The Hunters is James Salter's debut novel and a tale of USAF fighter pilots during the Korean War, first published in 1956.

He walks to dinner at the Officers Club reflecting on his ability as a flyer (he is a good one, with a reputation among his peacetime peers), his reluctance to leave the Air Force although pressured by civilian friends to do so, and his desire to test himself in combat.

One stands out from the rest, however, emanating cool confidence amidst their obvious insecurity, and mildly harasses a pretty Japanese bar waitress.

[a] He meets pilots he knew in Panama, just after the end of World War II, including Carl Abbott, now a major.

Cleve is mildly shocked to find that his young comrade of just a few years ago now looks old, out of shape, and lacking in spirit.

Imil is a larger-than-life personality who shows off Cleve to the veterans as a "real fighter pilot", and enthusiastically introduces him to Colonel Moncavage, a former ace just returned to flying.

Desmond reassures him that Casey Jones' distinctively black-striped MiG isn't seen on missions anymore, his tour apparently over.

They encounter MiGs in large numbers on one mission and although seemingly everywhere, the clashes are so fleeting that Desmond's flight is unable to ever catch up to any.

", prompting Desmond to relate to Cleve that Robey had once gotten Imil to cajole a reluctant wingman into confirming a kill he had not witnessed.

Just as he is about to recover his good humor however, he encounters a new pilot in their barracks just assigned to his flight, Ed Pell, the loud lieutenant from Japan.

Trapped by a feeling of helplessness, his growing self-doubt begins to gnaw away his confidence as he fears he is not just unlucky but possibly lacking something vital.

The feeling worsens when Major Abbott, about to be exiled from the Wing, drops in to say goodbye and begins sobbing uncontrollably, possibly foreshadowing Cleve's own fate.

Other missions go by without combat until one day Colonel Moncavage, who also had lacked success, shoots down two MiGs, eviscerating Cleve emotionally.

The night before the leave they head into Seoul for a steak dinner at the plush officers club of Air Force Headquarters, where they run into Abbott who insists with a pitiful obsessiveness on hearing the details of Cleve's MiG kill.

DeLeo has booked them a night at Miyoshi's, a well-known Soapland-style brothel, that is spent in samisen music, saki, the baths, and sex with two young Japanese women.

In the locker room after the briefing, he is surly with Pell, who is not only cocky but full of suggestions on how the mission ought to be flown and somewhat contemptuous of its veteran pilots.

He wants to be free of competing for MiGs but he's only too aware that he's expected by everyone, even Daughters and DeLeo, to match Pell's accomplishments.

Cleve imagines Daughters' terror at being shot down, and in the realization of his own mortality, comes to believe that his salvation will be in killing Casey Jones.

Their fuel tanks nearly empty, Cleve and Hunter climb to 40,000 feet to attempt to glide back to base, a too-common practice.

Pell, back after his seventh kill, tells a correspondent interviewing him that Cleve was one of the best, who taught him everything about air combat, but never got lucky himself.

Salter has been praised for his descriptions of flight in this novel, including comparisons to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (New York Times Book Review),[4] but until the next-to-last chapter, scenes involving flying are few and brief.

Salter's biographer William Dowie calls The Hunters a "variation on the theme of man's desire for glory in the face of death."

"[7] Dowie also notes that the protagonist of The Hunters was originally called "Cleve Saville," as is the main character of the film adaptation.

Salter as James Horowitz had been assigned to D Flight in the 335th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, which became one of the leading MiG-killing units in Korea while he was a member, scoring 28 victories.

[10][b] This occurred ten days after the attack on the Sui-ho Dam which provided the framework for the climax of The Hunters, although in the historical mission no MiG combat actually took place.

However, just as depicted in The Hunters, the 4th Wing's commander Colonel Harrison Thyng "went to bat for him" because he wanted results: MiG kills.

A month after that, following his sixth kill,[e] Low was sent back to the United States on temporary duty to lecture on the radar gunsight, of which he was undoubtedly an expert.

Controversy over the depiction remained subdued until release of the film, which transformed Pell's character into an immature but likeable pilot who redeems himself after his element lead is shot down while he was off chasing a MiG.

[14] Whether consciously or not, this rebuttal mirrored the scene in the novel in which Pell disparaged Cleve to Imil: "I don't think he goes for this combat flying too much.

[21] A pair of top-scoring Soviet Air Force pilots, Nikolay Sutyagin and Yevgeny Pepelyaev, both finished their missions only weeks before Salter arrived in Korea.