Saving Bravo: The Greatest Rescue Mission in Navy SEAL History

by Stephan Talty

Overview

From the author of A Captain's Duty, the New York Times best-selling account of Captain Phillips, comes the untold story of the most important rescue mission not just of the Vietnam War, but the entire Cold War.

One American aviator, who knew our most important secrets, crashed behind enemy lines and risked capture by both the North Vietnamese and the Soviets. One Navy SEAL and his Vietnamese partner had to sneak past them all to save him.

At the height of the Vietnam War, few American airmen are more valuable than Lieutenant Colonel Gene Hambleton. His memory is filled with highly classified information that the Soviets and North Vietnamese badly want. When Hambleton is shot down in the midst of North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive, US forces place the entire war on hold to save a single man hiding among 30,000 enemy troops and tanks. Airborne rescue missions fail, killing eleven Americans. Finally, Navy SEAL Thomas Norris and his Vietnamese guide, Nguyen Van Kiet, volunteer to go after him on foot. Gliding past hundreds of enemy soldiers, it takes them days to reach Hambleton, who, guided toward his rescuers via improvised radio code, is barely alive, deeply malnourished, and hallucinating after eleven days on the run.

In this deeply researched, untold story, award-winning author Stephan Talty describes the extraordinary mission that led Hambleton to safety. Drawing from dozens of interviews and access to unpublished papers, Saving Bravo is the riveting story of one of the greatest rescue missions in the history of the Special Forces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328866271
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	226,403
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Stephan Talty is the New York Times bestselling author of The Black Hand, The Good Assassin, Agent Garbo, and A Captain’s Duty. His books have been made into two films, the Oscar-winning Captain Phillips and Only the Brave. He’s written for publications including the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and Playboy. He lives outside New York City with his family.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Prologue: The River xiii

Part I Gene

1 Midwestern 3

2 Rocket Man 12

3 Korat 21

4 The Boys in the Back 29

5 The Time of Useful Consciousness 36

6 Ernie Banks 43

7 Blueghost 39 48

8 Tucson 62

9 Blowtorch Jockeys 68

Part II Dark Knights

10 Joker 77

11 Yesterday's Frat Boy 86

12 "Their Glowing Trajectories" 93

13 Tiny Tim 100

14 Futility 106

15 "I Know We're Going to Die" 111

16 Low Bird 117

17 The Division 124

Part III The Swanee

18 The Real John Wayne 129

19 The Hurricane Lover 135

20 When the Moon Goes over the Mountain 140

21 The First at Tucson National 152

22 Dark Encounter 159

23 The Grove 165

24 Clark 173

25 Places Like the Moon 179

26 Zeroed In 183

27 Esther Williams 188

28 "Some Kind of Rescue" 200

29 The Sampan 207

30 Journey's End 214

31 "Lay That Man Down" 222

32 Beyond a Normal Call of Duty 232

33 The Returns 242

34 "As Comrades" 247

Acknowledgments 258

Appendix A Chronology 259

Appendix B Walker and Potts 262

Notes 273

Index 298

Editorial Reviews

10/15/2018
Talty's (The Black Hand) modern retelling of a story also told in William C. Anderson's BAT-21 and the film Bat*21 centers on Lt. Col. Gene Hambleton, an Air Force navigator whose aircraft was shot down during the Vietnam War. Using previously unavailable primary and secondary sources, the author includes brief biographies of the more prominent characters involved before moving on to the pertinent events. He discusses various controversies, including the wide no-fire zone declared around the downed navigator, the lives lost in the several rescue attempts, and Nixon's buildup of aerial and naval assets despite campaign promises to wind forces down. This is all told within the background of the North Vietnamese buildup for the Tet Offensive, which was happening in Hambleton's immediate area, thus further complicating the rescue efforts. The account concludes with balanced assessments of the film and Hambleton himself, along with his participation in promoting the tale. Stories of others involved, specifically those killed or missing during the operations, are also included. VERDICT This new interpretation of a famous Vietnam era rescue operation is recommended for anyone interested in military history, especially special operations.—Matthew Wayman, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Schuylkill Haven

Library Journal

08/27/2018
Talty (The Black Hand) skillfully and engagingly tells the dramatic story of 12 fateful days in the life of then-52-year-old Air Force navigator Gene Hambleton. After he’d bailed out behind enemy lines in South Vietnam when his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile, he hid from thousands of North Vietnamese Army troops as—unbeknownst to him and his rescuers—they launched the massive attack known to Americans as the Easter Offensive in 1972. An “unprecedented” number of personnel were sent to rescue Hambleton—11 died and two were captured—and eventually “the only force left with a chance of getting Hambleton out alive was a short, slim, soft-spoken 28-year-old Navy SEAL named Tommy ‘Flipper’ Norris and his small team of South Vietnamese sea commandos.” Talty’s tale is gripping. Along with the derring-do of the rescuers (especially Norris and South Vietnamese commando Nguyen Van Kiet) and Hambleton’s almost inhuman ability to survive in the jungle, Talty brings in geopolitical and military strategy issues in this fully realized rescue story that will appeal to those in search of a (mostly) positive event that took place during the Vietnam War. Photos. Agent: Scott Waxman, Waxman Literary Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Saving Bravo is a meticulously researched and masterfully told war story that will capture you and take you deep into the darkest jungles of Vietnam. It won't release you until you’ve sweated through every page of what indeed qualifies as the greatest rescue mission in Navy SEAL history." —Eric Blehm, New York Times bestselling author of Fearless, Legend, and The Only Thing Worth Dying For "A gripping true story of unbelievable courage. Talty puts a tingle at the nape of your neck and a knot of horror in the pit of your stomach." —Captain Rich Phillips, author of the New York Times bestselling A Captain's Duty   “A terrifying story of aviators shot down behind enemy lines. Saving Bravo gives us a fresh and insightful look into the chaotic rescue of Gene Hambleton deep in the jungles of Vietnam. A must read, packed with unsung heroes." —U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Michael Golembesky, New York Times bestselling author of Level Zero Heroes "Expertly researched and brilliantly told. The biggest rescue operation of the Vietnam War depended on the will of Gene Hambleton to evade the enemy and survive - and the wills of Navy SEAL Tom Norris and Nguyen van Kiet to save him. Bravo shows us the enormous sacrifices that went into the mission. This is the stuff that heroes are made of." – Stephen Templin, New York Times bestselling author of SEAL Team Six "Stephan Talty does it again. In Saving Bravo, Talty puts his prodigious story-telling and research skills to work on the miraculous story of Gene Hambleton, an over-the-hill flyboy who ejects out of a jet into enemy territory in Vietnam. A true story of human survival and the largest rescue mission of the Vietnam War, told so vividly you can practically hear the gunfire." —A.J. Baime, New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental President  "Saving Bravo is the best account I have read of this mission.  As a former SEAL I am very familiar with this legendary operation. Talty's research and writing lets you get to know the men and what they are feeling in this tribute to human perseverance. This book proves that real world SEAL ops are better than fiction." —Howard Wasdin, New York Times bestselling author of SEAL Team Six "Talty skillfully and engagingly tells the dramatic story of 12 fateful days in the life of then-52-year-old Air Force navigator Gene Hambleton... [He] brings in geopolitical and military strategy issues in this fully realized rescue story that will appeal to those in search of a (mostly) positive event that took place during the Vietnam War." —Publishers Weekly “A taut study of the largest military search-and-rescue operation in history and the lessons learned…[Talty] shows informed appreciation for military culture and the workings of war…[with] a well-conceived work of military history dissecting a seemingly minor episode that still speaks volumes.”—Kirkus Reviews —

From the Publisher

2018-07-31

A taut study of the largest military search-and-rescue operation in history and the lessons learned.

Talty (The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History, 2017, etc.) has a fascination for grim moments under seemingly impossible odds, as with the story that would eventually become the movie Captain Phillips. The yarn he spins here was already made into a movie three decades ago, the Gene Hackman vehicle Bat*21, recounting the harrowing experience of an Air Force navigator shot down over Vietnam in the late days of the war. Iceal "Gene" Hambleton (1918-2004) was one of the most experienced officers in the business, a master of signals intelligence whose capture by the North Vietnamese would probably have led to a strategic and propaganda victory not just for them, but also for the Soviet agents who were tracking him. Thus it was that when Hambleton's plane went down under enemy fire, the commanders in Vietnam assembled "an armada of fighter planes, B-52s, attack helicopters, Navy aircraft carriers" to extract him from the field—to say nothing of soldiers, sailors, aviators, Marines, and special forces troops. As Talty recounts, for 11 days these allies raced against equally determined North Vietnamese troops to locate Hambleton, sometimes coming up against each other; among the costs of these extraordinary measures were the deaths of nearly a dozen airborne troops. Too young for service at the time, the author shows informed appreciation for military culture and the workings of war. As he writes, knowingly, "the men at Da Nang that spring would have loved to fight for values like freedom and liberty on behalf of a grateful republic. But as it was, their leaders were feckless, their country had forgotten them, and their allies rarely felt like allies….All they had, many airmen felt, was their unbreakable bond to one another."

A well-conceived work of military history dissecting a seemingly minor episode that still speaks volumes.

Kirkus Reviews