Cart (0)
VIDEOAmerican Bad-Ass: Boots & Coots
The author details the considerable bad-assery of the publicly traded drilling company.
 |
|
There’s no finer example of good ol’ American bad-assery than the aptly-named “hellfighters” who extinguish oil well blowouts.
And, from where I sit, the bad-ass’s bad-asses would have to be Asger “Boots” Hansen and Edward “Coots” Matthews.
“Boots Hansen”
“Coots Matthews”
Boots enlisted in the US Navy’s Submarine Service at the age of 17, and served in the Pacific aboard the Nautilus SS-168 during WWII. He met Red Adair at the Arrowhead Speedway in Houston while racing cars.
Bad-ass!
Coots served in Europe during the Big One as a tail gunner on B17 bombers with the 96th Bomb Group, 338 Bomb Squadron. In 1943, he was awarded the distinguished flying cross, air medal, 3 oak leaf clusters, purple heart and 2 presidential unit citations.
Baaad-asssss!
In 1959, Boots and Coots joined Red Adair at his hellfighting outfit, the Red Adair Oil Well Fires and Blow-outs Control Corporation, and helped extinguish 1961’s notorious “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter,” a 450-foot-high gas fire in North Africa.
It was this fire that turned Adair into an international celebrity and brought attention to the all-around bad-assedness of the profession - proven by the release of Hellfighters in 1968, which featured John Wayne as Chance Buckman, a character based on Red Adair. 
Copyright 2011 Minyanville Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
