Miller, Blaine "Danger Zone"
Co-written with Dupont Miller. American tag line: A story of the U.S. Neutrality Patrol.” There’s a Panama Canal / Caribbean setting for this short story about a U.S. Navy officer charged with monitoring “belligerent” shipping. Though its romance angle is rather trite (the Navy officer encounters his ex-wife (a champion aviatrix) and saves her from the guns of a British warship that mistakenly believes her plane to be a Nazi fighter), the story does point to the fact that merchant shipping in the Americas was being closely monitored by the U.S. military by the Summer of 1940. An interesting “author’s note” printed as a sidebar to the story – and written in the breathless style of a Hollywood press release! – says of the Millers:
“Blaine Miller, who collaborated with his wife in writing this story, is a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. He has recently completed a tour of duty in command of a squadron of giant patrol planes that have been winging their way back and forth over the Caribbean keeping an eye on belligerent ships. It was monotonous, hard work, fraught with danger. Yet, amid his daily adventures, Lt. Comdr. Miller found time to conceive the idea for this absorbing yarn, which he and his wife rushed into production on his return to his Panama base.”