Synchronicity for Bookworms: Martin Caidin

Some years ago, my son Connor and I were watching the movie Dunkirk on DVD. It’s a very good movie, telling the story of that fateful week from multiple points-of-view. Of course, the most compelling thread of the narrative is that of the lone RAF pilot (played by Tom Hardy) doing his heroic best to protect the stranded British troops.

These scenes inevitably led to a geek-worthy discussion between Connor and me about the relative merits of the RAF’s Spitfire versus the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt 109. Believe it or not, such discussions are becoming more common between fathers and sons (and mothers and daughters, for all I know), mainly because of online games like War Thunder, whose popularity has breathed new life into the study of military history by the Millennial generation.

Anyway…. At some point during the discussion, I offhandedly commented that I had once flown in Adolf Hitler’s airplane.

Connor was intrigued, if not necessarily impressed. I guess you would say he was skeptical. But I was telling the truth! When I was kid, I got a chance to fly on a seventy-year-old World War II aircraft, one of the last surviving German Junkers Ju-52’s, which was a work-horse of Germany’s air war in much the same way as the Douglas C-47 was for the USAF. Looking back, what’s even more amazing is the fact that I didn’t have to travel to some faraway air show to gain this experience. In fact, the plane in question—known as Iron Annie—was a fixture of local pop-culture here in Gainesville, as was its eccentric and colorful owner, Martin Caidin.

Caidin was a novelist who made a lot of money writing commercial thrillers and science fiction yarns. The most famous of these was Cyborg, which became the basis for the hit TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man. Many readers this blog won’t remember that corny old show but, trust me, if you had been twelve years old in the 1970s, you would have thought it was the coolest thing ever made. EVER!

My father was a friend of Caidin’s, and although I was too young to get to know Caidin myself, I gather that he was a gung-ho military-tech Evangelist, a sort of proto-Tom Clancy. Like Clancy, Caidin took his very real enthusiasm for technology and military history and transformed it into some very entertaining (and successful) thrillers.

Also like Clancy, Caidin was a collector of military antiques, the greatest of which was the Iron Annie herself. Using some of his Six Million Dollar Man millions, Caidin personally ventured to South America and located a JU-52, which he restored to working order and flew back to the U.S. For the next two decades, Caidin thrilled history buffs and aviation enthusiasts from near and far by taking them up for a flight in Iron Annie. (Sometimes he received a small donation for this experience, which he always gave to charity.)

Such thrills were enhanced, no doubt, by Caidin’s revelation that Adolf Hitler probably flew on Iron Annie during one of Der Fuhrer’s tours of the Russian Front. (Caidin was able to deduce this, in part, because of the presence of a special model of passenger seat near the cockpit, which Hitler was known to use in all his personal aircraft.)

I read a couple of Caidin’s thrillers when I was in high school, and I enjoyed them. He anticipated not only Tom Clancy but a lot of military-style science fiction, which is now a major sub-genre. Unfortunately, I never saw Caidin again after the mid-1980s. (He died in 1997.) But I still have fond memories of him and of Iron Annie.

And here comes the synchronicity part…

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of books about Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). For some reason, I’ve become fascinated them, even though I have no idea if any of these stories is true (whatever that really means in this case). My favorite book on the subject is Leslie Kean’s Surviving Death, which covers the subject of NDEs as well as various other paranormal phenomenon such as ghosts and reincarnation.

About a week after Connor and I watched Dunkirk, I stumbled upon this passage in Kean’s book:

Loyd Auerbach, parapsychologist and author…lost a mentor, friend, and kindred spirit when Martin Caidin died on March 24, 1997…. Nine days after Marty’s death, Loyd was driving along a California freeway listening to the radio. Suddenly he sensed a presence in the car with him. Then his new car, which had always been smoke free, filled up with the strong smell of cigar smoke. There was no way to explain this, but Loyd knew what it was. He recognized the distinct smell of the type of cigar that Marty had often smoked in his presence, which lingered in the car for five minutes. Loyd felt that his friend had come to say goodbye.

Kean goes on to report that two other of Caidin’s friends reported similar olfactory visitations.

Pretty weird, huh?

Yeah I know. You’re about call BS on this story. Of course, I have no idea if it’s true (and, even if it is true, maybe it’s just a coincidence).

But what I do know is that within the space of two weeks, Martin Caidin’s memory re-entered my life three separate times: first, with my recounting the story of Iron Annie to my son; second, with my finding this reference in Kean’s book; and, third, just a few days ago, when my father asked me, out of nowhere, if I remembered that crazy old pilot dude he used to know.

Yeah, I said. I remember him.

(Author’s Note: this post originally appeared on my old blog, Bakhtin’s Cigarettes.)