James Salter - Biography

Biography

Salter was born James Arnold Horowitz, the son of a moderately wealthy New Jersey real estate consultant/economist, on June 10, 1925. He attended the Horace Mann School, and among his classmates were Julian Beck and William F. Buckley, Jr., while Jack Kerouac attended during the 1939-40 academic year.

He is alternately said to have favored Stanford University or MIT as his choice of college, but entered West Point on July 15, 1942, at the urging of his alumnus father, Col. Louis G. Horowitz, who had gone back into the Corps of Engineers in July 1941 in anticipation of the war. Like his father, Horowitz attended West Point during a world war, when classes sizes were greatly increased and the curriculum drastically shortened (his father graduated in November 1918, after only 16 months in the academy, and with others of his Class of 1919 was called back after a month of duty to complete a post-graduate officer's course). Horowitz graduated in 1945 after just three years, ranked 49th in general merit in his class of 852. He was known among classmates as "Horrible" Horowitz.

He completed flight training during his first class year, with primary flight training at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and advanced training at Stewart Field, New York. On a cross-country navigation flight in May 1945, his flight became scattered, and low on fuel, he mistook a railroad trestle for a runway, crashlanding his T-6 Texan training craft into a house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Possibly as a result, he was assigned to multi-engine training in B-25s until February 1946, and received his first unit assignment with the 6th Troop Carrier Squadron, stationed at Nielson Field, the Philippines; Naha Air Base, Okinawa; and Tachikawa Air Base, Japan. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant in January 1947.

Salter was transferred in September 1947 at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, then entered post-graduate studies at Georgetown University in August 1948, receiving his master's degree in January 1950. He was assigned to the headquarters of the Tactical Air Command at Langley AFB, Virginia, in March, where he remained until volunteering for assignment in the Korean War. He arrived in Korea in February 1952 after transition training in the F-86 Sabre with the 75th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Presque Isle Air Force Base, Maine. Horowitz was assigned to the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, a renowned MiG-hunting unit. He flew more than 100 combat missions between February 12 and August 6, 1952, and was credited with a MiG-15 victory July 4, 1952. He used his Korean experience for his first novel, The Hunters (1956), which was made into a film starring Robert Mitchum in 1958.

The movie version of The Hunters was honored with much acclaim for its powerful performances, moving plot, and realistic portrayal of the Korean War. Although an excellent adaptation for Hollywood, it was very different from the original novel, which dealt with the slow self-destruction of a 31-year-old fighter pilot, who was once thought to be a "hot shot" but who found nothing but frustration in his first combat experience while others around him achieved glory, some of it perhaps invented.

He served twelve years in the U.S. Air Force, the last six as a fighter pilot, before leaving the military to pursue a writing career, a decision he found difficult because of his passion for flying. His works based on his Air Force experiences have a fatalistic tone: his protagonists, after struggling with conflicts between their reputations and self-perceptions, are killed in the performance of duties while inept antagonists within their own ranks soldier on. Salter paints a vivid and familiar picture for any military pilot who has survived aerial combat.

Salter was subsequently stationed in Germany and France, promoted to major, assigned to lead an aerial demonstration team, and became a squadron operations officer, in line to become a squadron commander. In his off-duty time he worked on his fiction, completing a manuscript that was eventually rejected by publishers, and another that became The Hunters. Despite the responsibilities of a spouse and two small children, he abruptly left active duty with the Air Force in 1957 to pursue his writing.

His 1961 novel The Arm of Flesh drew on his experiences flying with the 36th Fighter-Day Wing at Bitburg Air Base, Germany, between 1954 and 1957. An extensively revised version of the novel was reissued in 2000 as Cassada. However, Salter himself later disdained both of his "Air Force" novels as products of youth "not meriting much attention." After several years in the Air Force Reserve, Salter severed his connection completely in 1961 by resigning his commission after his unit was called up to active duty for the Berlin Crisis. He moved back to New York with his family, which included twins born in 1962, and legally changed his name to Salter.