Built in the 1930s - All Original Parts - Some Still Work

Warren recovering in his favorite recliner.

For several years, I have seen t-shirts advertised with the above caption. I always meant to get one. I was, after all, born in 1936. But now it’s too late. I don’t still have all my original parts. Last Monday my orthopedic surgeon flattened the surfaces of my left knee, cut mortises in the new surfaces, and installed a full knee replacement joint. My weight is now borne through plastic bearings onto titanium alloy surfaces. I am already walking on the new joint (with a walker). There is some pain, but I can manage it. And for the first time in 33 years, both my legs are the same length.

My surgeon and anesthesiologist used a series of pain blockers that delayed the onset of pain for about twenty-four hours. When I initially woke up from the operation, I felt hardly any pain at all. I was able to do all the exercises ordered by my physical therapists with no problems. I was beginning to think that this operation was a snap when the pain blockers started to wear off. That got my attention in a hurry!

The second day following the surgery was definitely the worst as far as pain was concerned. One just has to tough it out! Almost continuous therapy to straighten and then flex the new joint can definitely be quite uncomfortable. So can using a walker be. I mastered that art fairly quickly; it seemed to come natural to me. However, throw rugs are booby traps of the most serious order. All our rugs are now piled in the dining room.

It appears that how fast I will be able to get “back to battery” will depend largely on me. The harder I work, the better off I’ll be.  And the sooner I’ll get back to writing on Endure the Cruel Sun, the sequel to my best-selling novel, Hold Back the Sun.  The Battle of the Coral Sea beckons.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, was released on September 15, 2015.  He is currently working on a new novel, Endure the Cruel Sun, the sequel to his best-selling novel, Hold Back the Sun. For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.  

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When Australia Was Under Siege

In the spring of 1942, the people of Australia felt that they were under siege. They had every reason to believe so. In the opening months of the Pacific War, Australians had watched one Allied bastion after another fall to the forces of Japan’s Rising Sun. Hong Kong collapsed almost immediately. The key American islands of Wake and Guam quickly followed. But the earthquake than shook the defense of the entire region occurred when the British Army in Singapore, which included Australian troops, surrendered to a numerically inferior Japanese force. Conquest of the Dutch East Indies came quickly afterwards. Only in the Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur’s Filipino-American army on the Bataan Peninsula stubbornly held out, had the Japanese been held in check.

By this time, Australia had already come under direct attack. With the usual supply lines already cut, all Allied support to the Philippines and Dutch East Indies had to be funneled through the northern Australian port of Darwin. Japan’s planners took notice of Darwin’s importance. As Japanese forces prepared to wrap up their East Indies conquest, Tokyo sent Admiral Nagumo’s powerful carrier force, Kibu Butai, into the Indian Ocean to strike the British Royal Navy at Colombo, Ceylon, and block all lines of Allied retreat from Java. Sailing close to Australia, the six carriers launched a devastating air raid against Darwin, essentially destroying the town.  Savaging ships and aircraft in the area, the Japanese sailed on to pummel the Royal Navy near Ceylon and chase the remaining ships out into the Indian Ocean.

Many people in Australian coastal ports panicked. With Kibu Butai roaming the Indian Ocean at will, residents feared further air attacks or even bombardment by battleships. Many relocated as far inland as they could afford. Such fears were prevalent in the southwestern cities off Perth and its port, Freemantle.  These offered the only practical haven to the defeated Allied Naval forces trying to escape Java.

The situation to the north continued to deteriorate. Extending their East Indies conquest, the Japanese seized the Admiralty Islands and New Britain, with its magnificent harbor of Rabaul. Landings soon followed at Lae and Salamaua on the north coast of New Guinea.

In Mid-March, 1942, President Roosevelt ordered General MacArthur to break through the Japanese blockade and take command in Australia. When he reached Melbourne, he was appalled to discover that he had few forces at his disposal. Australia’s Army was in the Middle East fighting Rommel or in Japanese POW camps in Singapore. Australia was, in fact, very vulnerable to invasion. Continued air strikes against Darwin from the former Dutch East Indies and the appearance of enemy submarines off both the east and west coasts of Australia emphasized its vulnerability.

This is the situation into which I thrust my characters in my new novel, Endure the Cruel Sun (working title). Those who have read my second novel, Hold Back the Sun, will remember some of them at once. Dutch officers, Colonel Jan Dijker and Captain Garrit Laterveer, are prisoners of the Japanese. Unfortunately for the two officers, the Nazi Gestapo had asked that they be returned to Europe by submarine. Nurse Catherine van Zweden, Garrit’s fiancé, is in a civilian internment camp. What fate does the cruel Japanese Colonel Katsura Okuma have in store for her?

Dutch intelligence in Australia learns of the Gestapo’s request as a result of Allied codebreaking. They scramble to determine if there is any possibility of rescuing the former master spy and air ace.

Jack Sewell, promoted to Lieutenant Commander, now commands the old four-stack destroyer, Rust. With Japan marshaling for a full scale invasion of New Guinea, Allied naval commanders dragoon Rust into the Royal Australian Navy for the looming naval battle to seal Australia’s fate.

I plan to publish Endure the Cruel Sun early next fall. Those who have yet to read HoldBack the Sun may want to check it out before release of the new book.

On Amazon.com, Hold Back the Sun has 131 reviews with a 4.2 out of 5 stars overall rating. Forty-three percent of the reviews are five-star.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, was released on Kindle on September 15, 2015, and a paperback version will be following.  For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.  

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Return to the Southwest Pacific

After venturing into different genres and different decades, I am returning to my first writing subject—The Second World War. Although my muse deserted me for a few months, she is back in full force, churning out scenes of combat, self-sacrifice, espionage, and romance. The venue is once again the Southwest Pacific Theater in the crucial middle months of 1942.

When I published my bestselling novel, HOLD BACK THE SUN (HBTS), I left several pieces of unfinished business in Java and Australia. My principal Dutch characters were in the hands of the Japanese conquerors. Having lost almost their entire strike force in the battles around Java, Allied naval forces were in disarray. Only in the Philippines, where General MacArthur’s Filipino-American Army still held out stubbornly on the Bataan Peninsula, had Japan’s forces been held in check.

My next novel, ENDURE THE CRUEL SUN (working title), begins about the time that HBTS concluded. Java has just fallen. Japanese forces seize islands north of Australia from the Allies. Steadily advancing eastward, a string of Japanese island air bases threatens to cut the essential shipping lanes between Pearl Harbor and Australia and New Zealand.

Having lost their Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy responds with their last ace-in-the-hole: the four aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet.  Air strikes against Japan’s outlying island bases culminate with a raid on landings in progress in New Guinea. Heavily outnumbered in ships, the Americans have one tremendous advantage: Their newly-won ability to read JN25b, the principal Japanese naval code. The Coral Sea east of Australia becomes the pivotal battleground of the Pacific War. Jack Sewell, the destroyer officer from HBTS, is in the middle of the action.

Again, I am dealing with an international cast of characters. Besides Jack, Dutch officers Jan Dijker and Garrit Laterveer, are again in play. Nurse Christine van Zweden, Garrit’s fiancé, finds herself facing an impossible choice dictated by HBTS’s arch villain, Japanese Colonel Katsura Okuma. And across the globe in Germany, the Gestapo lusts to get its hands on Dijker, formerly the British Special Operations Executive’s key spy in Occupied Holland.

Jack Sewell’s new love interest is an American Navy nurse. Her adventures include being a surgical nurse in the jungle hospitals on Bataan, escaping to Corregidor just before Bataan surrenders, and then boarding a submarine to Australia on the night before Corregidor capitulates.

I’m about a third of the way through writing ENDURE THE CRUEL SUN. I hope to publish it sometime next fall.  Look for promotional posts near the end of summer.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, was released on Kindle on September 15, 2015, and a paperback version will be following.  For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.  

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Recalling Another Lost Airliner

Today’s headlines and TV news are filled with speculation about what has happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. The Boeing 777 vanished from radar last Saturday. Each day brings new evidence and new theories of the fate of the plane and the 239 souls aboard. A map in this morning’s Washington Post shows the entire Far East with circles drawn showing how far the plane could have flown on the fuel aboard. While reading the accompanying article, I was struck by how eerily similar the MH 370 mystery is to one I uncovered while doing research for my latest novel, Hold Back the Sun.

Hold Back the Sun begins with a Pan American Clipper flying boat flight across the Pacific from San Francisco to Manila in the Philippines. When this service was begun in the 1930s, the Pacific was a vast stretch of open water with few aids to navigation, as we understand them today. Fuel capacity limited the flights to daylight island-hopping. Nights were spent in posh hotels ashore. The four-engine aircraft rode radio beacons from island to island.  The price of a passenger ticket was the equivalent of about $5,000 in today’s currency.  Only airmail contracts with the U.S. government made the flights profitable. For businessmen, cutting the trans-Pacific travel time from 30 days on a ship to five days flying made the flights attractive.

The last stop before Manila was on the U.S. controlled island of Guam. About 136 miles to the north, the Japanese-owned island of Saipan was home to a major base of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN).

At about 12:15 p.m. Manila time on July 29, 1938, The Pan Am flying boat, Hawaii Clipper, reported its noon position by radio to airline stations in Guam and the Philippines. At that time, the plane was about 582 nautical miles east-southeast of Manila and on schedule for arrival in the Philippines. No contact with the aircraft ever occurred after that transmission. The Martin 130 aircraft and its passengers and crew simply vanished. A widespread air and surface search of the projected course found no wreckage, but an oil slick was encountered. Samples of the oil were taken and tested, but proved not to be oil from the aircraft.  With war raging in China and about to begin in Europe, the fate of Hawaii Clipper and the people aboard soon faded from the news. It remained a total mystery until the end of the Pacific War.

In the late 1940s, rumors began to circulate among the relatives of the people lost on Hawaii Clipper. One story attributed to a U.S. Navy admiral was that the plane had been found in Japanese colors at Yokosuka Naval Base by occupying forces.  Another rumor suggested that IJN naval intelligence officers has alleged that they had hijacked Hawaii Clipper west of Guam and flown it to their new seaplane base on the island of Truk.  The purported motives behind this theft were to stop over three million American dollars aboard the flight from being delivered to the Chinese government by a prominent Chinese-American businessman.  Stealing the details of the latest Pratt and Whitney engines that powered the clipper was another possible reason.

The similarities of Hawaii Clipper’s loss to that of Amelia Earhart barely a year before soon spawned a number of theories and enthusiasts.  In 2000, after many years of research, Charles N. Hill published a book entitled, FIX ON THE RISING SUN: The Clipper Hijacking of 1938 –and the Ultimate M.I.A’s. Mr. Hill’s thesis was that two Saipan IJN officers hid in the plane’s baggage compartment, emerged soon after liftoff from Guam, and commandeered control of the flight. He believes that they then diverted the plane to Truk. While enroute, the Japanese officers supposedly forced the Pan Am navigator, George M. Davis, to file false position reports to make Pan Am believe that the plane remained on its planned course. Mr. Hill presents a fairly convincing case that the false position reports contained clues to point investigators to the actual destination—Truk Lagoon. Mr. Hill also documented conversations with native people on Truk in which they told of helping to bury a number of Caucasians in the foundations of an IJN hospital being built at the time.  He was unable to get government permission to dig under the foundations to test the veracity of the stories.

Mr. Hill died without ever getting to prove or disprove his theories.  Guy Noffsinger, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, has taken up the quest for the missing clipper. He has a website on the subject at http://lostclipper.com. Mr. Noffinger has also traveled to Truk and believes that he has identified the slab beneath which the crew and passengers of Hawaii Clipper are allegedly buried. He plans to return to Truk this year and is optimistic that he will be able to examine the site with ground penetrating sonar and perhaps excavate. I hope that Mr. Noffsinger is successful. Bringing closure to the descendants and relatives of the nine crew members and six passengers lost with the plane would be well worth the effort.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific.  

The Pacific War was About Oil

In the latter part of his life, U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover predicted that the next wars the United States fought would be over access to oil. His conclusions proved remarkably accurate. The last ten years have seen the U.S. involved in conflicts in the Middle East, source of some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

For several decades, the U.S. has been a net oil importer. As local reserves diminished, it proved too easy to just replace them with foreign purchases. The point that modern industrial society cannot support itself without reliable sources of energy seemed to be forgotten. Then the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s shattered our illusions. The United States had become an an oil “have-not.”

Japan faced an energy crisis in 1941 that led directly to their attack on western colonies in the Far East. Since the opening of Japan to world trade by Admiral Perry in the mid-Nineteenth Century, the country had been striving to become a modern industrialized nation. From an archaic feudal society, the country made a great leap forward into the modern world. Desiring all the trappings of a major power, Japan turned to Germany to build her army and to Great Britain to construct an up-to-date navy. Consultants from all over the world helped develop their heavy industry.

Japan lacked one key ingredient to fulfill their aspirations—a local supply natural resources. Like many nations, they were forced to purchase them abroad. The U.S. was a major player in this trade, becoming Japan’s major source of oil and the scrap iron required to produce steel. While fostering world trade, these imports created a balance of payments problem for the Japanese. They successfully negotiated this situation until the 1920s.

The Great Depression hit Japan particularly hard. The hardships being endured prompted many ultra nationalists in the armed forces to advocate seizing the needed resources from their neighbors. Everything they needed waited just over the horizon. As more and more recruits joined their ranks, these aggressive thoughts were translated into action. The semi-autonomous Kwantung Army in Korea invaded and occupied Manchuria with its rich mineral deposits. When the League of Nations protested, Japan walked out.  Then, in 1937, Japan invaded China itself,

beginning a protracted conflict.

Long committed to its “Open Door” policy concerning China, the U.S. protested. Inspired by Pearl S. Buck’s novels and Hollywood movies, many Americans held romanticized views of China. The Japanese, however, persisted in their conquests. Sentiment built in the Roosevelt administration to impose sanctions on Japan.

When Japan occupied French Indochina (now Vietnam) in 1941, Washington finally acted, freezing Japanese assets in the U.S. This had the immediate effect of shutting off exports to Japan.  The U.S. oil tap was suddenly turned off. The finite reserves of petroleum products within Japan became a wasting asset.  Japan’s civilian government began negotiations with the U.S., attempting to find an acceptable resolution to the crisis. The ultra nationalists in the Army began pushing for a military solution.

One faction advocated invading Siberia. Hitler’s armies were, after all, at the gates of Moscow. The navy argued for a quick strike to the south. The lightly defended Dutch East Indies (Indonesia today) possessed a mammoth oil industry exploiting huge underground reserves.  The oilfields on Tarakan Island yielded crude so pure that it could be burned in boilers without refining. The Royal Dutch Shell refinery at Balikpapan in Borneo was the world’s third largest, producing sufficient product to satisfy the navy’s entire needs.

Two major obstacles fell in the way of the southern plan: The British forces stationed at Fortress Singapore and the U.S. forces in the Philippine Islands. Britain was stretched to the limit in her war with Germany, but the U.S. was not yet a belligerent. Roosevelt had moved the U.S. Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor, where it could respond quicker to trouble in the Philippines.

The brilliant General Tomoyuki Yamashita devised a workable plan to capture Singapore from inland. Navy Admiral Yamamoto’s staff conceived the idea of destroying the U.S. Pacific Fleet in port at the outset of hostilities, delaying America’s intervention. Then Washington further shocked Tokyo with a demand that Japan withdraw from China before sanctions would be lifted. The civilian government in Tokyo collapsed, and General Tojo became Prime Minister. Faced with the humiliation of withdrawal or exhaustion of fuel supplies, Tojo argued for war. With the Emperor’s approval, the date for hostilities to commence was set.

For the first six months, Japan ran wild in the Far East, seizing all the territories in their ambitions. Ironically, the Dutch Oil executives adopted a “scorched earth” policy. Nothing was to be left to the invaders. They plugged oil wells, blew up pipelines and set fire to their precious refineries. When the Japanese invaded Balikpapan, they found only burnt, twisted wreckage at the oil facilities. The enraged Japanese commander ordered the massacre of the entire Caucasian population. Some were beheaded. Most were machine gunned in the surf. A similar massacre of Dutch males occurred in Tjepu, Java.

Japan soon had the oilfields back in operation and new refineries constructed. Oil was not a problem again until U.S. submarines sank a large percentage of their tankers later in the war.

The philosopher, George Santayana, observed that nations that do not study history are doomed to repeat it. After three wars to assure oil supplies, the U.S. should develop its newly discovered oil reserves and strive for energy independence.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels released and for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com.  Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun is set in the war in the Pacific.

The Blessings and Disappointments of a Long Life

By Florida Memory, via Wikimedia Commons

This week I read a novel by one of my favorite mystery writers, Faye Kellerman. In it, she was describing the parents of her protagonist. The father was 77, the wife, 75. Both were described in ways that made clear that they were elderly. These characters were the same ages as my wife, Annette, and me, but we don’t look on ourselves as elderly.

Long life can be both a blessing and a curse. Watching your children and grandchildren grow from infants to young adults can be a blessing. We are proud of all our children and grandchildren, although they are each a singular person with individual personalities. My wife and I are blessed with devoted partners who treat life as a great adventure to pursue together. We were blessed with successful careers that provided a secure retirement. We’re blessed with a shared love of vocal music and many years of singing together in church choirs. Retirement can yield the time to pursue old dreams, as I am now with my writing and Annette does with her Master Gardening.

Living many years also gives one a long view of history. In a meeting with a group of young adults a few years ago, I was asked what I thought was the most significant thing I had witnessed in my life. My answer came instantly, “The civil rights revolution.” This surprised my young listeners. Having been born after the 1960s, they had no conception of how bad circumstances were for African Americans in the south during the last years of “Jim Crow.” When the market crashed in 2008, many of us older investors didn’t panic. We’d been through downturns before and knew to ride it out. I doubt that anyone under thirty really understands living under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, as we did during the Cold War. Yet we didn’t buckle under the pressure.

Time does not always result in progress. People my age remember when Congress used to actually function. Leaders of both parties conferred with the President and worked out compromises all could live with. Politics was not nearly as nasty as it has become in recent years. Compromise was recognized as essential to the democratic process, not viewed as caving in on one’s principles. The country moved forward. Watching the dysfunction of Washington today is heartbreaking to one who loves this country.

I remain thankful for a long life and good health, but most of all for my good luck in choosing a life partner. I suppose one day we really will get old, but we’re doing everything we can to stall that inevitability.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels released and for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com.  Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One takes place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun is set in the war in the Pacific.

Getting Technical Facts Right in Fiction Writing

While enjoying a fairly new mystery thriller set more or less in the present, I read about military guards being armed with M1 carbines. This was something of a jolt for me, because I know that the early Vietnam years were the latest that U.S. armed forces regularly used this weapon. In many other novels, some by highly popular authors, I often discover similar anachronisms, such as placing in WW2 fiction weapons not then developed. I’ve seen some authors use the words revolver to describe all pistols. I have found many other questionable technical details in popular fiction. For some reason, this really bothers me, especially because the right information is so readily available today on the Internet.

I believe an author has a responsibility to make his fiction as plausible as possible. Getting the details right is essential to complete plausibility. For knowledgeable readers, and there are hoards of them out there, hitting an obviously wrong detail interrupts the flow of the prose and may cause irritation. This isn’t a good reaction for the author.

Before penning both of my novels, a spent many hours in exhaustive research. When I first began writing, this required lots of time in libraries. I treat research as a puzzle, digging for the answer I want until I discover it. Only when I’m convinced that I’m on firm ground do I plunge ahead with the writing.

The dogfights in my new novel, Hold Back the Sun provide an example. My Dutch protagonist, Captain Garret Laterveer, is flying an obsolescent Brewster Buffalo against modern Japanese Army (IJA) and Navy (IJN) fighters. I read everything I could find both in print and on the Internet about the actual experience of Dutch pilots early in the Pacific War. Surprisingly, some of them had success, especially against the Army Nakajima fighters in Malaya. The IJN Zeros were another matter. At the time, this aircraft was probably the best fighter in the world. Yet some Dutch pilots did shoot them down. In my research, I found that the Brewster aircraft had a number of the same strengths and weaknesses of the P-40 fighters used successfully against Zeros by the Flying Tigers. Applying artistic license, I allowed the Dutch to use Flying Tiger tactics.

I know the old saw, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story,” and I have used it myself to alter history to make the plot go the way I want it. However, I do not believe this justifies incomplete research. Our readers deserve our best efforts.

Birth of a Novel

Yesterday, we successfully launched the paperback version of my new novel, Hold Back the Sun. This was my first experience of a formal launch event, but I really enjoyed it. After reading several passages that introduced the main characters and set the tone for the story, I invited the guests to ask questions. Several people asked, “How long does it take to write a novel?”

The answer to this question varies with individual books. Like mammals, different novels have different gestation periods, varying by size. Gerbils take about 25 days from conception to birth; cats require about 64; Horses, 340; African elephants, 645. In similar fashion, the bigger the book, the longer it takes to complete it.

My first published novel, Fall Eagle One required about three years from conception to final draft. The nature of my writing requires somewhat exhaustive historical research. Having the Internet available was a Godsend to my research. Actual writing took a little over a year, while editing and rewriting under the guidance of a skilled editor required several more months before we were ready to shop the manuscript. 

Hold Back the Sun took a little longer. My interest in the exploits of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet early in WWII was sparked in the mid 1960s by reading John Toland’s popular history, But Not in Shame. In the late 1970s, I read The Lonely Ships, Edwin P. Hoyt’s history of the Asiatic Fleet. The germ of an idea for a novel started tickling my mind. I was on active duty in the Navy, so my time for exploring the subject was limited. Nevertheless, I began doing literary research and taking notes on the places I visited in Hawaii and Asia. I began serious writing about 1980 during off duty hours while serving a tour without my family. The result of this effort was a manuscript that was far too long to expect to be published as a debut novel. New writing ideas drew my attention, so Hold Back the Sun languished in my computer for several years. However, I was very attached to the story and always meant to publish it when the opportunity arose.

Once Fall Eagle One achieved some success, I decided to buckle down and rewrite Hold Back the Sun. Using skills learned from my editor, I pared the manuscript and completely rewrote the last third of the story. It took me about seven months of hard work to get to the point of publication. The success of the Kindle e-book (currently #6 in historical fiction-Asian) suggests that it was worth the effort.

Being in my late seventies, I no longer have the luxury of a taking a lot of time for my future works. Fortunately, I can now do most of my research by computer without leaving my desk. I plan to publish one new book every year for as long as I’m physically able.  I hope that my readers will continue to enjoy them.

Note: Both of Warren’s novels are Amazon Kindle Bestsellers Hold Back the Sun is #6 on historical fiction: Asian and #56 in action-adventure: war and military. Fall Eagle One is #56 on action-adventure/war and military.