Saving Bravo: The Greatest Rescue Mission in Navy SEAL History

by Stephan Talty Narrated by Henry Strozier

Overview

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 was sought by the entire North Vietnamese and Russian military machines. 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 Lt. Colonel Gene Hambleton. His memory is filled with highly classified information, and he knows secrets about cutting-edge missile technology that the Soviets and North Vietnamese badly want. When Hambleton is shot down behind enemy lines in the midst of North Vietnam's Easter Offensive, US forces place the entire war on hold to save a single man hiding amongst 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 a starving Hambleton, who, guided toward his rescuers via improvised radio code, is barely alive, starved, 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 Drawing from dozens of interviews and access to unpublished papers, Saving Bravo is the riveting story of one of the greatest rescue missions in the history of the Special Forces.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

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.)

From the Publisher

"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 —

Kirkus Reviews

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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171084516
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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