Red Adair

Paul ''Red'' Adair, the son of an immigrant Irish blacksmith, was born in Texas in 1915. He left school to work as a labourer, first on the railways and then in the oil fields.

In 1939 he joined Myron Kinley, a famous Houston oil fire expert, and stayed with him for 14 years, with a break for wartime service in the US Army as a bomb disposal expert.