Hank Searls

Henry Hunt Searls (August 10, 1922 – February 17, 2017) was an American author and screenwriter. His novels included The Crowded Sky (1960), which was adapted as the 1960 movie of the same name; The Pilgrim Project (1964), which was adapted as the 1968 movie Countdown; and The Penetrators (1965, writing as Anthony Gray). Searls also wrote the novelizations for the movies Jaws 2 (1978) featuring Roy Scheider and Murray Hamilton, and Jaws: The Revenge (1987) featuring Michael Caine and Lorraine Gary. Career Hank Searls' 1960 novel, The Crowded Sky, was made that same year into a feature movie featuring Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Anne Francis, and Troy Donahue. Set in the USAF's Strategic Air Command, the 1965 novel The Penetrators is the story of a maverick Royal Air Force exchange officer who commands a mock Avro Vulcan bomber attack on the USA. Replete with quotes from Curtis LeMay, Robert S McNamara and other officials of the Cold War era, The Penetrators was the kind of detailed, political-military thriller which later became characteristic of Tom Clancy. The book also strongly argued the case for the US's crewed long-range bomber force, which was then in danger of being phased out in favour of ICBMs. Searls' novel The Pilgrim Project was adapted as the 1968 Robert Altman movie Countdown, which featured Robert Duvall and James Caan.