The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Operation Vengeance: The Astonishing Aerial Ambush That Changed World War II by Dan Hampton

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Operation Vengeance: The Astonishing Aerial Ambush That Changed World War II by Dan Hampton The New York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot delivers an electrifying narrative account of the top-secret U.S. mission to kill Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese commander who masterminded Pearl Harbor. In 1943, the United States military began to plan one of the most dramatic secret missions of World War II. Its code name was Operation Vengeance. Naval Intelligence had intercepted the itinerary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, whose stealth attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated America’s entry into the war. Harvard-educated, Yamamoto was a close confidant of Emperor Hirohito and a brilliant tactician who epitomized Japanese military might. On April 18th, the U.S. discovered, he would travel to Rabaul in the South Pacific to visit Japanese troops, then fly to the Japanese airfield at Balalale, 400 miles to the southeast. Set into motion, the Americans’ plan was one of the most tactically difficult operations of the war. To avoid detection, U.S. pilots had to embark on a circuitous, 1,000-mile odyssey that would test not only their skills but the physical integrity of their planes. The timing was also crucial: the slightest miscalculation, even by a few minutes—or a delay on the famously punctual Yamamoto’s end—meant the entire plan would collapse, endangering American lives. But if these remarkable pilots succeeded, they could help turn the tide of the war—and greatly boost Allied morale. Informed by deep archival research and his experience as a decorated combat pilot, Operation Vengeance focuses on the mission’s pilots and recreates the moment-by-moment drama they experienced in the air. Hampton recreates this epic event in thrilling detail, and provides groundbreaking evidence about what really happened that day. About Dan Hampton Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Dan Hampton flew 151 combat missions during his twenty years (1986-2006) in the United States Air Force. For his service in the Iraq War, Kosovo conflict, and first Gulf War, Col. Hampton received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor, a Purple Heart, eight Air Medals with Valor, five Meritorious Service medals, and numerous other citations. He is a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, USN Top Gun School (TOGS), and USAF Special Operations School. A frequent guest analyst on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC discussing foreign affairs, military, aviation, and intelligence issues, he has published in Aviation History, the Journal of Electronic Defense, Air Force Magazine, Vietnam magazine, and Airpower magazine, and written several classified tactical works for the USAF Weapons Review. He is the author of the national bestsellers Viper Pilot and Lords of the Sky, as well as a novel, The Mercenary.

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on your phone of all the amazing authors, books, and people that we interview on The Chris Voss Show. Today, we have a most excellent author. He is author of a multitude of books. Like, I couldn't even count that high. He has so many books, and he is a New York Times and international bestseller. His name is Dan Hampton, and he is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant. Colonel Dan Hampton is one of the most decorated fighter pilots since the Vietnam War. How's that? He was awarded a Purple Heart and four Distinguished Flying Crosses with valor. Throughout his 20-year career, he flew 151 combat missions in the Middle East during both Gophors and Kosovo. He's a graduate of the Elite U.S. Air Force Academy, Fighter Weapons School, and USN Top Gun School, and U.S. Air Force Special Operations School.

Dan has lived abroad in Europe, in the Middle East, and was an exchange officer with the Egyptian Air Force. Welcome to the show. How are you doing, Dan? Chris, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm glad you asked me, and let's get to it. Thanks. Thanks, man. That's an impressive resume, dude. That seriously is. So you've written this book, and the book that you've written that just got launched, published out this week, so you definitely want to pick this baby up, is Operation Vengeance, the astonishing aerial ambush that changed World War II. Tell us what brought you to write the book and what the overview it is.

Well, the book is about the killing of Admiral Yamamoto, who was the head of the Japanese Combined Fleet. More to the point, for Americans, he was the guy that planned the attack on Pearl Harbor that got us into World War II. So we had quite a grudge against this guy. In fact, he was the most hated man in America in 1942, according to time, I think. Everybody wanted to see this guy dead for different reasons. And we had a unique opportunity to go get him because we knew exactly where he would be at a certain time on one day. And so they threw this mission together to go get the guy. As with most of my books, Chris, it's because I get into it based on the research that I'm doing for something else. And I had run across some obscure references to this.

I knew about it, but not much while I was doing a previous book. And it occurred to me that, hey, if I could craft it just right and put people into the cockpit like I like to do, it could be a book itself. And sure enough, it is. This is the great thing about your books. You have a lot of experience of what that's like. You know, I grew up as a kid reading about a red Baron Baba black sheep was one of my things. I, you know, I read a lot of books about the Marines and the beaches and air force when I

was a kid and the lore and the, and the, and the experience of what went on there and battle and everything, you know, just seemed so glorious to me at the time. And so you have a lot of this from your experience, and so you can put, you know, those into the books and what the story's about. So can you give us a layout of the story of Operation Vengeance? Yeah, essentially, this is, we got into the Pacific, as everybody knows, right after Pearl Harbor. There was the Doolittle Raid. There was the Battle of the Coral Sea. There was the Battle of Midway.

And then the Americans finally got a little bit of breathing room because of the Battle of Midway and were able to take a couple of deep breaths and begin to fight back. And they began to fight back on a tiny little island nobody had heard about called Guadalcanal. And because we were able to hold on on Guadalcanal, we could now use that island as the base for other things in the Pacific, including this mission. If we hadn't captured Guadalcanal, this mission never would have been possible. Lots of great stories out there about that the pacific the hbo miniseries probably the best one i've ever seen um anyway these pilots now could range around and fight the japanese and attack you know when they needed to and so uh when when the opportunity presented itself when we knew where he was going to be for one day at a certain time they said hey you know

we've got the planes we've got the pilots let's see if we can throw this together and go get the the sob because he deserves it and was this like chomping the head off the snake basically this guy was the top dog and and if they knew if they hit him it would make a difference he wasn't he wasn't really the top dog He was the commander-in-chief of the combined fleet. And the army, the Japanese army really controlled Japan, not the Japanese Navy. But he was the best admiral that they had. And he was the one that knew the most probably about the Americans and how we thought and how we fought. He lived here. You know, he knew us. He knew what we were capable of, which is why he knew he didn't have much time to win

because he knew what would happen if he didn't win very quickly. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. The interesting thing about killing him was, I think, and I put this in the book, that shortened the war, all right? Or at least made it less costly than it was, because as smart as this guy was and as much as he knew about us, he would have made our eventual victories even more bloody. So how many people are alive today because their fathers and grandfathers didn't die in the Pacific because of this mission? That's the interesting point.

That's pretty amazing. So did they succeed in the mission? Yes. So on April 18th in 1943, exactly one year to the day after the Doolittle mission over Tokyo, these guys took off. They flew 400 and something miles over water without landmarks to intercept Yamamoto as he was descending to land into an airfield on Bougainville. Like I said, up from the Solomons. And the amazing thing about the flying is, and I try again, I got this into the book as well. I mean, I was a jet pilot. I had satellites and GPS and all sorts of other cool toys. The guy that led this mission, a major named John Mitchell, he had a wristwatch and he had a compass,

a big Navy compass that he had the Navy mount in his cockpit. That's what he had in a map. Okay. And he had put all this together, you know, just, just basically the day before to make this happen to most most of these guys, it was just another combat mission. To John Mitchell, it was. To Rex Barber, the guy that shot Yamamoto, it was. But it still doesn't take away anything from the sheer piloting skill and airmanship to get these guys 400 miles deep into enemy territory, over water, no landmarks within a minute of when they needed to be there it's amazing

yeah that's quite extraordinary it's amazing the stuff our our forefathers i guess you call did in world war ii and it's like yeah straps and gasolines uh tanks on there and yeah we'll make that fly we'll just make that work yeah people people need to remember that when they they deal with america you know the japanese and others since and even now think, yeah, it's a chaotic place. They can never get themselves together. They're weak. They're this, they're that. And yet we always pull through and just spank the crap out of everybody that tries to mess with us.

And that's certainly what you just said is very, very true. Americans are superb at improvising. And when push comes to shove, we'll make it happen. And he did. Yeah. I remember reading the books back then of the taking of the islands, the Pacific Islands. And it was atrocious, the cost of the Marines that would be piled up on the beach. Like if you knew you were in the first like one to five or one to seven marines that were in the first one

to seven waves going on the beach you knew your body was just going to be used as as cover for the next guy um it was just it was just and the bravery of them just to just to be like well go for it we're marines um and fight over those stupid little islands. Yeah, we owe those guys a lot. And one of my biggest purposes for writing these books is to remind people of that. And I hope they do. I hope they read this and they think, wow, we owe these guys a huge debt. So let's remember them. Yeah.

In fact, I was reading recently about how there was a couple scientists that were trying to get ahold of the president and they were trying to get him not to drop the bomb, the two bombs, and maybe dump them into the Bay of Japan or something along those lines, something to do a show of force without killing so many people. And there's always been that. And recently I saw the Hiroshima annual thing that they do, the destruction of hiroshima and it's always that interesting thing of dealing with like um should we have done that and and and uh was it the right thing to do but honestly when you look at what was going on back

then from what i read of history and what you read of history the japanese were man they were i mean there was just no stopping them they They were just going to keep on coming. And even for us to land on there and try and fight them in Japan was just going to be a bloodbath for our people. Yeah, to me, that's the nail in that debate. You know, it's all well and good 80 years later to look back and second guess these people. And the sort of folks that do that really don't understand history. If they think that 5 million casualties is worth not

dropping the bombs and ending the war. Now, having been through several wars myself, I'll tell you, I personally think war is absolutely, absolutely the last answer. I don't ever want to do it again. Okay. But sometimes it's necessary. And in the case of World War II, I think this is why this is such a, still a popular subject with everyone, because it was black and white, because it was a war that had to be fought. Everyone since then, including all the ones I was in, you could argue six ways from Sunday about it. This one, we had to do it. And if we didn't do it to them, they were by God going to do it to us. And the Japanese were not the Germans. The Germans would eventually get to the

point as they did, and they'd roll over and say, okay, we give up. The Japanese weren't going to do that. There was no way short of invading the home islands which as i said would have cost four million japanese lives and a million american lives yeah or bombs which is why they did it i mean they didn't even they didn't even capitulate after the first one was dropped yeah that should tell you a lot right we had to stop the second one and they like we're gonna fight on and finally the emperor you know grew a spine and said no no this is this isn't going to end well we've got to stop it now and he did yeah and in the stories of that came out of there i mean i grew up uh uh building ships from the midway ships and reading all about

the stuff so i i had a love of of the stories that came out of there but yeah they attacked us and i think the reason for them to sneak attack us from the Pearl Harbor thing was to try and cripple us, and probably from this guy that they killed, to try and make it so that it would make it even harder for us to fight back if they succeeded. Well, that was Yamamoto's plan. As I said, he knew America, he knew Americans.

To paraphrase him, the actual quotes in the book, but he said something like, if you make me go to war with the United States, I'll run wild for six months or a year, but after that, I can make no promises because he knew very well how angry and vengeful this country could be. And he also knew our industrial capacity. And so his plan then at Pearl Harbor and also at Midway was one massive strike, you know, one huge strike, let's wipe out their ability to fight back. And then we can talk about peace. And as long as we get to hold on to the territory we've captured with the oil and the rubber and everything else that we need, we can have peace with the Americans. That was a miscalculation because there was never going to be peace after Pearl Harbor. But that was his thought. And that's a very Japanese, imperial Japanese mindset, the massive sudden blow. They did it against the Russians, you know, at the turn of the last century. They did it against the Chinese. That's a very, a very Japanese thing to do. And that's what Midway was all about. He wanted to lure the fleet out into the middle of the ocean and then destroy

it with aircraft carriers and battleships. Didn't work out very well for him though. So they get to the, they get to the island, they got it timed down to the minute. You know, I imagine once they get in the airspace, it's going to be known that they're there. So they don't have time to just go circle around and be like, we're just waiting to kill this dude, right? Well, yeah. They knew that there would be, once they hit Bougainville, that obviously fighters would be scrambled, they thought. And they anticipated. There were 80 Japanese zero fighters stationed on that island.

And that's why John Mitchell, there were 16 of these guys in four groups of four. We called them four ships. And Mitchell and 11 other guys were going to climb up as soon as they, because they were at 50 feet, 100 feet over the water to avoid detection once they hit empress augusta bay the 12 of them were going to climb up and go after the japanese zeros they were looking forward to going 12 against 80 that should tell you a lot about how these guys thought uh fighter pilots anyway and the other four were then going to go after the bomber they only expected one bomber.

Turns out there were two, and two of the four guys that were supposed to go after the bombers turned back because they couldn't get their external, one guy couldn't get his external fuel tank off, and he didn't want to go into combat with a tank full of gas hanging off of his belly. Oh, wow. I think at that point I would have gone anyway, but he didn't. So now there's only two P-38s, and now they see that there's two bombers.

And you're right, they don't have much time, you know, because it's like kicking a hornet's nest. Those 80 Japanese fighters are going to come up and try to get them very quick. The whole thing lasted like nine minutes from start to finish, and the actual Yamamoto shoot-down was about two minutes. Wow. start to start to finish and the actual yamamoto shoot down was about two minutes wow so uh so they had to they had to do that old technique they used to do where they had to strap on extra fuel tanks to get those boys in and out of there huh they never would have made it otherwise yeah there was

even as as long range as the p38 was john mitchell had to get extra tanks brought in the night before and his ground crew stayed up all night uh getting these extra tanks bolted onto these these p38s they had like uh 781 gallons altogether of fuel which to me as a jet pilot you know that's what i would land with but uh you know that's that's what they had and of those 781 gallons 736 were accounted for for the flight up you know in the flight back and then i think he only had 45 gallons left over for combat which is about six and a half minutes that's crazy man they don't have much time to do it at all that is crazy and so you tell the story of how they go into this. You lay out the characters, the people who flew the planes and stuff.

Do you focus on just a few of the characters or all 11? Or how does the story go? Well, the story starts out in the cockpit. You're actually sitting in the cockpit with Rex Barber. He's one of the P-38 pilots. And he's the man that eventually shoots down Yamamoto. And so the way I like to write books is I'll do an action chapter, I like to call it, and a background chapter or something else. So, you know, you get tied up in the action, and then you get a little break while you read about why they're there or

who they are or the historical context, and then you get back into the while you read about why they're there or who they are or the historical context. And then you get back into the action. I find that sort of sawtooth rhythm keeps people, you know, turning pages. And I was very fortunate in that Rex Barber's son and his grandson have all of their dad's stuff. And I was able to use all of that. I was able to use a couple of P-38s, flyable P-38s, so that, you know, I could put the reader into the cockpit and use the switches. And this is how it works. This is how it felt and smelled. I found the oldest living P-38 pilot out in Colorado. He was 98. And he was a huge help in saying, yeah, we said that, or we'd never say

that. Or how the switch in your plane that you were in was like this, but in the P-38 we flew, it was over here. And this is what it smelled like and felt like and all those things that I think really put people into the action. Yeah. It gives people that textual feel when they read the book and stuff. I was listening to some of the audio from it, and yeah, you're very descriptive, and you do a really good job of just making, you paint the whole picture like you're in a movie, and so you get a good feel for it. You've written a lot of books, The Hunter Killers, Viper Pilot, The Flight, Lords of the sky chasing the demon, uh, the mercenary and, uh, chasing the demon. It looks like that was about the X 71. Was that what that was?

That was about, uh, the X one and the X one. There you go. I really believe broke the sound barrier first. Yeah. The, um, I remember reading a lot of this stuff when I was a kid. I just, I just love the lore of it, and it was so fun. So some other aspects about the book. What were some of the things that you learned that were really surprising to you or stuck out or maybe were new to you or you were like, wow, kind of an aha moment? Well, I have to be careful when I write because I like to go off on tangents,

so it's always a constant battle between my editor and myself. But I found that some of the tangents are actually really good and people like it. They like to learn things without feeling like they're being taught. So I try to take all the dry history that is written down and is a matter of fact and blend in the human element, try to make some of these people come alive as they obviously once were. For me, with this book, I knew about the Pacific War. I knew about Guadalcanal, but I didn't know it to the degree that I know it now because of this book. And I really tried to put that in there because I wanted to impress upon people that none of this would have been possible if that Island hadn't been

taken. And that Island being taken was not just an Island being taken. It was the Alamo. It was Gettysburg, you know, it was Yorktown. It was a, it was a line in the sand where we finally, the Japanese took their last Southern step on Guadalcanal. We stopped them there. And it's a, it's a fabulous story. Somebody who's in the movies sees this and says, you know, I'd make a great movie. I'll buy you a pitcher of mart for that. There you go. You know, yeah, I really love the history, and that's what I keep learning more about. I always find out how much I don't know, and this book was no exception. Well, I love the concept of it, because the stories of these men are what really made the difference.

I mean, it just takes an extraordinary, like if you said to me like, Hey Chris, you want to, we're going to strap some gas things on a plane and I'll be like, maybe not today, but you know, that's kind of why I'm not a U S air force fighter pilot. But, but still these guys were extraordinary. I mean, I don't even think they make these guys anymore. Maybe they do. But, but what do you do? Yeah, I do and you know you're it's it's a good point because it kind of goes to what you were talking to earlier america rises to the occasion and i think to some degree the times make the make the men and and you have to though, these guys were born in the 20s or the late teens. They were

raised during the Great Depression. So they didn't have much of a childhood. And then they got a World War thrown in their face. So these were some very tough men to begin with. I think that strength is still in America. I think it's still here. If we had to do it again, we would. I mean, look at on a much smaller scale, look at how the country came together after 9-11. It's not comparable to World War II, obviously, but people still forgot all their little differences and realized that we have more in common than we have apart. And they came together. They pitched in just like these guys did. The story of people study studying, and I'm sure they're reading your book, is like you say, they had to fight their way back across the Pacific

and just take island after island, especially when you get those little teeny islands, and just slowly walk back to Japan. It was crazy. I think I saw an interview that I think you did, and I think somewhere in the book, is there, is there, is the credit issue properly for who, uh, killed the, the, the, the Japanese dude? Yeah, that's been an issue ever since it happened. And, and, you know, all of these guys were brave guys or they wouldn't have been there,

but, but Tom Lanphphere was the other p38 pilot that was with rex barber when they got the bombers um and he had been very open from the very beginning that he wanted a political career after the war and he was going to do whatever he could to build a reputation in combat factual or otherwise uh to give him a leg up in politics. Most, you know, fighter pilots as a rule despise politics. So he's sort of the exception. And I'll tell you that guys like that are the ones you stay away from in combat. The guys that are on metal hunts or whatever, because they'll get you killed.

I'm frankly surprised he survived the war. But, you know, and the thing, the tragedy of it is, is the way that it panned out, there was enough credit for him in this as well, not actually shooting down Yamamoto. Let me tell you what happened. When they saw the bombers, and there's only two of them left, they do what's called a conversion. They're coming up from low to high, and he's using his eyes just to,

to roll out in the perfect position to shoot down these bombers. And it's all done geometrically, you know, in your head, as they're doing this, he sees the six Japanese fighter escorts that were flying with Yamamoto. And he does exactly what he should do. He peels off and he goes one against six. Let's Rex Barber now go in and shoot down the bombers. If he hadn't done that,

they wouldn't have been able to probably shoot down the bombers because they would have ended up in a dog fight with these six zeros. He plowed right through them. They didn't get him. He didn't get any of them, but he disrupted them long enough for Rex to then roll up behind the bombers and do what he needed to do to shoot them down wow that should have been enough credit for him but it wasn't he came back and he and he made a statement over the radio on a clear frequency that compromised the security of the mission and our code breaking capability and everything else And he went on to claim sole credit for killing Yamamoto. And I proved in the

book as a fighter pilot and using the other P-38 pilots and some other math that had been done before to prove that Lanphier could have been nowhere near Yamamoto's bomber. And there's no way it was physically impossible for him to have shot down anybody and so i i've laid the controversy to rest once and for all and my goal in doing that was simply to give credit where credit is due and that's to rex barber are any of these guys still alive no oh that's unfortunate no no they're not i i was fortunate enough to to visit rex's grave out in oregon when I was there, you know, talking to his son and his grandson. But they've all passed on.

Wow. So that must have given you some insight, talking to his kids and stuff, maybe? Or did they talk about it? Oh, absolutely. You know, and their dad, like most combat veterans, didn't talk about combat much. But over the years, you know, the sharp edges of war kind of get blended a little bit and you open up a little bit more. And he did, especially 30 or 40 years later, you know, when Lanphier began to get more vehement about his claim. Rex finally, you know, came forward and threw the flag down and said, well, that's crap. This is

really what happened. So it's interesting when you go and you see where somebody was born and raised, you get a feel for the kind of person that they were. And I put that into the book too, where Rex is concerned. He was an Oregon boy. He lived out in the country. He lived in the Deschutes River Valley and grew up hunting and fishing and was very independent. And, and, and all of that kind of builds into the character of the kind of guy that became a World War II fighter pilot, you know, very independent. He didn't need a lot of help. He had superb eyesight, good reflexes, coordination, all of that. And when you get to, when you get to see where he grew up and how he grew up, you realize how he was made into the person that he was made into.

Yeah. This sounds like it would make a great movie. Oh, keep saying that, Chris. Have you had any other books put into movies? No, I've talked to, you know, that's a strange world out on the West Coast. I, you know, I've talked to some people. It hasn't amounted to anything, but I have hopes.

I personally think The Mercenary, which was a novel, would make a superb missionary movie. It's like Tom Cruise meets Jason Bourne. It's a great story. I love the concept of this book. Well, yeah, this one I could see really being like an HBO miniseries. Yeah, it's a great pivotal moment in the war, how important it was. And, yeah, I mean, I just, I remember reading about the Marines just piling bodies on the beach.

And I remember just thinking, my God, the extraordinary amount of bravery and chutzpah and whatever else it took to do that. And just fighting over these little islands well you know and and that's and that's something i i got a little bit more into when i was researching this i always knew they had a plan but i you know you see the movies and you read the books and you think, gosh, that wasn't much of a plan. Actually, it was. Then they bypassed a lot of Japanese islands. They were capturing the ones up the Pacific that they could make into air bases because they wanted to get to within bombing range of Japan. If they could capture islands like Saipan and Tinian that you could build airstrips on, now you could put B-29 bombers in there and you could bomb Japan until it

bounces or drop an atomic bomb on it, which is exactly, you know, what they did. So they, they had a plan, but you're right. I mean, it doesn't make it any, any better for the guys involved. I went out to the South Pacific a couple of years ago on a history channel expedition to find Amelia Earhart. And they're just, you know, these are just lumps of coral with coconuts on them. You know, it's just an awful, awful place to fight. I'm glad I didn't have to do it.

Yeah, it's crazy. And if you go down, you go down. I used to watch the fighter pilots that you would see get shot down and go down and the kamikazes and stuff. I mean, I was just so excited by that lore when I was a kid. And you, you know, you see them get shot up and they go into the water and you're just like, I don't know, that guy's going to make that one. A lot of them didn't. And the Japanese in particular, they had a very World War I idea of flying in a lot of ways. They didn't even wear parachutes for the first part of the war. It would have been a disgrace. They're part of the bushido the samurai code you know if you get

shot down it means you lost and if you lost that's a disgrace yamamoto was actually one of those who finally put a stop to that and bonsai charges and some other things because he's like you you guys are we're losing thousands of men it takes 18 to 20 years to raise another soldier you know and you're dying unnecessarily if you have to die die but make sure it counts and the samurai charges the kamikaze attacks all of that not wearing parachutes i mean come on that's ridiculous look at the americans they if somebody gets shot down seven times out of ten they get picked up and within a day or so they're back in another airplane flying and fighting yeah i remember the german story about how uh i think it was the british the british shot down or france shot down

a bunch of german german uh air force pilots and in some deal they give them back to germany and then germany just uses them again to start bombing London. And you're just like, what? I don't remember that one. Yeah. Actually, the Germans that got shot down over England were probably the lucky ones because they got captured and they survived the war. Yeah.

The ones that were down over Russia weren't so lucky. Yeah. I think it was France or one of the other countries. They did some deal and, and, uh, I don't know, it was crazy. Um, so this is a pretty interesting book. Uh, anything more we need to know about, uh, operation vengeance? You know, I, I, I think you covered it, Chris, and it's, you know, it's all, it's all in the book. Um, you know, there's, like I said, there's a lot of history, there's a lot of background, but it all has a point.

And I hope that the readers will find themselves in the cockpit and empathizing with Rex Barber and feeling like they're there, you know, squeezing the trigger and watching the bullets fly because that's sort of the point of it. If you can make history enjoyable and accessible, I think more people would read it and get something out of it, which would be good for us all. Well, it's getting rave reviews so far. Operation Vengeance is a colorful, intimate, eye-popping history delivered at breakneck pace.

I loved it. According to Lynn Vinson, the New York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot delivers an electrifying narrative account of the top secret U.S. mission to kill Yamamoto, the Japanese commander who mastermind Pearl Harbor. Where can people find this on the interwebs and find out more about you? They can find the book at Amazon, of course, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads. I think it's also a Costco. It's an airport bookstore. So pretty much, pretty much everywhere. Uh, I would, I would ask like you did, you know, if, if you like the book, uh, please favor me with a review. It doesn't have to be, you know,

Leo Tolstoy's war and peace, just a couple of lines saying, Hey, I liked it. And the stars that's, that's nice to get the stars and the five stars in there, the more the better. Um, and, and I more the better. And I'm up on, I have an author Facebook page. I always respond to people that contact me. It may take me a while because I get quite a few, but I will always answer. So if people just want to talk or ask questions, I love to do that.

People in all my books will say, hey, I didn't know that. What does this really mean? Could we go into a little bit deeper? You know, I'm happy to talk to anybody that takes the time to write me. I figure they deserve a reply. That's pretty awesome, dude. That's pretty awesome. This book just came out August 11, 2020. You definitely want to pick it up. Operation Vengeance, the astonishingush That Changed World War II. It sounds like an exciting read. Check it out today. Go to thecvpn.com or

chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. You can subscribe to the show and hear more about great books like this, and you can see the video version of this on youtube.com forward slash chrisvoss. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.