Russians invade the home of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

American and Russian allies pause at Wilbur & Wright Memorial in North Carolina
during top-secret Project Zebra. (circa 1944)

Russia and America were borne of radically different circumstances. So, it is not surprising that each has country’s social philosophies, political systems, and cultural traditions are radically different.

Ironically, for reasons too numerous to enumerate here, the two countries have never really understood the other; and, have never trusted each other. All that changed for one moment in time when that Nazi nutbag Adolph Hitler vowed to get rid of both of them. And, so it was that Russia and America were forced to work together.

The amoral Hitler maintained the ethics of a pig

When World War II was over, 40 million Russians and 500,000 Americans lost their lives, and both countries reverted to being suspicious, not listening, and disrespecting each other for the next 73 years. Consequently, my views were shaped by Senator McCarthy’s hateful rhetoric, Civil Defense drills in school, the Cuban Missile Crisis, an ever-present Cold War, and a plethora of James Bond red menace spy movies.

So, it turned out to be a curious stroke of good fortune that I befriended the last living survivor of a joint Russian-American military top-secret mission during 1943-1945 so incredulous that it was only declassified on December 31, 2012.

The one-of-a-kind mission, called Project Zebra, was the brainchild of President Franklin Roosevelt and Comrade Joseph Stalin. And, the story of the mission, and the people who participated in it, has never been told, until now! Not surprising, my book is called Project Zebra. Roosevelt and Stalin’s top-secret mission to train 300 Soviet airmen in America.

One-of-a kind book about the once-in-history mission

Should you decide to pick up a copy of Project Zebra, you’ll find the military mission was only part of the story. The other was the life-long friendships the mission created among 400 Russian and American men, despite significant language and cultural barriers. You’ll find out how and why that came to be in the words, documents, and pictures created by the men themselves.

Not long ago I visited the Wright Brothers’ moving monument to aviation. I stood in the same place, at the same dedication stone where these Russian and American men took “tourist” pictures a long, long time ago.

Project Zebra author (me), poses for the same picture at the same Wilbur & Wright Memorial in North Carolina

As I got up to leave, I thought to myself, with all the problems in the world today, why can’t these “one-moment in-time” superpowers work together to solve existing world problems rather than create new crisis?