The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Midnight Flyboys: The American Bomber Crews and Allied Secret Agents Who Aided the French Resistance in World War II by Bruce Henderson

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Midnight Flyboys: The American Bomber Crews and Allied Secret Agents Who Aided the French Resistance in World War II by Bruce Henderson https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1668051419 Brucehendersonbooks.com The untold history of a top-secret operation in the run-up to D-Day in which American flyers and Allied spies carried out some of the most daring cloak-and-dagger operations of World War II. In 1943, the OSS—precursor to the CIA—came up with a plan to increase its support to the French resistance forces that were fighting the Nazis. To start, the OSS recruited some of the best American bomber pilots and crews to a secret airfield twenty miles west of London and briefed them on the intended mission. Given a choice to stay or leave, every airman volunteered for what became known as Operation Carpetbagger. Their dangerous plan called for a new kind of flying: taking their B-24 Liberator bombers in the middle of the night across the English Channel and down to extremely low altitudes in Nazi-occupied France to find drop zones in dark fields. On the ground, resistance members waited to receive steel containers filled with everything from rifles and hand grenades to medicine and bicycle tires. Some nights, the flyers also dropped Allied secret agents by parachute to assist the French partisans. Though their story remained classified for more than fifty years, the Carpetbaggers ultimately received a Presidential Unit Citation from the US military, which declared: “it is safe to say that no group of this size has made a greater contribution to the war effort.” Along with other members of the wartime OSS, they were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Based on exclusive research and interviews, the definitive story of these heroic flyers—and of the brave secret agents and resistance leaders they aided—can now be told. Written in Bruce Henderson’s “spellbinding” (USA TODAY) prose, Midnight Flyboys is an astonishing tale of patriotism, courage, and sacrifice.About the author Bruce Henderson is the author of more than twenty nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller AND THE SEA WILL TELL, which was made into a highly-rated TV series. His latest book, SONS AND SOLDIERS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE JEWS WHO ESCAPED THE NAZIS AND RETURNED WITH THE U.S. ARMY TO FIGHT HITLER, hit the New York Times Bestseller List in 2018. Henderson's previous books include RESCUE AT LOS BANOS: THE MOST DARING PRISON CAMP RAID OF WORLD WAR II, and HERO FOUND: THE GREATEST POW ESCAPE OF THE VIETNAM WAR, a national bestseller which told the true story of U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, with whom Henderson served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CVA-61) during Vietnam. Henderson is also the author of TRACE EVIDENCE: THE HUNT FOR THE I-5 SERIAL KILLER and FATAL NORTH: MURDER AND SURVIVAL ON THE FIRST NORTH POLE EXPEDITION. An award-winning journalist and author, he has taught reporting and writing at USC School of Journalism and Stanford University.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hello, Zvoss here. The Chris Vos here with the Chris Vos show. Welcome to the big show. As always, the Chris Voss shows, family that loves you, but doesn't judge at least not as harsh to the rest of the world.

As always, the Chris Foss show. Refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreach.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Jamie, amazing young man, the show. Bruce Henderson joins us. He's the author of the latest book to come out. Midnight Fly Boys, the American bomber crews and allied secret agents who aided the French resistance in World

War II out November 11th, 2025. We're meeting with him, some of his insights, some of the things he learned, developing story, and all that good stuff. He's the author of more than 20 non-fiction books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, and The Sea Will Tell, which was made into a highly rated TV series. His latest book, Sons of Soldiers, The Story of Untold, Story of the Jews who escaped the Nazis and returned with the U.S. Army to fight Hitler, hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2018. He's got several other books that cover military actions and all sorts of stuff that happened. Welcome the show. How are you, Bruce? Hey, Chris. Thanks. Good to be here. It's good to have you. Give us your dot-coms. Where do you

want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah, my website, Bruce Henderson, books. dot com. I've got more information about this book and my other books as well. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's Inside Your New Book, Please? Midnight Flyboys tells the story of what was a top secret operation that began in late 43, about eight or nine months before what we now know was D-Day. And the thought was that they had to quickly strengthen the French resistance forces prior to our soldiers in hitting the beaches at Normandy because they wanted the resistance to be organized. They wanted it to be armed. They wanted it to have the communications that it needed in order to commit sabotage acts

behind enemy lines to stop German reinforcements from rushing to the beachheads. And it was a rather urgent thing that Eisenhower put the orders out and said, we've got to get some of our planes involved in this, and they chose three squadrons of B-24 liberators, which are known as bombers, but in this case, they became something a lot more. And what more did they become? They were, the bombers were trained, the pilots, I should say, were trained to fly the bombers at high altitudes in large formations. We've all seen those pictures of bombing deep inside Germany.

And instead, this mission called for a plane singly solo missions at night time. They painted the planes black to try to keep them from being seen. And went in, had to go very low, 600, 700 feet to drop the parachutes so they would open and very slow so the parachutes would open properly over the target area, which was really just a little field in the middle of nowhere that was lit by a couple of lanterns by the partisans who were waiting to get these parachuted supplies. And it was also important to land some more of these allied agents, many of them British-strained, some Americans, OSS,

and these folks, men and women, I should say, had the expertise that the resistance people needed. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I guess they had weapons and whatever else they needed to create sabotage, huh? Each group, and there were about 100 resistance networks in France. But, you know, from very small to very large, to organize to unorganized. And they had to be pulled together into some kind of a cohesive unit that could operate. The left needed to know what the right was doing. And this was not easy. Some of the resistance folks were communists. Some were anti-communists. Some love to Gaul, some hated de Gaul. What Eisenhower wanted was everybody pulling in the same direction to support and assist the Allied landings on the coast of France. You know, we think about Normandy, but we don't hear a lot too much about these secret things. I imagine they kept a secret, you know, so that people weren't aware of it.

Has it been kept a secret this whole time? I mean, you finally had covered it? It was not declassified for 50 years after the war. And in fact, the only way I, the reason it was, honestly, I think it was probably overclassified. But the fact that it was an intelligence operation, OSS, which soon became the CIA, right after the war, you know, they just said, no, we don't want anyone talking about how we organize this and what are. strategies are. And so the guys who flew these planes, and it was so dangerous, they could not only get shot down by nighttime German fighters, radar equip, they could get shot out of the sky by the ground anti-aircraft fire. They also, because they were flying so low and slow at night,

could crash into a hillside, clip breeze, and go in that way. But these guys, after they did this, and the war was won and were sent home, they were told never to speak about what they had done during the war. And for the most part, they all took that very seriously. And in fact, I've reached out to some of the families. And, you know, many of these guys went to their graves without even telling their own kids or anybody what they had done in the war. So it wasn't until about the mid-1990s that they finally got recognition. They were given the Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest civilian award.

and to honor what they had done and started to have reunions and me with their buddies and talk about what they'd done. But that doesn't mean that their entire story was in one place for somebody like me to go in and read. We had to piece it together, you know, not only archivally, but through families. And unfortunately, there's only three of these fellows still alive who flew these missions, and they're 99 and 100. And, you know, we have to, I always reach out to the families. Do they have a suitcase in the attic that has dad or grandpa or their uncle's flight stuff. And it's amazing how many people have that kind of stuff. And, you know, we pull it together. Did they leave a journal? Did they leave a diary? Did they write letters that were saved? You know, my own

family, my grandmother, saved letters from her youngest son in an old suitcase that I found when I was 10 years old in one of her, you know, closets. And I pulled it out. And every letter, hundred of them from the time he went into flight training until two days before his last mission from which he didn't return. So there are a lot, you know, there's a lot out there, but you've got to go digging for it. Did that give you this, you know, you've written a lot of books on nonfiction history and military operations? Was that what piqued your interest, maybe, or influenced you? Was finding that? I really, I really think so. And certainly the last, let me, I admit that in my career early on. I wrote true crime. That was my number one New York Times book. I wrote

Arctic Adventure. I wrote, you know, I did a book with Joe Montana, for God's sakes. So I was a commercial author, but the last five or six books I've written are World War II. And I'll tell you from the first one, I just got into this. There were a lot more of those vets around. Unfortunately, they're really thinning out now. But I just love them. I love them. I love going to their city, spending a few days, breaking bread with them, talking to them. And I just made, and I'm sure it goes back to that, what, obsession or that, trying to find out more about this uncle I never knew and what he did in the war. And I think that that's really brought me on the path that I'm at now.

And my plan now is to just keep with World War II and keep, and you know, it's a younger generations that are reading it. Obviously, these older folks. I mean, if we just had to sell it to the World War II generation, there wouldn't be that many books sold, but new generations are embracing this history, which is fabulous because there are important lessons here, you know, that they taught us. There's some segments of our society that's embracing the other sides. Yeah, but I mean, the duty, the commitment, the mission. I mean, America was pulling all. together in World War II. And I've got to say, that's the beauty of it.

It's okay, is it black and white? Is it good against evil? And yeah, guess the good guys won. Can you imagine what, you know, that globe would have looked like back then if they had lost? I mean, so the fact that they went to war and were willing to do that to defend democracy,

I just feel it's a lesson that we should never forget, and it's something we shouldn't let be in vain. Yeah, most definitely. in 1943 this was this was they were from the OSS precursor the CIA tell us about that and what that was about the way that worked was the the resistance forces in France all had these radios that were supplied by the OSS and by the British intelligence and they could get messages on what they needed to London and at the headquarters of the OSS in London they would put together, you know, it would be a shopping list. Okay, this group here 200 miles south of

Paris needs the following. Ammonition for these kind of guns. A couple of bicycle tires because they're couriers use bicycles and we need to get them that. And so they'd be very specific shopping lists that would then be radioed or sent to the secret airbase in England that these planes flew out of. No other activity was at this air base. Nobody else was allowed into the base. They were then loaded into 300. They were steel canisters that could hold 300 pounds of anything, supplies, ammo, bicycle tires, whatever you needed. And each bomber could carry a dozen of these. And they loaded them into that bomber in the bomb bay, just like a rack of bombs.

And then when they got over the target and the bombadier pressed the button only instead of dropping bombs, he was dropping these containers, each one of which was attached to a parachute. I wanted in this book also to show what happened. How was that, was that equipment used? And really importantly, what about those two or three agents that jumped in through the hole in the fuselage of those planes too on those dark nights? Where did they go? What were their fates? What did they do?

And we follow, I follow several of them. Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot that can happen on an eyedrop like that. You can fall into a tree. You know, you can get seen by the enemy. It's quite the little effort there. And I love the fact that a good number of these agents were women. And it's difficult in World War II stories, honestly, to get that many women. The characters involved because they weren't generally combatants like they are today. And, you know, we end up being with them at home and writing letters. And that's all right. That's important. to but i love the fact that the british and american intelligence services understood there was a real value in getting women agents on the ground there because a woman on a bicycle alone going from this village to that village carrying a secret message was on the surface at least less suspicious to the german soldiers that were than a guy or two guys would have been and they usually didn't search them for a pass, you know, what, you have a pass, or do you not have a

pass? And so the women were, and they were just as brave. They were in there in the fighting as well. One of them I cover a woman named Nancy Wake. And one of the, one of the partisans she fought with later said that she was the most feminine woman I'd ever met. And then when the fighting started, she fought like five men. Wow. You know, women were in World War II, a bit of not only a distraction, but you know, they got a pass. We've had some authors on the, talked about the Jewish slums in

Poland and stuff like that. And the, and the Jewish women would, you know, kind of flirt with the guards who would contain the slum. And they would, you know, be let out. And they would go do excursions of missions, sometimes

assassination, sometimes activities blowing stuff up, getting food, getting guns. And sometimes they would bring contraband back to the Jewish slums. And by flirting with the guards, the guards would, you know, would guard, oh, do you want me to carry that for you? And they're literally carrying bags of guns. I know, that's it. You know, and that's exactly what these female agents were doing. Very funny. And, of course, let's not forget, we had the wash, the women air service pilots who in the United States were delivering. I mean, they were flying the biggest bombers and the fastest

fighters we had for delivering them. But weren't in combat. doing it and that was you know that was not their fault yeah interesting story what how did you find this what made it appeal to you what it struck you in in why this should be written i never knew i had never heard of this i've written what six world war two books and i never heard of this operation uh it's amazing that 80 years after that war were still things are popping up that are untold honestly never never reported i had a a relative of one of the pilots, and it was called Operation Carpetbaggers, one of the carpetbagger pilots who was deceased, but the family found in an attic in a trunk, some of his stuff, just like I did

my uncle's suitcase. And they, this relative had read one of my other books and brought it to my attention and said, would I be interested in this? I really piqued my interest. and anything more that you have going on maybe for future books maybe you're working on I have to tell you I'm actually looking at doing the book about my uncle and what happened to him and it turns out my I've learned over the years and I did luckily get into some of the reunions with some of the pilots that flew with them unfortunately they're all gone now but it was a legendary group of P51 Mustang pilots flying out of England, they were the first long-range fighters to be able to escort those

bombers all the way to Berlin, and they kind of changed the air war in Europe. And I'm planning to take that on for my next book. I'm going for bomber pilots, parachuting supplies and agents now to fighter pilots. The P-51 was largely responsible for defeating the Luftwaffe in the skies. I think that'll be an exciting story. That definitely should be exciting. When I was a kid, I used to love the air battles and stuff and stories of the Red Baron and, you know, all that. Yeah. And it used to be fun to build the planes, the little biplanes or whatever they were. And, yeah, I mean, I think people are still nostalgic for that time and era.

And it was definitely a hell of time or bravery. I like how you, I believe you published the book on Veterans Day, right? Yeah, that was really something. I got to say my publisher a couple years ago, of course, when I was still working on the book, he said, you know, we could do it on Father's Day. veterans day. And I said, let's do Veterans Day. That's a good hook. And I've got some things to say about those vets. And by the way, it's a little late, day late, but happy Veterans Day Day to every veteran. And I don't mean, I mean, whether you're in a war or not, I served. I was in the

Navy. And I'm, you know, always get calls from my buddies wishing me happy Veterans Day. So I say the same to everybody else. Yeah, we had a wonderful young man on the show. He's not quite young but that's how we roll on the show yesterday and and he was the first show and he came in wearing his his hat from his service and i don't know what wars he fought in or whatever but i don't think you would have been world war two i shouldn't have asked him but he asked he goes it's yeah maybe but he had 24 years of service and he asked me he goes you you know it's veterans day today you might have wear my hat for just the first few minutes of the show if that's okay i'm like sir you can wear your hat all damn show long if you were in the right to wear wherever the

hell you want you can keep it on in church as far as I'm concerned yeah yeah it was such a great time and I mean I don't know that it was a great time I mean there was death and and hell and all that that goes on during war but it was such an interesting time to see the bravery coming against Americans fighting against a common enemy recognizing what was evil and wrong in the world and you know i mean the one thing man can learn from his history his man never learns from his history and thereby we go round and round and we really get to knock this shit off just seeing people i mean embracing nazism embracing germanyism authoritarianism fascism is really disturbing to see that and you're seeing it in open

context and communications and chatter with people in fact there's a huge civil war in the GOP going on right now in 2025 between the Nazi faction and two other factions inside and, you know, some, some feel Trump's not being Nazi enough. It's kind of an interesting thing that's going on in our world. So we'll see how that all turns out. We may, we may get to find out what, what would have happened if Nazism and invaded and taken over America. My earlier, an earlier book I did was called Sons and Soldiers, and it was about the Ritchie Boys. If you heard of them, 60 Minutes did follow. picked it up after the book came out.

These were a group of German-born Jews, who as boys in the 1930s were their families sent them out. And some of them ended up in England. A lot of them came to the United States and lived with, and some of their families never got out. Lived with relatives or whatnot. And then when the war came out started, they were young men, but they were Germans. Even though they were Jews, they were Germans and they were considered enemy aliens. They weren't suited for military service, so the government thought. Then, very quickly, we got into the war and we realized we needed guys with the skills of the German language

to be able to interrogate and interview prisoners of war that we were taking. So where do we find these guys? Oh, we have them here. We're not using them. So they brought them into a camp. They made them naturalized citizens. They trained them. They put them in the army, and they sent them out on Richie Boy teams.

It was Camp Ritchie, which is where they were trained in Maryland. And small teams that were attached to even the frontline combat units, because that was really the best place to talk to and get information from a captured prisoner when they're afraid, hungry, not sure what's going to happen to them. And so sitting down, and there were a number of them, this was in 2017, still alive and I got to go out and talk to them and interview. And I'm telling you, it was a little scary when I heard what was happening. You know, of course, the parallels with what was happening in Germany in the early mid-30s.

I mean, they really thought this was a fad. It would go away. I mean, Germany had a pretty solid republic at the time when Hitler came. And, you know, people just thought, oh, okay, this isn't going to last very long. And how it turned really on a dime so quickly and became this really cancerous evil empire. Yeah. Anything more we want to tease out about the book before we go? No, I'm good. I think it's, I write narrative nonfiction, and what that means is it reads like a novel, but it's all true, and I think you'll find it action-packed and have some, you know, very colorful characters in it. And they weren't colorful characters back then. Those are, those people were just salt to the earth.

So thank you for sharing your story and their story as well, Bruce. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And where can people find out more about you on the interwebs? Bruce Hendersonbooks.com. A lot of information on the book and links to buy the book, which is available anywhere books are sold.

Folks ordered it up wherever books are sold. Midnight Fly Boys, the American bomber crews and allied secret agents who aided the French resistance in World War II. Thanks for us for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forteous, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss, one on the TikTok, and all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out. Great show, Bruce.