Coyote Recon: The Forgotten Wars of Colonel Jay D. Vanderpool

When the rules of battle failed, he wrote his own...

On December 7, 1941, Lieutenant Jay D. Vanderpool awoke to the sound of Japanese bombs falling on Pearl Harbor. By nightfall, he was digging trenches along the beaches of Oahu, preparing for a Japanese invasion.

But Pearl Harbor was only the beginning.

Within two years, Vanderpool was fighting through the jungles of the South Pacific, surviving brutal combat on Guadalcanal and New Georgia.

Then, he volunteered for a mission few men would accept: A top-secret submarine insertion into the Japanese-occupied Philippines.

Operating deep behind enemy lines, Vanderpool linked up with Allied guerrillas in southern Luzon and helped coordinate their operations with the 11th Airborne Division—supporting the daring raid that freed prisoners from the infamous Los Baños Prison Camp.

But his story didn’t end with World War II. During the Korean War, Vanderpool commanded UN guerrilla forces behind North Korean lines while championing a revolutionary idea: Helicopters as ground-attack weapons and troop transports.

That vision would help shape the US Army’s future airmobile (air assault) doctrine.

Like the proverbial “coyotes” who slip unseen across international borders, Jay Vanderpool built his legacy running soldiers and guerrillas behind enemy lines.

Inside Coyote Recon , you'll discover:

A Pearl Harbor survivor who became a guerrilla warfare pioneer
The submarine mission that inserted him into Japanese-held Philippines
The Allied guerrilla campaign in Luzon
The dramatic liberation of Los Baños Prison Camp
The birth of U.S. Army helicopter warfare
The secret war of UN guerrillas in Korea

Coyote Recon is the remarkable true story of a soldier who helped shape the modern battlefield.