In this remarkable World War II story by New York Times best-selling author John R. Bruning, a renegade American pilot battles against all odds to rescue his family, imprisoned by the Japanese, and revolutionizes modern warfare in the process.

From the knife fights and smuggling raids of his youth to his passionate days as a naval aviation pioneer, Paul Irving “Pappy” Gunn played by his own rules and always survived by his wits and his fists. But when he fell in love with a conservative Southern belle, his love transformed him from a wild, reckless aviator into a shrewd businessman whose backyard engineering brilliance helped launch one of Asia’s first airlines.

Pappy was drafted into MacArthur’s air force when war came to the Philippines; and while he was away on a top-secret mission to Australia, the Japanese captured his family. Separated from his beloved wife, Polly, and their four children, Pappy returned to his wild ways. He flew rescue missions with near-suicidal desperation. Even after being shot down twice and forced to retreat to Australia, he waged a one-man war against his many enemies—including American high command and the Japanese—and fought to return to the Philippines to find his family.

Without proper planes, supplies, or tactics, the U.S. Army Air Force suffered crushing defeats at the hands of the Japanese in the Pacific. During his three-year search for his family, Pappy became the renegade who changed everything. With a pair of pistols and a small band of loyal followers, he raided supply depots, stole planes, invented new weapons, and modified bombers to hit harder, fly farther, and unleash destruction never before seen from the air. When Pappy’s modified planes were finally unleashed during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, America scored one of the most decisive victories of World War II.

Taking readers from the scorching skies of the Pacific to the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines to one of the war’s most notorious POW camps,