Around The World With LBJ; My Wild Ride As Air Force One Pilot, White House Aide, And Personal Confidant

[10], 208, [4] pages. Illustrations. Author's Note. Index. James Underwood Cross (April 25, 1925 - July 11, 2015) was a United States Air Force brigadier general and author of Around the World with LBJ: My Wild Ride As Air Force One Pilot, White House Aide, and Personal Confidant. He was a military aide and chief Air Force One pilot under United States president Lyndon B. Johnson. General Cross was trained as a pilot by the U.S. Army and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces in November, 1944. Cross flew transport aircraft in World War II. After joining the Air Force Reserve in 1946, he was recalled to active duty in 1948 and served at military bases flying transport aircraft in the Philippines, South Carolina, Newfoundland, and Delaware. Cross was sent to Bolling Air Force Base in Washington D.C. in 1958, where he served as pilot for VIP aircraft. In 1961, he was appointed military aide and pilot to Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Johnson requested that Cross become qualified to fly the Boeing 707, the 707 being the airframe on which the USAF VC-137 presidential aircraft is based. He served as a co-pilot for one year and then served as Armed Forces Aide and pilot to President Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to 1968. On February 23, 1962, Cross flew Vice President Lyndon Johnson, then-Chairman of the National Space Council, to Grand Turk Island, where Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn Jr., USMC had splashed down in Friendship 7 after completing the Project Mercury space expedition. When Lyndon Baines Johnson wanted to go somewhere, there was no stopping him. This dynamic president called for Air Force One as others summon a taxi, at a moment's notice, whatever the hour or the weather. And the man who made sure that LBJ got his ride was General James U. Cross, the president's hand-picked pilot, top military assistant, and personal confidante. One of the few Air Force One pilots to have a position, simultaneously, in the White House, General Cross is also the only member of LBJ's inner circle who has not publicly offered his recollections of the president. In this book, he goes on the record, creating a fascinating, behind-the-scenes portrait of America's complex, often contradictory, always larger-than-life thirty-sixth president. General Cross tells an engrossing story. In addition to piloting Air Force One around the globe, he served President Johnson in multiple capacities, including directing the Military Office in the White House; managing a secret two-million-dollar presidential emergency fund; supervising the presidential retreat at Camp David, the president's entire transportation fleet, and the presidential bomb shelters; running the White House Mess; hiring White House social aides, including the president's future son-in-law, Charles Robb; and writing condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Vietnam. This wide-ranging, around-the-clock access to President Johnson allowed Cross to witness events and share moments that add color and depth to our understanding of America's arguably most demanding and unpredictable president.…