a shapely Fraulein who said she was a concert pianist but obviously wasn’t; CHU HOONG, multimillionaire manufacturer of Dragon's Tooth Elixir; LITA NALINE, an exotic, sloe-eyed film star who developed a sudden affection for Colonel North; BORIS SALENKOV, who resembled Stalin in more ways than his mustache; LEX ROSE, a Hollywood executive and once a card-carrying Commie. Looking at them, Colonel North knew that murder would be the least of his troubles...
This book is about the United States Air Force's first photo reconnaissance missions that got flown over Southeast Asia in 1961. The 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (Polka Dots) from Misawa Air Base Japan was ordered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to start flying missions out of the Don Muang Airport near Bangkok Thailand on November 7th. 1961. It was designated a secret mission called the Able Mable Project. I was a member of the first group sent there. There are some pictures I also wrote about Misawa Air Base and Lake Towada. I shared some of the things we did on our two months temporary Duty assignment in Thailand. The last part of this book has short stories covering the life experiences that I have written on My Mixed Blog. Truth is Stranger Than Fiction as you will see from some of these short stories. I amsure you will enjoy reading some of them.
Military history of the elite 400th US Army Security Agency Special Operations Detachment Airborne assigned to support the 1st Special Forces Group (Abn) on Okinawa is chronicled in this book.
Riveting, novelistic, and startlingly candid, John T. Halliday's combat memoir begins in 1970, when Halliday has just landed in the middle of the Vietnam War, primed to begin his assignment with the 606th Special Operations Squadron. But there's a catch: He's stationed in a kind of no-man's-land. No one on his base flies with ID, patches, or rank. Even as Richard Nixon firmly denies reporters' charges that the United States has forces in Laos, Halliday realizes that from his base in Thailand, he will be flying top-secret, black-ops night missions over the Laotian Ho Chi Minh Trail. A naive yet thoughtful twenty-four-year-old, Halliday was utterly unprepared for the horrors of war. On his first mission, Halliday's C-123 aircraft dodges more than a thousand antiaircraft shells, and that is just the beginning. Nothing is as he expected -- not the operations, not the way his shell-shocked fellow pilots look and act, and certainly not the squadron's daredevil, seat-of-one's-pants approach to piloting. But before long, Halliday has become one of those seasoned and shell-shocked pilots, and finds himself in a desperate search for a way to elude certain death. Using frank, true-to-life dialogue, potent imagery, and classic 1970s song lyrics, Halliday deftly describes the fraught Laotian skies and re-creates his struggle to navigate the frustrating Air Force bureaucracy, the deprivations of a remote base far from home and his young wife, and his fight to preserve his sanity. The resulting nonfiction narrative vividly captures not only the intricate, distorted culture of war but also the essence of the Vietnam veteran's experience of this troubled era. A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to war literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606th's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.
The Mystery Fancier, Volume 4 Number 6, November/December 1980, contains: "Spy Series Characters in Hardback, Part V," by Barry Van Tilburg, "Favorite Magazine Issues: Manhunt (3:6)," by Jeff Banks, "Old Time Radio Lives," by Carl Larsen, "Pow-Wo on the Potomac (Bouchercon)," by John Nieminski, and "Bouchercon Scrapbook," commentary by Guy M. Townsend.
