Customs and Immigration at LAX were located in terminal two where the Flying Tiger plane taxied into. There was no jet bridge, as most airports were installing instead of the giant metal staircase that was set up to rest against the left front side of the 747’s fuselage. Before the front door was opened, I was able to give my young ‘escort’ back his Steyr and get him to promise that he’d never given it up. There’d been no incident that might require its use on the flight, and why someone at either end making such a decision had determined there might be was troublesome in several ways. Did the person making that decision have any clue about the inherent cabin safety of international travel? How had a weapon been allowed to pass through security? Why was I thought to be in danger once out of the country, since there’d been talk but no real physical threat to my life?
I went down the stairs. The kid traveling with me had little understanding that if he told his handler the truth about what had happened it would likely be career-ending for him and could even be problematic for me. The whole mission had been one of strange controversy and revealing positions and relationships.
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The “four burning” used the same fuel as the six P&W 4360 28 cylinder radial engines. (145 octane)
A cool change of pace chapter after all the Korean skulduggery
Looking back it’s kind of a shame that they cancelled the H model, all jet powered with a top speed of over six hundred miles er hour and carried a whole lot more (including a nuclear reactor a couple of times) than the B-52 they chose instead. Thanks for the data on fuel usage. I don’t think they even make 145 octane anymore.
Semper fi, and thanks a lot.
Jim
They made the 145 octane back then, I’m not sure about now. Tetraethyl lead is a no no these days. That being said, the ex warbird unlimited racers Use an exotic 160 octane fuel blend.
I used to drive to the airport in Albuquerque to fuel one of my cars, one that will make it’s way into the story
as we go along. It was 130 octane and cost twice as much as regular fuel on the outside.
thanks for the update my friend,
Semper fi,
Jim
“You’re not getting a hot air balloon,”
I actually laughed out loud, James !!
Keep ’em coming.
Semper Fi
I wasn’t always totally rational!
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Just ordered the first three books and can’t wait for IV to print.
I thought about waiting for hard cover, to match my three 30 Days set.
Thanks for doing this.
Thanks Larry, not yet printing the hard cover but will let you know.
Thanks for the compliments.
Semper fi,
Jim
Someone possibly mafia tailed you to your house? Matt knowing the status of your family? Back in the hell hole of the valley you knew where & who your enemies were. Not any more! What’s next?
The last chapter in this volume will appear next week and will resolve some of this discussion about who was following whom and shy.
Thanks for the very pertinent and interesting comment, however.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hot air balloons? I must have missed somethin somewhere in an earlier chapter, if you could direct me to which one I will find it. Thank you
Im really lookin forward to the next chapter, you sure do have a way of finding trouble…or trouble has a way of finding you.
Popeye
When I first arrived in Albuquerque, the International Balloon Fiesta was going on…and instantly I made a decisi0n that I as going to get one as I’d never seen one up close before the one that almost hit my hotel room window that morning. I told my control officer that a hot air balloon was part of the deal which he agreed do but never intended to exactly follow through.
It’s somewhere back in Volume IV but you an find that part of the story the same way I would. Thanks for caring enough to write what you have here and for going to look for that bit of writing.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jay.
The Hot Air Ballon Race was mentioned in Chapter XXI of Volume Four by Herbert
Where and when and on what was the huge tire in the image above used?
Convair B-36H Peacemaker, the original aircraft developed during WWII only had 6 reciprocating piston engines, as the jet age came about, 4 jet engines were added in twin pods on the outer wing area. It never dropped a bomb in war. It could fly 10K miles without stopping to refuel.
they test flew the XB36 with these single tires, also with catapiller threds, dropped both, and the production a/c used bogie-style maingear with four tires..
Thanks for that Paul, much appreciate your own experience and knowledge helping us out here.
Semper fi,
Jim
I can not wait till the next chapter…
Much appreciate that compliment and your writing it on the site.
Semper fi,
Jim
That B-36!
The Big Stick, 10 engines, 6 turning, 4 burning. Separate fuel tanks, AvGas, and JP-4. Developed during WWII, one truly awesome aircraft.
Thanks Thomas for the information. They actually produced one that was all jet engines, intended to be used for long haul supply but they decided against it as avionics was fast making the need for huge crewed airplanes obsolete.
Semper fi,
Jim
They quit making REAL bombers with the B-36. Nothing in the world sounds like a B-36 but a B-36.
One would have to assume that you might like the sound. Many living nearby would not.
But you are most accurately correct in what you wrote here. Louder than the B-52 by far.
Thanks for the great comment.
Semper fi
Jim
Jim,
I tell you, more twists and turns than you find at a pretzel factory! Bravo!
Tom being a threat and not a friend, you dodging death–once again, Herbert’s responses to your “requests”, Matt reappears, and you now being tailed by unknown threat. Matt sure is a keeper. You weave an exciting tale, Sir. Love it.
Some minor edits, if I may:
“… He was a baby-faced young kid, yet there were [we] were, with him no doubt thinking that he might shoot me where I stood in the restroom.”
“He was no more a kid than I was when I came out of that valley,” I finally said, realizing just how lose [close] I’d come without ever knowing it until now.”
Get your laptop up and reload,
There is more we need from you to be told.
See you in a week (online).
Best regards.
THE WALTER DUKE. Thanks most sincerely for the edits. Mike Kirby is back from working the fires in California so he will be helping as well. You are a class act, from beginning to end. Thanks for the compliments on top of everything else.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Jim,
More later, but about this “tail”:
Tom/mafia knew you were CIA – If it was them, why were they following you? To take you out? Which would have required the mafia to conclude that taking out a CIA agent would wouldn’t be a big deal? Why lead the “tail” directly to your home and family? If not ‘them’, then who? If not ‘them’, seems they also knew you were CIA (How?) and again, leading them to your family?
So Matt knew/worked with-under Herbert/???, but how would he know your family was fine? Granted, your house would be bugged, but for Matt to “know by now”, then someone would have to be ‘watching’ in ‘real’ time, 24/7. Welcome home.
Regards my friend,
Doug
As you shall read in the next chapter, Doug, there Ewa all kinds of accidental stuff happening with the Agency but also some ver specific and accurate stuff as well. But I can’t write anything about it here without giving that chapter’s content away.
Great analysis and conclusions, however.
As usual.
Semper fi,
Jim
As always amazing! The plot thickens! I love it!!
Thanks for putting your reply to Doug up here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Like a spelunker, deeper and deeper into the darkness!
It is amazing to me how accurate and sharp your memory is. I’d bet on you recognizing the “Mafia” man even today, although I wouldn’t want to be quite that sharp.
Did you ever find out who your tail was, on your ride home?
Just finished, for the third time, reading “The Last Ten Days”. And was once again shocked at the loss of so many Marines during your visit to the Valley. And your wounds from the spider hole. Now, something like that would have engraved itself in my mind, as did watching the loss of three shipmates on the carrier.
Things are proceeding apace here. About like a clock that gets slower each day.
The last chapter of Volume IV (this coming chapter) will be followed by the first chapter of Volume V, as all these adventures didn’t end where the book ends. Anyway, thanks for the comments on 30 Days. Understandably hard to adjust from that kind of thing when so young…hell, even if older. Thinking of you my friend….God Bless….
Semper fi,
Jim
Holy mackerel Jim, what a world of intrigue and hidden dangers. Exciting until it comes to possibly having your loved one’s lives put in danger.
Semper Fi 🇺🇸
The next chapter explains a lot and, as usual, not all is as it first seems to be.
As that chapter will reveal an answer to a great question. How could anybody follow me when I came in on an Air Force jet
that had no filed flight plan? Interesting.
Semper fi,
Jim
Wow.. I am always concerned that the next page I turn will have “Submit A Comment ” on it 🙂 This chapter was no exception..
Thanks for the complimentary comment Charly. Much appreciated.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I don’t feel as though I ever knew you! This more than strange, it’s weird!
True, there was a lot you did not know about me back in those days as, after coming home I mostly shut everything away in order to try to survive and then took up with an outfit that didn’t allow for much release of anything to those around me.
In spite of my expressive personality and being so outgoing, I was pretty good at keeping secrets. I still recall when you helped same me once, when I was evacuated to London and the hospital there didn’t know how to treat me…and my wife called, of all people on the planet, you! And you performed wonderfully, like your call sign in Marine air ‘batman’ foretold. Still owe you for that one.
Semper fi, my great friend
Jim
Environment of suspense!
What next !
Thanks for the short but telling compliment Ronal.
Semper fi
Jim
Such a wild, confusing chapter I had to read it twice and I am still a little confused. Was Tom really Mafia and if so why would he give up the gun he was supposed to kill you with and why would he get into a limo and ride away without taking you out and maybe winding up with cement overshoes? Your son is in a swim meet? I thought he was only an infant? Herbert seems to be your guardian with the agency. Glad Matt is there for you and your family. Korean mob on your tail? How the hell would they know where you live?
Charles, some of what you are confused about will be in the next chapter.
It’s likely that Tom either wasn’t intending to shoot me on board, or maybe even at all. Some things you don’t get to know because I don’t know. He sure as hell wasn’t likely to shoot I’m inside the passenger cabin aboard an aircraft that had such a long way to go to land and his decision to give me the gun was a wise one. It was unlikely the crew knew he had a weapon backk in those days. Mysteries that sometimes have no resolution. Was the guy who let him into the limo Korean? He was definitely oriental but trying to figure national origin of orientals can be problematic at best. In the Agency, for field personnel, your control officer is exactly your guardian at all times.
Thanks for the interesting questions, as usual.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Not really a chapter but more of a segment of time; real life in a in the normal naive way we all learned, just a different or unique direction! When we connect the dots differently, we can be easily out of the “box”, but still operating through the simple senses we have developed!
Fascinating!
These are, indeed, segments of time or history. Quite accurate observation. The readers here get to actually learn the business from the ground up in a time when real intelligence work was in its infancy. You worked in the same arena a few years later out there and your thoughts about that are much appreciated. Thanks for the great comment.
Semper fi, my great friend,
Jim
what a rush how could somebody follow you when you weren’t on an airplane that had a filed flight-plan I’m assuming?
you certainly have a lot of things floating out there but sometimes a mystery is just that I don’t believe in coincidences yet some things are coincidental
I think back on how I first met you Homan and I were talking about something at one time and he told me about your book and it sounded like pure fiction but he then sent me a copy of 30 days
I realize very quickly it wasn’t fiction but in fact a unique perspective on your experience in the land down south across the pond
so much of what you’ve had to do is follow your instincts and in most situations it’s so far it looks like that is kept you alive
I have come to realize that following my instincts in life could have led to jail many times but that is why God sent an IHM girl to watch over me
What will be next
I, of course, am the recipient of God’s grace in that my wife went to IhM in Illinois too! Grand coincidence since that was a pretty damned small
school. Yes, the adventure in the A Shau was particularly difficult but I have come to see through the years that all real combat is like what
I went through. Men fall apart under such tense terror and fear, and then have to get the time to reassemble themselves. Most are FNG’s who don’t get
that time and are dead almost literally before they know it. Thanks for being all you are my great friend.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
I tell you, more twists and turns than you find at a pretzel factory! Bravo!
Tom being a threat and not a friend, you dodging death–once again, Herbert’s responses to your “requests”, Matt reappears, and you now being tailed by unknown threat. Matt sure is a keeper. You weave an exciting tale, Sir. Love it.
Some minor edits, if I may:
“… He was a baby-faced young kid, yet there were [we] were, with him no doubt thinking that he might shoot me where I stood in the restroom.”
“He was no more a kid than I was when I came out of that valley,” I finally said, realizing just how lose [close] I’d come without ever knowing it until now.”
Get your laptop up and reload,
There is more we need from you to be told.
See you in a week.
Best regards.
THE WALTER DUKE. Thanks most sincerely for the edits and all the corrections have been made.
Also, happy you are writing for more and some resolution (not all!) to the continuing mysteries.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Things are sounding tense .
Thanks for the short but very accurate comment William!
Semper fi
Jim