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-   -   What's your favorite aviation book? (https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=11441)

jpowell13 05-12-2015 11:42 PM

More good books (Higher Call and The Good Shepherd)
 
I have some great friends that love to read and recommend good books to me so I don't have to waste my time on bad ones. I'm just finishing up A HIGHER CALL by Adam Makos. It's been reviewed here before, but I'd like to add two cents. It's about b17 pilot Charlie Brown and bf109 pilot Franz Stigler and their amazing encounter over N Germany in WWII. Makos spent a lot of time with the subjects who both lived in N America until their deaths in 2008. Brown and Stigler must have been totally open because the book really goes into the internal conflicts and emotions they had to endure. Brown's survival of 28 combat missions was remarkable. Stigler's survival of more than 400 combat missions seems miraculous. Both were men of faith, a Catholic and a Methodist, who became close friends after the war.

Did you ever read anything by CS Forrester (African Queen and Hornblower books)? THE GOOD SHEPHERD is probably out of print, but I found it at my library. This is another WWII book and a fictional account of a destroyer commander escorting a convoy across the N Atlantic. It's only marginally about airplanes, but has the best description of submarine/destroyer battles I've ever read. (Very similar to dogfights.) Couldn't put it down.

John

Xkuzme1 05-13-2015 12:03 AM

Fate is a hunter.

North Star over my Shoulder by Bob Buck

Bob also wrote Weather Flying.

xblueh2o 05-13-2015 02:00 AM

Lots have been mentioned here before:

Fate is the Hunter. Ernest K Gann. A great read for so many reasons.

Pretty much anything by Bach but Illusions and Nothing By Chance are my favorites. I can smell the summer hay mixed with gas and oil when I read his stuff. I read them over and over.

Failure is Not An Option. Gene Kranz. I have so many questions I would love to ask him after reading the book.

Fighter Pilot. Ed Rasimus. The stories of Robin Olds. What a life he led.

Some that I haven't seen mentioned:

First Light. Geoffrey Wellum. True story of a WWII Spitfire pilot. No special heroics. Just a simple telling of his path through extraordinary times.

Palace Cobra and When Thunder Rolled. Ed Rasimus. Two books about tours in two different aircraft types. F-4 and the F-105. Both are great reads.

A Lonely Kind of War. Marshall Harrison. Stories of a Vietnam era OV-10 Bronco FAC. Thumping great read. I was hooked by the second page and read the entire book in a day.

Hero Found. Bruce Henderson. True story of a SPAD driver POW who managed to escape and evade recapture during the Vietnam war and what a character he was.

jrs14855 05-13-2015 01:16 PM

Bob Bu7ck
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Xkuzme1 (Post 982505)
Fate is a hunter.

North Star over my Shoulder by Bob Buck

Bob also wrote Weather Flying.

Bob was a regular contributor to Air Facts Magazine. In the late 40's?? he was assigned by TWA to fly with Tyrone Power in a DC3 from LA across the South Atlantic to Africa, where they then did a lengthy tour of most of Africa. Bob wrote about this in a series of articles for Air Facts that is fascinating reading. EAA Museum Library has a near complete set of Air Facts.

jpowell13 02-19-2018 08:11 PM

Glacier Pilot
 
Just finished Glacier Pilot by Beth Day. She tells the story of Bob Reeves who pioneered high altitude glacier landings in the 1930's in order to haul freight to gold miners. Then, with war on the horizon, he flew countless tons of cargo into the Aleutians for the US Army with a Fairchild 71 and and an old Boeing Trimotor biplane.

The book was written in 1957. I can't get my head around the fact that Day was not a pilot. The descriptions of the weather flying, forced landings and airplane maintenance in the harsh Alaskan environment seem totally correct to me. (Or, at least plausible and understandable to a warm weather pilot.)

Many other Alaskan aviators and noteables are included in the book. The old black and white photos are worth the price of the book.

Would be interesting to know if anyone on this site remembers Bob Reeves or Reeves Aleutian Airways.

John

h&jeuropa 02-20-2018 10:31 AM

John,

I spent a year on Shemya island at the western end of the Aleutians in 1967. Reeves Aleutian flew out the islands twice a week with mail. They stayed overnight at Shemya. The stewardesses were the only women on the island during their overnight (lodged at the terminal building, far from everyone and everything).

They were flying Electras at that time. A story often told was that they had to have 10 runway lights in sight to take off and one time, the pilot said to the copilot, "I have five, do you have five? OK, lets go"

Jim Butcher

mbauer 02-20-2018 09:31 PM

Some Not Listed
 
Agree with GLACIER PILOT reviews Great book. The FLYING NORTH is another accurate one as well-been to some of the places both books mention.

I've read through this thread. Was surprised to see some of the best only mentioned once, OPERATION OVERFLIGHT by Francis Gary Powers was one, interesting read.

Quite a few of my library has already been mentioned, these are the ones that seem to have been left out:
ROCKET FIGHTER by Mano Ziegler (1st person account on flying the ME163)
THE LONELY SKY by William Bridgeman (1st person account on flying the Douglass D558-II Skyrocket)
MEN FROM EARTH by Buzz Aldrin
MOON SHOT by Sheppard/Slayton
COME UP AND GET ME by Kittinger (tested spacesuits for the early astronauts by riding a balloon to over 100,000ft and then parachuting-he helped coach Felix Baumgartner in his record parachute jump a few years ago) National Geographic did a piece on him as well-The Long Lonely Jump
WING LEADER by J.E. Johnson (WWII top scoring allied fighter pilot)
THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE by Brig. Gen Frank Everest JR
IGOR SIKORSKY by Frank Delear
APACHE SUNRISE by Jerome Boyle (Vietnam Cobra Pilot)
CENTAUR FLIGHTS by Richard Spalding (Vietnam Cobra Pilot)
TEST PILOTS: RIDING THE DRAGON by Martin Caidin
FORK TAILED DEVIL THE P38 by Martin Caidin
John Glenn by John Glenn

Not so much a book on aviation: Photos taken by quite a few different astronauts: THE GREATEST ADVENTURE from MACH 1, Inc

The best movie about spaceflight: FOR ALL MANKIND from Criterion-Rob Riener was allowed into NASA archives, he spliced together all of the astronauts film footage into a movie. Many astronauts are quoted and shown. If you watch this movie, best to use the Astronaut Identification choice at the start so you know what mission you are watching. Mostly about Apollo missions to the moon, however, you will see Astronaut White do the first US spacewalk. Lots of moon footage!

As mentioned CHICKENHAWK is one of my favorites.

Currently reading, AT THE EDGE OF SPACE THE X-15 FLIGHT PROGRAMME by Milton O. Thompson bought it two weeks ago on eBay for less than $10. Interesting read so far!

ROCKET FIGHTER by Mano Ziegler is the best book about flying rocket powered airplanes, THE LONEY SKY is a close second. Both cover the dangers of flying rocket engines and the incredible power available.

If you decide to try ROCKET FIGHTER and THE LONELY SKY-try to get the hardbound versions, both have lots of interesting photos.

Best regards,
Mike Bauer

jpowell13 02-20-2018 09:40 PM

Glacier Pilot
 
Great stuff Jim. I also read Last Letter from Attu about the school teacher taken captive (along with the entire Aleut population of Attu) by the Japanese and interned in Japan for the duration. The life on those islands before scheduled air service sounded brutal... and pretty rough even after a few airports got built. Must have been quite an experience for you.

Thanks for the recommendations Mike. Lots of intriguing titles and authors in that list.

John

edneff 02-22-2018 10:32 AM

"The Final Hours" by Johannes Steinhoff

An interesting but short book by a top WWII ace and Me-262 pilot

PerfTech 02-22-2018 04:35 PM

This is it!
 
...Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century A D 25th Century...:D


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