AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY 

Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Bruce earned his Navy wings as an Overwater Jet Navigator and served operationally during the closing years of the Cold War. 

In 1988, while based in Pensacola as a flight instructor, Bruce underwent surgery for a malignant spinal cord tumor and retired from the Navy with a permanent disability. He subsequently worked part-time as the staff historian for the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation until 1996, when he made the leap to freelance writing. 

Bruce's first book, The Black Sheep, was published in 1998, followed by six more nonfiction books devoted to WWII in the Pacific. His award-winning work led to appearances in documentaries produced by the History Channel, Discovery Network, Fox, PBS, the World War II Foundation, and others. He is currently creating content for Skywarrior Media, a documentary channel dedicated to historically accurate digital productions.

A cancer survivor for more than 35 years, Bruce lives in the countryside near Madison, Georgia. 

                                                                                                                      BACK IN THE DAY...

Bruce flew as a navigator in EA-3B Skywarriors, the largest and heaviest aircraft to operate routinely from aircraft carriers.  They flew with a crew of seven, conducting passive electronic surveillance and reconnaissance missions that often exceeded six hours, and even longer with aerial refueling. During the Cold War, Bruce logged more than 100 arrested landings in two deployments aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), including ELINT missions over the Strait of Hormuz during the "tanker wars" that took place in the 1980s. Highly classified surveillance was the name of the day, particularly regarding the Soviet Union. Tensions ran especially high after SU-15 interceptors shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007 in September 1983. Bruce flew with Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1) for three years, from November 1982 to November '85.