Tuesday 29 July 2014

A good read for aviation buffs!

Having emptied my head of almost 700K words over three years of writing, I am reading a few non-military related stories as a form of detox.
Ernest K Gann, a pioneer in the early airline business, tells a fascinating tale or twenty, such as when Gann took off in an aircraft with engines of a new design. He half glided to safety a couple of minutes later, back onto the same runway, with spluttering engines and a cabin full of screaming passengers.
The Lycoming engineers put the blame squarely back on his shoulders and the management backed the engineers, on account of them having slide rules, and the pilot being a self-taught ex-barnstormer. 
He invited them to join him as he recreated the flight, and to their credit the engineers agreed, but he half glided to safety a couple of minutes later, back onto the same runway, with spluttering engines and a cabin full of screaming engineers. 
Ernest K Gann, hell of a guy!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fate-Hunter-Ernest-K-Gann-ebook/dp/B005ZTBXYI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1406408475&sr=1-1&keywords=fate+is+the+hunter

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