The Jungle Express (An Emerald World series aviation adventure)

Michael Bleriot flew airlift support to counterdrug missions in Central and South America in the early 1990s. He was stationed at Howard Air Base in Panama, on the edge of the former Canal Zone, and based the stories from his first book, Memories of an Emerald World, there. The Jungle Express is a sequel to that volume. It takes the action from Panama to the jungle basins of Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, and shows what good pilots and bad pilots both can do with a reliable machine. The plane, the C-27 Spartan, is the main character in all the stories. It was a rugged trash-hauler the U.S. Air Force used to get in and out of tiny, out-of-the-way fields where Hercs wouldn't fit and helos couldn't reach. Any tac airlift pilot and certainly any bush pilot will appreciate the experiences the Spartan pilots went through flying in the biggest uncontrolled area in the western hemisphere.