China Pilot

Felix Smith spent his years as a pilot with an airline based in China, an operation said to have taken more gunfire than any other. In this memoir he describes flying troops and equipment for the Nationalist forces during the Chinese civil war, and carrying medical supplies and other provisions into regions devastated by fighting. Vivid accounts of narrow escapes run throughout.

Later, Smith flew under contract with the CIA, and the book follows him through the French war in Indochina, the Korean War, the covert conflict in Laos, and the Vietnam War. Few accounts show the Cold War in Asia from the cockpit, and this one covers the dangerous exploits of the pilots at Civil Air Transport as well as the people working behind the scenes to keep them flying.