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Hello, and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast Episode 174,

a conversation with Bob Dury and Tom Clayton to discuss their latest collaboration,

Lucky 666, the Impossible Mission. The year is 1942. The Japanese War Machine has rolled up

nearly all of the Pacific theater and American forces are clinging to what little

unconquer territory remains. While US Marines claw their way across Guadalcanau, small contingents

of US Army Airmen make their way to the lonely, embattled Allied Air Base on Papua New Guinea.

Their mission to defend Australia from invasion, harass Japanese supply lines,

fly perilous bombing missions over enemy-held strongholds, and make reconnaissance runs to

provide intelligence for America's nascent island hopping campaign. The story of Lucky 666

describes in detail one of those missions, which turns out to be the longest dogfight in history.

So gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us today.

Oh Ray, this is Dury Bob Dury, and thank you for your interest in Lucky 666. It's flattering.

Same here. Thank you. Okay, so as we jump into this, how about we just get you gentlemen to

just set up the main part of your story, and we're going to get into all the details later,

but I do want to let the audience know that this book does a very good job of covering the war,

war's point of view from the Southwest Pacific. You really get a sense of what the people in

Australia were worried about, McArthur and all that kind of stuff, but we're going to kind of

jump past that for a moment and get to what really probably inspired you to write this story.

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