Hugh E. Scott

For the record, my full name is Hugh Edward Scott. I'm a 1956 graduate of Texas A&M and the Fighting Aggie Corps of Cadets, ex-USAF pilot, Vietnam veteran and retired Continental Airlines B727 captain turned novelist, political cartoonist and dedicated investigative journalist.

I began my nine-year active duty Air Force tour as an intelligence officer in Washington, D.C. where I worked with CIA analysts to help produce low-level radar navigation charts for SAC B47s penetrating the Soviet Union on a retaliatory nuclear strike. The top-secret Cold War assignment earned me a Regular commission and allowed me to attend USAF flight school.

After completing pilot training, I flew six years as a KC135 SAC combat crewmember. During that time, I refueled B52 Stratofortresses carrying live H-bombs over the North Pole on 24-hour airborne alert "Chrome Dome" missions, ready to strike the USSR should it launch a surprise ICBM attack against America.

When the Cuban Missile Crisis began in 1962, my tanker crew deployed to Moron Air Base, Spain, where we refueled SAC B52s over the Mediterranean. Each Stratofortress carried two live H-bombs for threatened use against the USSR to back up President Kennedy's demand that Russia pull its missiles out of Castroland. Later, following the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, I spent two six-month combat support tours in Southeast Asia.

On June 18, 1965, I had the high honor of flying in the lead aircraft of "Arc Light One," the first B52 combat mission of the Vietnam War--a mighty 60-plane armada including air spares.

Tragically during the radio-silence, night refueling in a typhoon above the South China Sea, two bombers from my SAC wing, the 320th at Mather AFB, CA, collided and went down in flames, killing eight crewmembers.

In terms of drama, Arc Light One was one of the Vietnam War's great air combat operations. You can read about the ill-fated mission in my 2004 narrative nonfiction Kindle book,"George Dub-ya Bush: THE PHONY FIGHTER PILOT."

I also pulled temporary duty at Takhli Air Base, Thailand, for refueling F105 "Thuds" on Rolling Thunder missions into North Vietnam. In 1966, I resigned my Regular commission because of LBJ's mismanagement of the war, joined Continental Airlines and ironically spent the next five years flying U.S. Marines to and from South Vietnam.

In 1984, I wrote my first aviation/crime thriller, "Stall Warning," which later became the Kindle novel, "Return of the Zodiac Killer," coauthored in 2015 with my writing partner, Mike Krecioch, a retired LAPD cop with 28 years of active service, and a published author in his own right.

Mike and I have written a second aviation/crime thriller titled, "Dallas Double Cross," which will become an Amazon Kindle book in December 2015. Our third novel is in the drafting stage.