IN THE SLIPSTREAM

About the book

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In November 1942, barely five months out of flight school, B.K. Watts launched his P‑40 off a repurposed British carrier into Operation TORCH. From Morocco and Tunisia through Sicily and Italy he learned air war at low altitude, flying more than 110 sorties with three confirmed kills, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with twelve oak leaf clusters. In 1944, having just turned 25 and promoted to major, he flew a 180‑day combat tour in the China‑Burma‑India theater with the 33rd Fighter Group under Claire Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force Flying Tigers.

In 1945, as the jet age was just beginning, he returned stateside to Wright‑Patterson and Muroc to test‑pilot new designs alongside Chuck Yeager and Glen Edwards. In the 1950s he went to Taiwan to train Chiang Kai‑shek’s pilots in jet flight. He then served served Cold War tours at Great Falls AFB and later as a B‑52 pilot at Biggs AFB, flying polar routes on nuclear‑alert duty. Then came a NATO tour in Europe and a professorship in aeronautics at RPI. Watts ended his tenure at Fairchild AFB, retiring as a full bird colonel and command pilot, responsible for the infrastructure of a SAC airbase.

In 1945, as the jet age was just beginning, he returned stateside to Wright‑Patterson and Muroc to test‑pilot new designs alongside Chuck Yeager and Glen Edwards. In the 1950s he went to Taiwan to train Chiang Kai‑shek’s pilots in jet flight. He then served served Cold War tours at Great Falls AFB and later as a B‑52 command pilot at Biggs AFB, flying polar routes on nuclear‑alert duty. Then came a NATO tour in Europe and a professorship in aeronautics at RPI. Watts ended his tenure at Fairchild AFB, retiring as a full bird colonel and command pilot, responsible for the infrastructure of a SAC airbase.

From a carrier launch in World War II to the tense skies of the Cold War, this is more than a memoir. Based on his flight logs, squadron orders, wartime correspondence, and his war diary, this is the sweeping story of a decorated American aviator told from the cockpit… a remarkable thirty‑year journey of a combat and test pilot whose career traced the arc of his nation’s rise in the air.