Hank Searls' novel The Crowded Sky was made into a motion picture in 1960 by Warner Brothers starring Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Anne Francis, and Troy Donahue.

Set in the corridors of power of the USAF's Strategic Air Command, the 1965 novel The Penetrators is the story of a maverick Royal Air Force exchange officer who leads a mock Avro Vulcan bomber attack on the USA. Replete with quotes from Curtis LeMay, Robert S McNamara and other key figures of the Cold War era, The Penetrators foreshadowed the kind of richly detailed, political-military thriller which later became the trademark of Tom Clancy. The book also strongly argued the case for the US's manned long-range bomber force, which was then in danger of being phased out in favour of ICBMs.

Searls' novel The Pilgrim Project was adapted for the screen as the 1968 Robert Altman movie Countdown, which starred Robert Duvall and James Caan.

Based on his own novel of the same title, Searls wrote the screenplay for the 1978 Angie Dickinson TV movie Overboard. He wrote a biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. The Lost Prince: Young Joe, The Forgotten Kennedy. This became the basis of the 1977 TV movie Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy, with Peter Strauss in the title role.

Searls' other military and aviation-themed novels included: The Astronaut (1962), Pentagon (1971), Hero Ship (1969), The Big X (1959), and Altitude Zero (1991). His other writings were Firewind(1981), Sounding (1982), Blood Song (1984), Kataki (1987), and The Adventures of Mike Blair (1988). He also wrote the novelisations of the movies Jaws 2 in 1978 and The Revenge in 1987.