The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan by Sam Kleiner, my latest book editing project to see publication, is out and already breaking into the top 500 on Amazon, an increasingly difficult feat in an increasingly crowded media world — especially for a first time author like Sam. Check it out here.
Author & Editor
My dad, C. Bruce Gregory, was an electrical engineer working as an executive for the Gulf Oil Corp. and in the Army reserves when he was called up in early 1941 (before Pearl Harbor) to be part of a secret mission to build air fields under the direction of General Groves, head of the Army Corps of Engineers (and also the Manhattan Project). Their first project was to convert Ascension Island in the middle of the South Atlantic into a refueling location for ships and planes in 5 months, which they accomplished. Next most of the crew were sent to the Belgian Congo to re-open the uranium mine at Shinkolobwe that Madame Curie used to get her radium supplies and also to rebuild the airport in Leopoldville (my dad’s job). This uranium was the purest form known at the time and was shipped to America to be used in the Manhattan Project, though no one knew that at the time except those who needed to know. Next, my dad rebuilt airfields in North Africa after Rommel was routed, and finally he was sent to Assam to bargain with the tea-plantations for land for the airfields to do the “over the hump” flights to fight the Japanese in China. He was an admirer of Gen. Joe Stillwell and Gen. Chenault of the Flying Tigers who used his Assam airfield regularly. Your edited book might give me more understanding of my dad who passed in 1997 at 87. Thanks, Bruce Gregory