Fourth Book Coming This Year
Many of you reached out to me inquiring about the publication date of my next book. Will I hear more tales from my early days as a Hangmen? Or more thrilling aviation exploits? I’m excited to let you know my fourth book will come out later this year. It will continue where Better Lucky Than Good left off and will be packed with adventures, just as you like it, and some inspiration along the way.
As a teaser, I am providing a snippet from the book in this blog entry. Your valuable thoughts and comments are highly appreciated.
Flying on fires was exciting and rewarding. Frequently saving people’s homes and sometimes people’s lives. Including firefighters caught in a bad spot, making drops right on top of them. The movie “Always,” with Richard Dreyfuss centered around aerial firefighting, and depicted a scene just like that.
One of the most memorable fires was not that big, but it happened right at the edge of the town of Sonora, only about two miles from the end of the runway.
Pushed by high winds, it quickly threatened homes and the town itself, which had many old wooden buildings that were very vulnerable. For once, the Ranger and I were on the scene first. There was a lot of fuel with trees and scrub oak.
Taking off on runway 17, only climbing a couple of hundred feet, the tankers barely had their wheels up when they would turn towards town and make their drops.
Banking hard, they turned back to land in the opposite direction on runway 35, not shutting the engines down, the loading crews were kept busy, filling up the planes one after the other.
On one or our circles around the fire I noticed flames racing across a yard toward a house that had brush growing against the side of it. I pointed it out to Ranger Watson.
Tanker 76 had just come back from reloading and reported in. Jerry Watson said, “Seven Six, you see that yellow house with the tile roof next to that road?”
Norm in T-76 said, “Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“I want you to drop your whole load right on that house.”
“Roger that, inbound now.”
76’s wing dipped, and his nose dropped as he dove toward the ground. Damn, I admired those guys for their skill and courage.
I held my breath as I watched the fire reach the brush growing next to the house and suddenly the brush burst into flames.
At the same time Norm arrived overhead with a huge red cloud of retardant billowing from the belly of Tanker 76.
The yard and the house were now painted bright red, but the flames were gone. Norm had made the drop just in the nick of time.
Many homes were saved that day, several times by direct drops right on the houses as the flames were licking at the eves. Not a single home was lost.
I flew for an hour and a half that day, but the tankers only made three drops each for a total of twenty four tons of retardant. It was enough to bring the fire to a screeching halt, so the ground crews who worked the rest of the day could bring it under control.
Our two tanker pilots and the loading crews were absolute heroes. The next day, we were on the front page of the local paper with the big headline at the top of the page saying; “The Airmen Who Saved Our Homes.”
A few days later, the town held a ‘thank you’ ceremony at the Air Attack base. A big crowd showed up wanting to meet us, we were celebrities.
And so we made it in the news…