BB: Hi, Jimbo..

As you well know, I've been threatening for a year or so to write about my oldest and best friend, Martin Caidin. Problem is there's no way I could do justice to Marty with one of my New Jersey letters-- it's intimidating just to contemplate. Jeeze, here's a guy who wrote 150-plus books -- I'm scared witless just thinking about launchin' a handful of words about him into cyberspace. Ironically, if Martin were alive today he'd slap me upside the head and say, "Button, you idiot! Just write the damned thing!"

Okay, okay...but we'll have to settle for barely scratching Marty's surface.

Martin died a little over ten years ago, a few months before his 70th birthday. When we knew he was in serious trouble I flew down to Cocoa Beach in my ancient Beech Musketeer to help his beautiful wife Dee Dee with care-giving duties. An American Airlines flight attendant, she had to keep workin' so Marty could reap much-needed medical benefits. Marty was undergoing frequent complex surgeries as cancer meandered through his body. With Dee Dee flying hither and yon I became a poor substitute for six of Martin's final months. Much of that time was spent driving him in his big van back and forth to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.

We had a great, sad-happy time, sharing memories, laughin' like crazy, and yeah, shedding a few tears. Martin knew damned well his time was running out. But he was never maudlin. Hell, he was finishing his final book, "Destination Mars," with his NBC-TV friend and co-author, Jay Barbree. But Martin tired easily. "Bob," Jay later wrote, "I'll never forget you pounding on Marty's shoulders, urging him to finish that final chapter."

Martin still played poker with his cronies, and we still ran out in the wee hours for hamburgers and fries. We'd have dinner now and then at Bernard's Surf and chat it up with dozens of admiring patrons-- weren't too many in Cocoa Beach who didn't know and love Martin and Dee Dee (photo). Not that Marty was lovable! No way! He was "one gruff sombich," to quote his buddy, the late Johnny Moore, retired Navy test pilot and former mayor of Cocoa Beach. Caidin did not suffer fools gladly. He loved to shock thin-skinned VIPs, newsfolk and hangers-on with unvarnished, brutally honest squelches to stupid questions. He could spot a phony in a flash and render him to quivering mush with his saber-like wit. Oh, I too bristled at his occasional jabs 'til I learned to respond, "Screw you, Marty!" He'd laugh and say, "Good! Never take crap from anybody!" Caidin and I met back in the late Fifties when every launch from Cape Canaveral was top secret. We'd sneak up the causeway and crawl into the marshes with binoculars and cameras, usually at night, to watch those fiery spectaculars. Spectaculars, because half the time those early birds would blow themselves to smithereens just barely off the pad. Flaming debris would float down onto the Cape, scaring hell out of a zillion alligators who, in turn, would stampede through the swamps and scare hell outta us.

Like me, Martin was the product of orphanages and foster homes-- him in New York, me across the Hudson in New Jersey. We both ran away at age 15-- him to pursue a hugely prolific writing career, me to join the Navy. While still a teenager, Martin, who (again like me) never finished high school, was writing knowledgeably about aviation for Popular Mechanics. We used to joke about taking different roads to the craft of writing... His road became a super highway, mine a winding path.

And though Marty was anchored at Cocoa Beach for decades while my sundry careers took me all over the world we stayed close for half a century. He was best man when Regina and I got married thirty years ago.

Marty's uncanny knack for understanding things technical, plus his quick grasp of logic had the FBI knocking on his door during WWII, asking how he knew so much about radar-- top secret technology at the time. He didn't know squat about radar. But he figgered out how signals bounce (the Doppler effect) and extrapolated that into an article about Britain's most cherished top secret-- with frightening accuracy. The Feds finally asked this brash kid to stop writing that stuff, then went away shaking their heads.

His affinity for technology linked to a photographic memory led Martin to writing one of the most enduring series of books on military aircraft, ours and our enemys', in WWII: "Thunderbolt" about the P-47, "The Forked-Tail Devil" about the P-38, "The Zero Fighter," "Messerchmitt ME-109," "Flying Forts" about the B-17-- the list is practically endless. He also wrote a book about history's biggest-ever clash of armor at Kursk on the eastern front, "The Tigers are Burning" (dedicated to me). Caidin wrote fiction too, lots of it. He wrote well, he wrote accurately and he wrote fast.

How fast? Well, one day back in 1963 Marty and I are in his Cocoa Beach pad listening to a tape of The Red Army Chorus booming from huge speakers. We almost didn't hear the phone ring. Marty answers as I turn off the tape. "Yeah, yeah," Martin says to the phone. "That's weird," he says. "I've got almost exactly that story in my typewriter as we speak... half finished! Okay, I'll have it to you in a few days." Marty hangs up.

"Okay, Button, get your ass outta here. I've got a book to write and it's due the end of the week."

"What book, Marty? I heard what you said to that guy... you don't have a damned thing in your typewriter..."

"I know, I know," Marty says. "But my agent in Hollywood says if I come up with the right story he'll guarantee movie rights. He needs it RIGHT NOW! And I need the money so I've gotta conjure up some kinda story about the Russians and us doin' something nice together in space... take off, Button, and don't let the door hitcha in the butt."

True to his word Martin created a sizeable manuscript and got it off to his publisher in five days. He had hammered away 24/7, non-stop at the typewriter. His first draft-- with hardly a typo-- became a best-seller titled "Marooned." It also became a major hit movie starring Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman and David Janssen. We met those guys a few years later at the film's grand opening in Hollywood; Martin Caidin was the real star that night.

He wrote a book, "Cyborg" that quickly became a hit TV series called "The Six Million Dollar Man," then followed that with "The Bionic Woman," another popular television series. The word "prolific" hardly measured up to Martin's creative production. Marty was also one helluva pilot. He and some friends flew a B-17 to England (it starred in the movie, "The War Lover"). He loved WWII war birds, owned an ME-108 and later a JU-52 German bomber/transport. He flew the JU, lovingly named "Iron Annie," at air shows all over the country. He took me up and let me fly Annie once or twice.

We didn't fly together all that often but I do remember one time we rented a Cherokee 180 at Merritt Island and went for a ride. Comin' back, Marty says "Watch this!" Those words usually precede disaster, but I turned loose the yoke and Marty flew us directly down the runway at about 1500 feet. Suddenly we split-S just past the numbers and Marty pulls up into a very short and extremely low 2G approach to a landing. He let me do one or two of those hairy maneuvers before we returned the airplane to its owner. "I saw that, dammit" the FBO hollered. "You guys are nuts! I ain't never again gonna rent you one of my planes, Marty."

My God, did Caidin love to fly! Toward the end when he wasn't able, his good friends Bill Larson, Vern Renaud and I loaded Marty into the van and drove him to Merritt Island Airport. By now he needed help climbing into Vern's beautiful Czechoslovakian Zlin. But once in the cockpit it was old home week-- he scanned the panel, grabbed the stick and was ready to go. Vern took him up and they wrung out that Zlin for nearly half an hour. We all knew our buddy Martin had just made his last flight...so did Marty.

Months later, Vern and I scattered Martin's ashes and hundreds of flower petals from a Cessna 172 along the shore behind Holiday Inn at Cocoa Beach . Hundreds had congregated on the beach, a memorial to celebrate Martin's joyful, adventurous life. (Sadly, about a year later Vern was killed flying an experimental aircraft not far from that same shoreline.)

Martin spent his last weeks in a Catholic nursing home. The cancer had spread to his brain -- he took frequent flights of fancy and had no short-term memory at all. Yet, when we'd talk on the phone he'd tell me exactly how many P-40s Curtis produced before and during WWII, exactly how many Lancaster bombers were built by the British, how many FW-190s by Nazi Germany, how many kills a given ace wracked up-- facts he'd garnered while researching scores of books for more than half a century.

We talked the night before he died...he told me he'd just returned from a long, exhausting flight across the Pacific. "I'm a little tired," he said, "but the nuns are takin' real good care of me. I've never been so happy in my life."

Bob Button.
5/2008

Album

Editor: Martin Caidin was a flamboyant man of great passions. One was Iron Annie, which Bob mentioned in his letter. Martin wrote one of his books about the airplane and their adventures together.:

One of their adventures was the time Marty carried 19 parachutists to a jump off the old plane's port wing .. successfully:

Picture, courtesy Lindsey Photography (Newberry, FL)

You were special if you got to wear one of Caidin's patches. This one's on Button's flight jacket:

--30--

For another story by Bob Button, Click Here.

Did you enjoy this article? Have a comment or a question? Write to Jim Slade at: jsairlines1@aol.com