Honest John

HONEST JOHN is the dramatic unvarnished autobiography of Walker “Bud” Mahurin, an American fighter ace who performed extraordinary feats of skill and bravery in shooting down more than twenty enemy planes in two wars, only to be called a traitor by many after he was forced to sign a germ-warfare confession by the Chinese Communists.

In his own words, Col. Mahurin recalls the youth from Fort Wayne, Indiana, who was the leading American ace in Europe until his Thunderbolt was shot down over France, who escaped to fight again in the Pacific and returned in 1945 a much decorated war hero. When hostilities broke out in Korea in 1950, Col. Mahurin wangled his way out of his Pentagon desk job and soon, under the code name of “Honest John,” was flying against the MIGs over Communist skies. Then one fateful day in May, 1952, while perfecting the F-86 dive-bombing technique he himself had pioneered, his Sabre jet was hit by ground fire and crashed in a North Korean rice paddy.

Thus began Col. Mahurin’s ordeal, an experience which few Americans have encountered and fewer still have survived. For over a year he was kept in solitary confinement by his captors, interrogated almost constantly and subjected to a veritable arsenal of mental pressures and “invisible tortures” as the Communists sought their elusive confession. In harrowing detail he relates his attempt at suicide and his devices for resisting while still maintaining sanity…