Martin Caidin
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Martin Caidin (September 14, 1927–March 24, 1997) was an American author and an authority on aeronautics and aviation.
Caidin wrote more than 50 books, including Samurai!, Black Thursday, Zero!, The Ragged, Rugged Warriors, A Torch to the Enemy and many other classic works of military history. He wrote more than 1,000 magazine articles. Caidin established his own company to promote aeronautic subjects for a young audience and began writing fiction in 1957.
Caidin's 1964 novel, Marooned, tells the story of an American astronaut who is stranded in space and NASA's attempt to rescue him. The novel was the basis for the movie Marooned made in 1969. The movie starred Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, and Gene Hackman.
He twice won the Aviation/Space Writers Association award as the outstanding author in the field of aviation. Among his other honors, he was made an honorary member of the US Army's Golden Knights parachute demonstration team; flew for several months with the US Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration squadron; and set the world record for the number of people deployed for a wing-walk - 19 - on one wing of an airplane on November 14, 1981.
He was involved in many wild and crazy aviation adventures. He was one of the people involved in the rescue and resurrection of the Junkers 52 No. 5489 that would become famous on the Warbird circuit as Iron Annie. He was one of the pilots that flew what will likely be the last-ever formation flight of B-17s across the Atlantic Ocean from the United States to England (via Canada, the Azores and Portugal) in 1961, a trip which involved a near-miss with a submarine, a brawl with KGB agents, and just barely missing ending up in jail in Portugal, an epic trip he chronicled in his book, Everything But the Flak. He wrote what has been approved by the FAA as the standard aircraft manual for the Messerschmitt Bf-108. He flew as a pilot in the movie The War Lover. He was also one of a very few pilots ever to take a Ju-52 off in less than 400 feet.
Caidin's style of fiction focused on acceptable projections of technical innovations with political and social repercussions. In this respect, his work has some echo in the writing of Michael Crichton. One recurring theme is that of the cyborg - the melding of man and machine, epitomised in the use of replacement body parts called bionics. Caidin references bionics in his 1968 novel, The God Machine, but most famously based his novel Cyborg on the concept. Cyborg (1972) became Caidin's most famous work when it was adapted for a top-rated TV movie in 1973 and formed the basis of the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and its spin-off, The Bionic Woman. Caidin himself wrote three sequels to Cyborg (Operation Nuke, High Crystal and Cyborg IV), which differed considerably from the television series version. Years later, Caidin would revisit bionics in a tongue-in-cheek manner for his novel Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future (a reinvention of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) in which the title character is given bionic parts after being revived from a centuries-long coma. A remake of The Bionic Woman, titled Bionic Woman debuted on NBC in 2007; unlike the original series, on which Caidin was given screen credit for the series being "based on" Cyborg, no such credit has been included in the new series.
Martin Caidin is also known for having restored the oldest surviving Junkers Ju 52 aircraft (which he named Iron Annie) to full airworthiness. Following his death, Iron Annie was sold to Lufthansa, which renamed her the Tempelhof. Lufthansa flies her today as a VIP ship and for special charters. An account of Caidin's adventures with 'the corrugated cloud' can be found in his book about the warbird restoration movement, Ragwings and Heavy Iron. His experiences with Iron Annie's resurrection were also drawn heavily upon for his book "Zoboa".
