To kick off my first blog entry, I thought it might be good to start at the beginning. Which is, whatever in the world possessed me to want to, or think I could, write anything anyone else would want to read! I suppose it started when I was about six years old and I began work on my first “novel.” It was about an adventurous Norwegian boy I called “Per” (my schoolteacher mother informed me it meant “rock”, which I thought grand) and though I got off to a reasonable start the words trailed off after two scribbled pages. Already writer’s block??!!
Long years of education and the matter of earning a living postponed further efforts until many decades later. In the 1990s, after discovering a vast trove of letters, documents, memoirs (several thousand pages) in my grandmother’s keepsakes (Mamie B. Nelson 1879-1976), I decided to write a four-volume series called ”A Minnesota Remembrance,” which told the story of the north-central Minnesota regional history through the eyes of the Marcus and Mamie Nelson family. This years-long effort did two things—enabled me to preserve their written and pictorial history and, perhaps more importantly, greatly helped to hone my own writing skills (see my Home Page for details on purchasing these volumes from the Aitkin County Historical Society).
Having whetted my writing appetite and finding my business career slowly winding down, I decided to seriously apply myself to this scribbling business. In 2009, the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, MD published my book Flying From the Black Hole: The B-52 Navigator-Bombardiers of Vietnam, which in 2015 was named one of their Top Ten books on Vietnam (see Home Page). Subsequently, with The Three Musketeers of the Army Air Forces: From Hitler’s Fortress Europa to Hiroshima and Nagasaki I told the story of the three key men who delivered the atomic bombs against Japan. It helped greatly that I had served with bombardier Tom Ferebee and had gotten to know navigator Dutch Van Kirk later in life. During these years, I also wrote short stories and nonfiction magazine articles on military/aviation history, all available on the website.
In 2022, traditional publisher Sunbury Press of Mechanicsburg, PA agreed to publish “First Crossing: The 1919 Trans-Atlantic Crossing of Alcock and Brown.” The elevator pitch to Sunbury on this story may have set a mark for brevity: “The first to cross the Atlantic non-stop wasn’t Charles Lindbergh, but two long forgotten British airman.” In 2026, I was most pleased when Sunbury decided to publish my first novel called The Medicine Treasure. Scheduled for release in the Fall of 2026, a brief synopsis is available on the Home Page. Much more on the making of that book is yet to come.
Again welcome to my blog. I will from time to time post additional items which I hope will provide readers with a better understanding of who I am, where I am coming from, and why you might want to read my stories.
Until next time!Bob
I can’t resist adding a comment to Bob’s blog since it looks like I can be “first” at something – and that’s not easy in today’s fast-paced world. I’m listening to the audio-book version of “Flying from the Black Hole” and really enjoying it. The author and I have similar histories with the B-52 and Strategic Air Command. He served as a radar navigator and I served as an electronic warfare officer on B-52 crews at about the same time. We never knew one another.
I’m writing this post on August 13, 2026 and Bob created the blog just 4 days ago. Bob and I both have a Minnesota connection (I learned that from his book) so I did a search on-line to see if I could find contact information so I could share some experiences with him. That’s how I discovered this website and interesting details about the author. Looking forward to following the comments here. I’m hoping I might cross paths with old friends from my days at Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City SD. I’ve lost touch with everyone from that season of my life. Bob may become my adopted B-52 crew brother .
Hi Del,
Many thx for the comments! Always great to hear from Linebacker Two crewdogs. You fellows during the B-52 “Eleven Day Christmas Bombing” of 1972 were instrumental to the January, 1973 Peace Treaty with North Vietnam, bringing our POWs home and essentially ending the war from the US perspective. Hats off!
I hope you get a chance to read my other aviation books. And as a Minnesotan, you might like my new novel “The Medicine Treasure,” set largely in Minnesota.
Cheers!
Bob