
Saving Bravo
The Greatest Rescue Mission in Navy SEAL History
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Narrated by:
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Henry Strozier
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By:
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Stephan Talty
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 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 among 30,000 enemy troops and tanks. Airborne rescue missions fail, killing 11 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 11 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 Drawing from dozens of interviews and access to unpublished papers, Saving Bravo is the riveting story of one of the greatest rescue missions in the history of the Special Forces.
©2018 Stephan Talty (P)2018 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















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Great story
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Excellent Book
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My only complaint was that Appendix B follow up of two others from that time who were not so lucky left the end on a sad note. I could wish that the author had arranged his information so that the very last person followed had an upbeat ending.
There were sad tears, touching tears, and happy tears. If you are a person who cries when reading true stories you need to have tissues handy.
I have the Audible audiobook version. It was well worth the time to listen all the way through in one sitting. I couldn't leave it.
I had to finish it in one sitting.
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But, this was to be no easy rescue. Unbeknownst to the rescue team, this was in the buildup to the Tet Offensive and he had landed right in one of the main corridors of troops and materiel heading south. The strange thing was that military intelligence knew something about what what was happening but, even after the failure of several rescue attempts refused to share the information with the rescue teams. The story has been written into a previous book and made into a movie, Bat*21, but this account involves much more extensive research using many previously unavailable primary and secondary sources and interviews with many of the participants. The result is not just a story of a heroic rescue, but a more complete account of everything from the miscommunications, the mistakes, the controversies over the high costs in human lives, the internal politics involved, as well as the actual rescue and the amazing way Hambleton escaped detection and moved out of the area and close to a South Vietnamese base. After several failures and the loss of so many lives, the Air Force had been ready to give up but Navy SEAL Thomas Norris and a Vietnamese guide, Nguyen Van Kiet, volunteered, even insisted on going in on foot. They went far past the limits of their orders, barely avoiding enemy soldiers over several days while Hambleton is being guided by an improvised radio code based on his love of golf towards a meeting point, though when they meet he is so malnourished that he is barely alive and is hallucinating.
Of course, as with most of this type of documentary literature, the author includes brief biographies of the main characters involved at various points in the narrative. The last part also includes some assessment of the movie and of the effect on Hambleton afterwards, both positive and negative. There is some follow up with the families of those killed or missing as a result of the several rescue attempts. All in all, it’s a well-rounded account that is interesting to anyone interested in military history or just in adventure stories.
Remake
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Accurate details!
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The real story of Bat 21
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Poor choice of Narrator
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Excellent
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A fine memoir presented with a fine performance
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excellent book
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