Bill McWilliams was born in Brownsville, Texas, was raised in small towns in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from the third congressional district of Colorado. He graduated with a bachelor of science degree and earned a master of science in business administration from the George Washington University while attending the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. He later attended the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, where he completed ten months of senior management training.
His air force service included work as a flight and classroom instructor in undergraduate pilot and fighter training; a seven-month combat tour in the Republic of Vietnam, where he flew one hundred twenty-eight fighter-bomber close-support and interdiction missions; and posts at the United States Air Force Academy as commanding and flight instructor for cadets receiving familiarization training in light aircraft. Later he served in the Republic of Korea for two years, and at the Air Force Tactical Fighter Weapons Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. After leaving the Air Force he served more than eight years in systems engineering and management positions in the aerospace industry.
McWilliams’s writing includes two Korean War histories—A Return to Glory: The Untold Story of Honor, Dishonor, and Triumph at the United States Military Academy, 1950–53 and On Hallowed Ground: The Last Battle for Pork Chop Hill—plus numerous articles, including series in newspapers and magazines. The ESPN made-for-television movie Code Breakers, which premiered in December 2005, was based on McWilliams’s first book.
