Meet Daniel Ford

I first learned about the Flying Tigers when living near Boston just after the war--World War II, that is to say. That would have been one of the early AVG romances, written in 1943 by Russell Whelen and Robert Hotz. About the same time, I also became fascinated by the J-3 Piper Cub, then being sold in great numbers for $2,600 at the factory in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Of course I never became a Flying Tiger, but in 1999 I did achieve my other teenage ambition and soloed the Piper Cub. as you can see here. The plane is Zero Six Hotel or, more formally, N7006H.... And therein lies a tale:

When Smithsonian Institution Press published the first edition of Flying Tigers in 1991, many of the AVG pilots were still alive and kicking, and oh! did they kick when they read my figures on the planes the Japanese actually lost in the winter of 1941-1942. About the same time, I ventured onto the World Wide Web and a newsgroup called rec.aviation.military. Erik Shilling of the AVG 3rd Squadron was also a regular contributor, and he made it his online task to cut me down to size. One of his recurring lines was "Of course, Ford is not a pilot," which irritated me so much that I signed up for flight lessons, and in due time soloed and got a pilot's certificate. Thank you, Erik!

But this is supposed to be a biography. Okay, I attended seven schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts--my dad had the wanderlust--before settling down at the University of New Hampshire. My four years there were the longest time I'd ever spent in one place. I did some haphazard graduate work at the University of Manchester, England, and more recently at King's College London, where I'm a "distance learning" student in the War Studies programme. (Most of my classmates at KCL are British Army majors.)

I did the then-mandatory hitch in the U.S. Army, at Fort Bragg and in France. After a few flings at employment, I abandoned the job market in 1968 and ever since have earned my living as a writer. You can check out my books at danfordbooks.com. (That's me at right, with an ARVN radioman, in the U Minh Forest of South Vietnam. We spent most of the day wading through canals.)

I'm happily married, live on the north shore of Great Bay in New Hampshire, and all my descendants are female. (I like to think that's proof of virility. It must be more difficult to turn out a woman than a man, since it took God himself two tries!) I ski, preferably in Aspen; I go to the opera, preferably at the Met; I read In Search of Lost Time; and of course I fly Zero Six Hotel whenever I can.

I'd be pleased to hear from you: my address is 433 Bay Road, Durham NH 03824, and you can get my current email address by clicking here.

(And the J-3 that went out the door at $2,600 in 1946? We're required to carry $60,000 hull insurance before we're allowed to rent it. Sic transit gloria dollari!)

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford