Hardcore Heroes (6 x 60’, HD)

EP. 1 - BATTLING THE ELEMENTS: CAPTAIN JACK PRITCHARD / JOHN KELLER

CAPTAIN JACK PRITCHARD – FIREPROOF Standing all of five foot five and weighing in at a little over a hundred and fifty pounds, Pritchard served with an elite unit of the FDNY that specialized in showing up first to the scene, pulling people out of burning buildings while the structure collapsed around them, and then getting the hell out before they were crushed to death by flaming cinderblocks or asphyxiated from an insane amount of smoke inhalation. Pritchard prided himself on being the first man to pretty much every major fire in Brooklyn, never backed down from a fight, never took sick time, once had two ribs broken in a fist fight with his commanding officer, and routinely preached that there was nothing a firefighter could encounter that couldn't be solved with two Asprin and a healthy amount of burn cream (they say that his entire upper body is covered in scar tissue because despite his many visits he never stayed in the hospital long enough for his wounds to heal completely). He won medals for many of his daring rescues, including saving a disabled boy from a raging fire without an oxygen tank and saving the lives of four firefighters on one of the most tragic days in FDNY history, digging men out from rubble with his bare hands and dragging them to safety while ignoring massive burns all down his arms and chest. Pritchard's most famous action took place in July of 1998, when the Jolly Rogers were called to a massive fire in a six-story apartment building in the heart of Brooklyn. When Jack leapt out of the fire truck cab he was immediately met by a woman screaming that her baby was trapped up on the fourth floor in a smoke-filled room that was also on fire. Captain Jack didn't hesitate. He told his men to get to work, then immediately ran up the stairs without bothering to grab a hose or a mask or an oxygen tank. He charged up to the fourth floor, and saw smoke pouring out from under the door of the apartment. Unable to smash through the locked door, and with time running out, Pritchard suddenly noticed that the woman's keys were still in the lock on the door, so he took his bulky gloves off, turned the key, opened the door, and was almost knocked unconscious by a backdraft fireball exploding in his face. But nothing was going to keep this madman from saving the baby inside this place, and Jack immediately dropped down and began crawling through the black smoke towards the sound of the crying child. He made his way to the nursery, where he found the baby laying in a plastic playpen. The flames and smoke were so intense in the room that there was no way for him to pull the kid out of there without it catching on fire, so, even though he wasn't wearing his gloves, he grabbed the melting plastic playpen with his bare hand and began dragging it out of the room. Burning the crap out of his hand every step of the way, and sucking down unhealthy amounts of carbon monoxide, Pritchard dragged the playpen through the apartment, calling out to his men to meet him at the door. With the playpen (and his hand) melting under the insane heat, Pritchard toughed it out, pulling the kid to safety and getting the baby out of there alive. For his actions he became only the second New York firefighter to receive the Bennett medal twice, and the first one to ever receive three Class One medals for "extreme personal risk".

JOHN KELLER – HURRICANE KATRINA HERO Keller, the 6-foot-7 ex-Marine who rescued 244 of his neighbors at the American Can Company apartment complex in Mid-City, emerged as one of the most memorable heroes of Hurricane Katrina. When the first floor of a five-story building flooded, leaving many of the 500 residents (who were mostly elderly and handicapped) stranded, he took charge. First Keller assessed the health of each remaining resident. He spray painted the names of medical supplies they desperately needed on the roof in hopes that rescue helicopters would drop them off, but when no help arrived he swam to the hospital to get them. Next he gathered all the weapons in the building and formed a mini squad who protected the building from the chaos raging around the city. Keller was on 24/7 patrol looking out for thieves who were attempting ransack the place – when he came across a group of burglars beating up one of the residents, he overpowered them and ordered them to leave. He passed police in a boat on one of his trips to the hospital who offered to evacuate him but he declined. Before leaving the police gave him their guns saying “you’re going to need these.” Keller says, “What made me stay was the old people. I just realized that nobody else in here could have gotten those people out. They would have sat in here for five more days. And they didn't have five more days.” In another instance, he was helping some residents evacuate in a rowboat when they were headed past a dangerous part of the city. A man with an automatic weapon approached them in the water demanding that they get out of the boat and give it to him. Keller (also armed) refused and told him he would come back and save him after dropping off his residents. A gun fight ensued and Keller was able to injure the man and safely row away. “When you’re a few days in without food or water, its dog eat dog.” Five days after the hurricane, Keller had overseen the evacuation of all 244 people in the building. He carried many to the roof (on his back) where they were airlifted to safety.

EP. 2 – SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS: JOE KITTINGER /

JOE KITTINGER - SPACE JUMPER To call former command pilot a daredevil is an understatement. He was the subject of harrowing experiments conducted to research the physiological effects of space on a human and the communications/logistics systems needed for sending a man so high. His most famous mission (Excelsior III) took place on August 16, 1960 where Kittinger (in an open gondola) was lifted 102,800 feet into the stratosphere by a helium balloon. The only thing protecting him from the deadly stratosphere was his pressurized suit. If the suit ripped or his helmet opened death would be almost immediate. This wasn’t a job for the faint of heart. In fact, in a previous jump an equipment malfunction caused him to lose consciousness. The automatic parachute opener was the only reason he lived to jump again. Kittinger made history for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest drogue-fall (four minutes), and fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere. Kittinger's records for the highest ascent, highest parachute jump, and fastest velocity stood for 52 years, until they were broken in 2012 by Felix Baumgartner. Kittinger mentored “Fearless Felix” along with a team of scientists, engineers and doctors who spent five years preparing and training for the jump. Baumgartner, inside a space capsule, was carried up 128,100 feet to his jump point by a large helium balloon. The mission had some obstacles including weather conditions and a foggy faceplate but Baumgartner wasn’t going to let that stop him. He forged ahead and everything went smoothly until he began to spin out of control while still in the stratosphere, but eventually he steadied himself. After four minutes and 20 seconds of free fall— with about a mile left to go in the jump—Baumgartner released his parachute and landed safely in the desert of . With Kittinger’s guidance, Baumgartner made the jump of a lifetime, becoming the first man to break the speed of sound during free fall, though Kittinger still holds the record for longest free fall. “Records are meant to be broken. And better champions cannot be found than Felix Baumgartner,” Kittinger said. Baumgartner hopes to mentor someone else to break the records, “I want to inspire the next generation.”

JOHN STAPP - THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE After the Second World War, Doctor John Stapp, a military MD and biophysicist decided to take it upon himself to make the world safer for the men and women of the air force. At that point in history if anything happened to your airplane while you were traveling at high speeds you were pretty much a goner. Stapp’s mission was to design a new type of ejection system that would allow fighter pilots to escape from falling aircraft before it was too late. The only problem was there wasn’t anything on Earth that moved fast enough to test his theories. So Stapp found 2,000 feet of railway track and designed a rocket sled that would run along the track at over 600 miles an hour. Understandably the first tests of this new rocket train used crash test dummies. And during the first catastrophic tests the dummies literally disintegrated. Eventually the team had worked out most of the major mechanical issues but no one really knew what would happen to a human being under these conditions. Good thing Doctor John Stapp was badass. Stapp stepped up and chose to strap himself into this nearly supersonic train for the betterment of mankind. The other scientists lit the fuse and hot-tailed it to the safety of the bunker. When the rocket ignited Stapp accelerated to 632 miles an hour – faster than a 45. caliber handgun bullet and making him the fastest man on Earth. He then came to a complete stop in less than 1.4 seconds while experiencing 35 times the force of gravity. The deceleration broke Stapes bones and pulled his eyes out of his head, temporarily leaving him blind. This stunt and the following 74 rocket sled test that Stapp personally participated in helped create the world’s first rocket ejection system, saving countless lives. His work also created a new understanding of safety harness systems which were instrumental in convincing President Lyndon Johnson to make seatbelts mandatory – saving millions of lives.

EP. 3 – WARRIORS OF THE FRONT LINE: DREW DIX / VIKTOR LEONOV

DREW DIX – THE REAL RAMBO Drew pretty much defined ‘die-hard’ throughout most of the Vietnam War. As a highly trained Green Beret, he spent most of his time on ultra-dangerous, top-secret missions behind enemy lines. But the single battle that would ultimately define Drew’s true badass-nature took place on January 30th 1968. On that morning Dix was on patrol with two Navy SEALs in an inflatable powerboat on the rivers near the city of Chau Pau when the Viet Cong launched an epic sneak attack with 2,400 men. Instead of retreating (like any sane person) Dix and his men didn’t even hesitate; they decided to attack. The three men turned their inflatable boat toward shore and into “intense enemy fire from nearly every direction”. Dix described that "it was a little like Normandy", except he and his men were the only ones the Viet Cong were shooting at. Amazingly the three-man team not only managed to land their boat and take up a defensive position but they started to attract local, friendly South Vietnamese men who wanted to help strike back. Dix used this newly formed and totally untrained militia of 20 men to fight house-to-house, room-to-room. Dix and his men ultimately took back the city itself and eventually captured the enemy commander. After fifty-six hours of non-stop fighting, the city was firmly in South Vietnamese hands. Drew Dix, the lone warrior, had single-handedly coordinated the successful defense of Chau Pau.

VIKTOR LEONOV – THE RUSSIAN GLADIATOR Viktor Nikolayevitch Leonov was a grizzled, hardcore Russian sailor so completely over-the-top scary that he once convinced a Japanese garrison to surrender simply by staring them down and threatening to tear them all limb from limb. He was also a pioneer in the art of modern amphibious warfare and a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union. His operations in the early days of WWII laid the foundation for one of the most hardcore special operations forces in the world, the Russian Spetsnaz. Viktor Leonov enlisted in the Soviet Navy in 1937, clawed his way up through the ranks, and by the time World War II really got going he had already been promoted from Private to Lieutenant, and was attached to the 181st Special Recon Detachment of the Soviet Navy – a special unit designed specifically to carry out balls-to-the-wall commando raids aimed at tearing apart the Germans in lightning-quick night raids. Throughout 1941, Lieutenant Leonov single-handedly commanded dozens of raids on enemy bases along the Russian and Finnish coastlines, running chest-deep through the frigid temperatures of the Baltic Sea, blazing his submachine guns like a maniac, and wiping out all in his path. Deploying by inflatable raft, torpedo boat, submarine, and parachute, he obliterated communications centers, ammunition depots, and other strongpoints in the Arctic Circle, monitored enemy ship movements and captured/interrogated/obliterated enemies along the Black Sea, and once coordinated with Norwegian commandos on a mission that wiped out a motor transport depot, killed 100 of the enemy, destroyed 25 trucks, and ignited untold quantities of fuel without suffering a single friendly casualty. Leonov survived hundreds of dangerous missions during four years of near-constant battle, but his most famous raid against Fascism came in October of 1944. The Spetsnaz unit had been ordered to silence four massive 155mm coastal defense guns that had been kicking the shit out of anything the Russians tried to stick in Cape Krestovyi – certainly no easy task, considering that these men were locked-and- loaded to blast anything in the water wasn’t sporting a giant swastika. But Leonov wasn't about to be deterred. Instead of trying the frontal approach, he did something even more insane – he landed his troops several miles up the coast, somehow force-marched a team of about 100 commandos a half-dozen miles deep behind enemy lines without anybody noticing, and ambushed an 88mm flak cannon position that just so happened to be strategically positioned right near the 155mm guns. The Spetsnaz captured the 20-man artillery unit, had them call for reinforcements, and when the reinforcements showed up Leonov lowered the guns and plowed them into a crater with heavy artillery. He then immediately attacked the 155s, capturing 60 men (including the commanding officer) without so much as firing a shot. This unbelievable asskicking helped the Soviets land in Finland, and earned Leonov his first Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union -- the highest award for military bravery the USSR had to offer. In September of ‘45 Leonov led his men on successful raids that captured no fewer than four Japanese ports along the Korean and Manchurian coastlines. When his 140-man team parachuted into hostile territory and was taken hostage by the Japanese HQ garrison commander, Leonov got super pissed and threatened to blow the place to pieces. The Japanese surrendered and Leonov received his second Gold Star.

EP. 4 – FOR A GREATER CAUSE: GEORGE ROWE / THE MASIN GANG

GEORGE ROWE – TWO WHEELS, DOUBLE LIFE Mention the word "badass" to your average citizen, and one image pops into their head – that of a ridiculously-gigantor, 325-pound, bald, bearded, leather jacket clad mofo with tatted-up arms the size of telephone poles tearing down the highway doing 120 on a chrome-plated custom Harley. Rowe had been a drug dealer, crystal meth addict, barroom brawler, and convicted felon for the first 40 years of his life, but when he witnessed the Vagos, the local motorcycle gang, brutally and senselessly beat his friend over a pool game, everything changed. Rowe decided to pay back his Southern California hometown for his past sins by taking down the gang that was terrorizing it. Rowe was the first private civilian in ATF history to ever successfully infiltrate an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, becoming a psychotic Harley-riding madman while simultaneously Donnie Brasco'ing it up and compiling enough evidence for the Feds to indict the biker gang on a multitude of felony charges. Despite tons of close calls – including several times when he was almost killed and/or had his cover blown – he spent the next three years of his life running an elaborate operation, getting in close with the Vagos leadership and infiltrating the club while simultaneously keeping his ATF contact informed of Vagos movements and operations in the region. While undercover, he pissed off the president of a Vagos-affiliated chapter in a different city and was ordered to face off against four members of that chapter's toughest guys. He started a huge bar brawl and beat the shit out of the gang members, one after the other, and used the cast on his broken arm to club a pool cue-swinging biker to the ground. After the fight, he was very nearly handed over to them to atone for his crimes – a sentence that would have meant his own slow, painful death. Three years later he helped bring the entire organization down - 700 federal agents conducted 72 raids across 5 counties in Southern California, arresting 42 members of the Vagos motorcycle club, seizing a hundred illegal firearms, two stolen motorcycles, thousands of dollars in cash, and multiple stashes of drugs. Many gang members went to prison and Rowe lost everything when he was under witness protection: his family, his business, his home—even his identity. He wrote a book about his experiences and to this day, under protection by the U.S. government, Rowe still looks over his shoulder, keeping watch for the Vagos who have vowed to search for him until the day they die.

THE MASIN GANG – TWO BORDERS AWAY FROM FREEDOM What if there's not just one but two borders separating you from freedom? With a few hundred miles of enemy territory in between and police, state security and two goddamn armies trying to stop you? You could ask the Masin brothers -they walked right through it. Citrad and Josef Masin started on the Czech government's "good kids" list at the ages of 13 and 15 by receiving medals for fighting the Nazis in World War II, just like their dad had done. When they realized the ruling communists were little better than the Nazis, they started a resistance group. And we're not talking about the usual ways teenagers revolt, like getting a piercing or two: We're talking about twice violently raiding police stations to steal guns and ammo. In 1953, the group decided it was time to get the hell out. Now, getting out of communist territory meant they had to get first across the Czech border, then across East Germany into West Germany. They started their push toward the border 150 miles away. Injuring or killing people who got in their way, the two brothers and three others sneaked across the border and hiked through the forests. When they tried to buy train tickets in Germany, the sales staff was suspicious and reported them to the police. The police raided the train station, which was only a minor speed bump in their plans - the brothers and their band shot their way out. The East German paramilitary soon realized they needed help from locally stationed Soviet troops to take the brothers down. Eventually, at least 5,000 men were involved, three of whom were gunned down during the chase west. The group was even encircled some 60 miles outside of Berlin. And once again, the ragtag group of Czechs broke out. Eventually the three remaining fugitives made it to the West, one by suspending himself from a subway car's undercarriage. Where did the brothers end up? The one place where their talents and violent hatred of communism were truly honored: Fort Bragg. That's right - they joined the U.S. Special Forces.

EP. 5 – LONE WOLVES: CARLOS HATHCOCK / MAX HARDBERGER

CARLOS HATHCOCK – THE ULTIMATE HUNTER Hathcock has one of the most impressive mission records of any sniper in the Marine corps. Aside from the dozens of shooting championships he won, he amassed 93 confirmed kills during the Vietnam War and likely many more unconfirmed. The Vietnam army put a $30,000 bounty on his life for killing so many of their men. It was Hathcock who fired the most famous shot in sniper history – he fired a round, over a very long distance, which went through the scope of an enemy sniper, hit him in the eye, and killed him. Hathcock and Roland Burke, his spotter, were stalking the enemy sniper who had already killed several Marines and who was now out to kill Hathcock. When Hathcock saw a flash of light reflecting off the enemy’s scope, he fired at it in a split second, pulling off one of the most precise shots in history. Hathcock reasoned that the only way that this was possible would have been if both snipers were aiming at each other’s scopes at the same time and he fired first. Although the distance was never confirmed, Hathcock knew that because of the flight time, it would have been easy for both snipers to kill each other. The white feather was synonymous with Hathcock (he kept one in his hat) and he removed it only once for a voluntary mission where he crawled over 1500 yards of enemy territory to shoot an NVA commanding general. He knew nothing about the mission beforehand and information wasn’t sent until he was already on-route. It took 4 days and 3 nights without sleep of inch-by-inch crawling. One enemy soldier almost stepped on him as he laid camouflaged in a meadow, and when he was nearly bitten by a viper, he didn’t flinch. He finally got into position and waited for the general. When he arrived Hathcock was ready – he fired one round and hit the general through the chest, killing him. The soldiers started a search for the sniper and Hathcock had to crawl back to avoid detection. They never caught him.

MAX HARDBERGER – EXTREME REPO MAN Along with having a badass name, Max Hardberger has one of the most badass jobs on the planet. He steals stolen freighters back after they’ve been stolen by the mafia, warlords and pirates. He has been doing this for the last 25 years he has never failed to retrieve a ship. Hardberger doesn’t like to use violence - in fact on all his missions he's never killed a single person. Instead, he prefers to show up at the port, blend in, recon the area, and put together a clever, airtight plan for getting the boat and himself out in one piece. Perhaps his most famous repo-boat-heist of all time took place during the Haitian Revolution of 2004. Hardberger was hired to retrieve a 10,000 ton, 3.5 million dollar ship that had been seized by some unsavoury villains and was now being held in an obscure Haitian harbour. All in a days work for Max Hardberger. In order to retrieve the ship Max and his team risked their lives and infiltrated the Haitian war zone. Then they used a witchdoctor to scare off the guards on shore. Max then posed as a potential buyer to gain access to the stolen boat. Once aboard, he and his team evaded armed guards to fix the ship’s broken engine. Then they cut the massive anchor chains holding the ship in port with a blowtorch and hot tailed it out of there with the 3.5 million dollar boat. At the age of 62, Max Hardberger continues to run his extreme boat repo businesses, doing more badass stuff in one weekend that most of us will do in our entire lives.

EP. 6 – TAKING FLIGHT: GEORGE WELCH AND KENNETH TAYLOR /

GEORGE WELCH AND KENNETH TAYLOR – PEARL HARBOR HEROES In the movie Pearl Harbor, Danny and Rafe spend the night at a bar getting drunk and then passing out early in the morning. The next day, they are awakened by what they think are U.S. Navy drills, but are actually the sounds of incoming Japanese aircraft bombing the hell out of the harbor. Quickly realizing what's going on, they make a call and order two aircraft loaded up. They then jump into their car and race toward the airfield at full speed, being shot at by Japanese planes the whole way because, hey, it's a Michael Bay movie. Once at the field, they rapidly take off (without permission) as the airfield is attacked around them. Once in the air, they proceed to kick some serious ass, shooting down Japanese aircraft left and right, before landing. It has all of the classic elements of a Michael Bay masculine fantasy: heroism while grossly defying authority, ridiculous badassery in the face of overwhelming odds, all while battling a hangover from a night of manly drinking with the dudes. And the reality is the whole story is true, almost verbatim. Except in real life, their names were George Welch and Kenneth Taylor. After spending the night of December 6 getting drunk and having fun, the two men passed out early in the morning. The next day, they were awakened by the sounds of what they thought were U.S. Navy drills, but turned out to be Japanese aircraft swooping in and destroying everything in sight. Quickly realizing that they didn't want to sit there and do nothing, they called the small, relatively unknown Haleiwa Fighter Strip and ordered two aircraft readied for a fight. The two then hopped into a car and sped all the way to the airfield. And they were totally shot at by the Japanese planes, just like in the movie. Once they arrived at the airfield, they jumped into their aircraft and took off, without permission. From there they proceeded to take on any Japanese planes they happened across, despite being outnumbered a mind blowing 175 to 1. After shooting down a few Japanese, the two landed back at Wheeler Airfield to re-arm, where they were ordered not to take off again because their superiors feared that it was a suicide mission. However, when the second wave of Japanese fighters came in, their superiors ran for cover. While Welch and Taylor took off by driving through the grass. Just like in the damn movie. At the end of the day, the two had shot down between four and six Japanese planes before finally landing themselves back on the ground after they ran out of ammo. After landing Taylor and Welch passed by their squadron commander who noticed that they were wearing their tuxedo attire. Unaware of their earlier dogfights, he shouted at the two men, saying "Get back to Haleiwa! You know there's a war on?"

CHUCK YEAGER - THE FIRST PILOT TO TRAVEL FASTER THAN SOUND Aviation legend, Chuck Yeager spent three decades as a human experiment testing the effects of extreme speed on the body. Yeager embarked on the most dangerous flights ever attempted, blasting through the stratosphere at speeds that could blast a lesser man’s brains out the back of their head. Welcome to the Yeagerzone. Yeager's career began in World War II as a private in the Army Air Force. While there he gained notoriety for being shot down over the French countryside, but surviving and carrying a wounded American pilot over his shoulder across the Pyrenees Mountains. Over the course of the war he took down 4 German-Me 109s, a badass Nazi Me 262 jet fighter, and recorded 13 aircraft kills over the course of 61 missions. But after the war, is when the real fun began. Yeager was the chosen one from a group of 125 senior pilots to become a test pilot for experimental rocket-powered aircrafts. While dealing with two broken ribs, he still got his ass in the rocket and on October 14th, 1947 was the first man to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. Soonafter his Mach 1.07 record was beat by Scott Crossfield. Yeager would have none of it and set a new record, DOUBLING his initial speed with the record of Mach 2.44 a mere two months after Crossfield crossed his path. But the flight wasn’t smooth sailing. His Bell X-1A went so ballistically fast that immediately after he hit the fastest speed ever, the plane went completely out of control, plummeting 51,000 feet in the span of 51 seconds. But Chuck didn’t even blink he just said screw it and pulled out of the dive a mere five feet from the ground and flew back to safety.