Books I Have Enjoyed

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

I just bought a book for a friend of mine and wanted to recommend it to the folks here as well.

 

"Flying Through Time" by Jim Doyle.  Mr. Doyle bought a Stearman, an ex-military trainer, then an ex-sprayer.  The plane is restored back to how it looked as a trainer, and Doyle discovers that it had been ground looped by one of the trainee pilots (James Longan) that flew it ramping up for WW2.  

 

Doyle comes up with the idea of flying the airplane around to the various bases it operated from, meeting with guys that flew it or learned to fly in planes like it and getting them back in the cockpit in exchange for collecting their stories about learning to fly and what they did after.

 

He winds up taking an 8,000 mile trip across the country and back in a biplane designed in the 30s, and part of the book is about that.  The rest of the book is about the pilots that learned to fly in Stearmans.  He talks to bomber pilots, navigators and bombardiers -- guys that washed out of flight training, often behind the stick of a Stearman.  There are Lightning pilots, Mustang drivers, Thunderbolt guys including Bill Barlow.  Barlow's story is that he trained as a Mustang pilot and was transferred to Thunderbolts.  He got knocked down by flak over Hurtgen Forest, and as he is coming down some light AAA guns are using him as target practice.  A couple 109s come and circle him to keep the AAA gunners from killing him - the second time he has his life saved by German pilots.

 

On the ground, he does the SERE thing on his own for 8 days with no food or water.

 

As a consequence, he loses both his legs, but 57 years after he soloed in a Stearman and went on to bigger, faster aircraft he manages to climb back into one and is back over Sequoia Field in California, doing low passes down the runway with Doyle.

 

The other part of the book is about these bases.  Where they were, what they did, etc.  There are pictures of what is left -- to often it is a Walmart parking lot or something.

 

The stories are sometimes sad, sometimes funny but always interesting.

Edited September 12, 2013 by HeavyCavalrySgt