Jack Cheevers's Blog, page 3

The CIA's mission: Find the Pueblo

After the USS Pueblo was captured and forced into a large North Korean harbor, Washington urgently wanted to know its exact location. The Navy had hatched a bold plan to drag the spy ship back out to sea lashed to the side of a destroyer, while the Air Force wanted to dive-bomb and sink the vessel. CIA pilot Jack Weeks was assigned the task of pinpointing the Pueblo in Wonsan harbor. Flying an exotic, little known spy plane called the A-12, Weeks took off from a closely guarded airfield on Okinawa. Zooming through the sky at more than 2,100 miles per hour -- three times the speed of sound -- Weeks spotted the spy boat in a small bay at the northern end of Wonsan bay. This photo, kindly provided to me by CIA Chief Historian David Robarge, shows an A-12 refueling during a training mission. Weeks's pictures were rushed into the hands of CIA analysts, but Washington ultimately decided to call off any attempt to recover the Pueblo while U.S. diplomats tried to persuade the North Koreans to free the captured crew. Weeks's A-12 flight is described in Chapter 6, "A Minefield of Unknowns."

The passing of Rose Bucher

Rose Bucher was the wife of Pueblo commander Lloyd M. (Pete) Bucher. She's pictured here embracing Pete with almost savage desperation moments after he stepped off the plane that returned him and his crew from a North Korean prison on Christmas Eve, 1968. Rose was a very shy, very gracious woman who turned herself into what she called "a tiger from Missouri" and embarked on a personal crusade to make sure that the American public didn't forget about her husband and his men after they were captured by North Korean gunboats. She succeeded beyond all expectations. Rose died on Sept. 5, 2013 in Poway, California, where she and her husband had lived for decades. She was 87. I'd like to share a remembrance of her I wrote for the San Diego Union-Tribune. It gives some details of her spirited "Remember the Pueblo" campaign in 1968. Rose was truly a remarkable woman and I didn't want her passing to go unnoticed. Here's the link:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Sep/09/tp-appreciation/

My book originally had three chapters on Rose but they had to be cut for space reasons. Too bad, because there was a lot of good material on Rose's upbringing on a Missouri farm, her life with Pete as a Navy wife, and the "Remember the Pueblo" campaign. But thanks to the magic of the Internet, I get to post the three cut chapters on my website! If you'd like to read them, go to "more" on my home page and click on the "Rose's story" dropdown.

Cheers,
Jack

Website goes live

Pretty exciting to see my website (www.JackCheevers.net) go live today! I'll be posting regularly in the run-up to Dec. 3, when "Act of War" will be published. I also want to share on my personal site photos and other material that couldn't be included in the book. I just put one of my favorite pictures on my blog. It shows seven sailors and Harry Iredale, a civilian oceanographer (back row, second from left) during their imprisonment in North Korea. The communists intended the photo as propaganda, portraying the Americans as healthy and well cared for -- the exact opposite of their astonishingly brutal treatment. But the Americans managed to turn the medium into a message. Notice the men in the front row: three of them are flipping the bird, in a deliberate effort to ruin the picture. The crewmen gave their captors the finger for months -- telling the clueless North Koreans it was the "Hawaiian good luck symbol" -- until they were finally caught and severely punished. Chapter 13, "Hell Week," tells the strange story of how they were found out.

Hello, everyone

Pretty exciting to see my website go live today! I'll be posting regularly in the run-up to Dec. 3, when "Act of War" will be published. I also want to share on this site photos and other material that couldn't be included in the book. This picture will be in the book, but I wanted to share it here, too, because it's one of my favorites. It shows seven sailors and Harry Iredale, a civilian oceanographer (back row, second from left), during their imprisonment in North Korea. The communists intended the photo as propaganda, portraying the Americans as healthy and well cared for -- the exact opposite of their astonishingly brutal treatment. But the Americans managed to turn the medium into a message. Notice the men in the front row: three of them are flipping the bird, in a deliberate effort to ruin the picture. The crewmen gave their captors the finger for months -- telling the clueless North Koreans it was the "Hawaiian good luck symbol" -- until they were finally caught and severely punished. Chapter 13, "Hell Week," tells the strange story of how they were found out.    

The Passing of Rose Bucher

Rose Bucher, the vivacious and gutsy wife of Pueblo skipper Lloyd M. (Pete) Bucher, passed away last month, at age 87. She was an amazing woman, and I didn't want her death to go unnoticed. Here's a remembrance I wrote of her for her hometown newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/S...

Cheers,
Jack