DTB Review: No Parachute

Arthur Gould Lee, No Parachute

Product Details

• Hardcover: 233 pages
• Publisher: Time Life Education (June 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809496127
• ISBN-13: 978-0809496129
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews) 
• Price: $48.80 plus shipping

1. Short review:    (Amazon rating: 5 out of 5 stars -- I love it.)

2. Long review:

2.1. What I liked:  The contemporaneous account by a flyer in the Great War. Of all the books I have read on air combat in the Great War, No Parachute is the best.
Roller-coaster or walk-in-the-park? Roller coaster.

2.2. What I did not like: The cover (see above). The cover is god-awful.
     The first edition cover is better but misleading. Here 'tis:

     The airplane in the foreground sporting the roundel on the fuselage and the Lewis gun on the top plane is a Nieuport fighter. This implies that Lee flew Nieuports. He did not. He flew Sopwith Pups and Camels.
     The 1971 mass-market paperback got it right; here 'tis:

The airplane in the foreground is a Sopwith Pup.
(Note the price on the cover: 95¢.)

     The non-scalable font. I have gotten used to e-books. I like to choose the size of the font I read. Not having that ability is an annoyance.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: Air combat buffs. History buffs.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  Yes. No worries.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book? Yes. I plan to order Open Cockpit through Amazon soon. Afterwards, I may order Fly Past.

2.6. The plot in a nutshell:

     There is no plot, but it feels like there is. I could feel the stress tearing down the man. No Parachute is a memoir. Arthur Gould Lee compiled and edited this account years after the war. It was first published in 1968.
     To compile No Parachute, AGL used the letters he wrote to his first wife, Gwyneth Ann, during the Great War. She died before the book was written. The book is dedicated to her. AGL interspersed the letters with entries from his diary. He edited the letters to include places and details that the war censors took out.
     AGL broke a leg during pilot training. This caused him to repeat the course. Thus, he had more flying hours than most when he was posted to France.
     No Parachute begins 18 May 1917 with AGL in the pilots' pool at the aircraft depot at St. Omer. He was eager to join the war. 22 May 1917 he joined 46 Squadron at the Ypres front. Here he began to fly the Sopwith Pup, an airplane that was easy to fly but obsolescent by this stage of the war. He was the most junior pilot in the squadron.
     I shall not spoil the book for you by summarizing the action. But here is the last paragraph of AGL's letter to his wife dated November 24th[, 1917]:

     Now that Charles has gone [WIA], I've been flying longer in the squadron than anyone else.

     In 6 months AGL went from most junior to most senior pilot in the squadron. Think about that.
     In December 1917 AGL wrote his wife that, save for breakfast and tea, he had gone off his meals. For lunch and dinner, he substituted milk with brandy. 
     Both his squadron commander and the wing M.O. spoke to him about standing down. They knew he was cracking up. He replied there was nothing wrong with him that a good drinking binge would not cure. 01 January 1918, they ordered him to the Home Establishment.
     When he left the front, AGL had logged 12 1/2 hours of dual instruction and 386 hours solo. 222 of those solo hours were over the lines. He flew 118 patrols and fought 56 combats with 7 kills (AGL wrote 11 but not all were confirmed).

 2.7. Other:
     This is another classic of the war in the air during the Great War. Shame it is not available as an ebook.
     The book contains 17 illustrations and pictures and one map.
     Why No Parachute was published under the Time-Life Education imprint and Wind in the Wires was published under the Time-Life Reprint imprint, I do not know.
     AGL rose to the rank of RAF Air Vice Marshall before his retirement in 1946.
     The book includes three appendices: Appendix A, The Failure in High Command; Appendix B, Trenchard's Strategy of the Offensive; and Appendix C, Why No Parachutes? 
     The price given above is what I paid. YMMV.


2.8. Links: 

Arthur Gould Lee

Open Cockpit
Fly Past 

2.9. Buy the book:
hardback with ugly cover: No Parachute 
hardback with misleading cover: No Parachute (used) 
paperback with pretty cover: No Parachute (used)

DTB Review: Wind in the Wires

 

Duncan Grinnell-Milne, Wind in the Wires

Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Time-Life Books; REPRINT Edition edition (1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809496291
• ISBN-13: 978-0809496297
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews) 
• Price: $10.25 plus shipping

1. Short review:    (Amazon rating: 4 out of 5 stars -- I like it.)

2. Long review:

2.1. What I liked:  The first-hand account by an early (1915) flyer in the Great War.
Roller-coaster or walk-in-the-park? Should be both, but it is a walk in the park.

2.2. What I did not like: The cover (see above). The cover is god-awful. The 1957 mass-market paperback cover is also god-awful. The 1970 mass-market paperback is beautiful; here 'tis:

Ain't that pretty?

     The non-scalable font. I have gotten used to e-books. I like to choose the size of the font I read. Not having that ability is an annoyance.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: Air combat buffs. History buffs.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  Yes. No worries.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book?  Maybe. Other than The Silent Victory, I am not interested in any other of GM's works.

2.6. The plot in a nutshell:

     There is no plot. Wind in the Wires is a memoir. Duncan Grinnell-Milne wrote it years after the war. It was first published in 1933.
     GM began with his flying school experiences. He learned to fly on a Farman Longhorn, a machine that could barely struggle into the air on a calm day.
     After pilot training, GM joined 16 Squadron and flew the BE2c, aka the Quirk. GM seemed to have liked the Quirk. For the life of me, I cannot think why. The observer sat in front with his downward view obstructed by the bottom plane. His rearward field of fire with the Lewis gun was obstructed by the pilot. Unmaneuverable and slow, the Quirk was a remarkably bad airplane in an era of bad airplanes. Still GM and his observer managed to down one German with it.
     GM did not enjoy his time with 16 Squadron. The Officer Commanding was a stuffed shirt who was more interested in keeping planes in running order than in accomplishing missions. Pilots were graded by the softness of their landings instead of the aggressive accomplishment of their missions.
     Soon after scoring his first kill, GM flew a reconnaissance so deep behind German lines that it required he leave his observer behind. Predictably, his engine packed up, and he was captured.
     GM spent 30 months in captivity and eight of those months were in solitary confinement as punishment for one escape attempt or another. Fabricating escape attempts seems to have been his hobby. He finally succeeded the day before he was to be paroled through Holland.
     GM returned to France to fly the SE5a with 56 Squadron. 56 was the most celebrated RAF fighter squadron of the Great War. GM noted that 16 Squadron made a big man of its one MC recipient. 56 Squadron hung a board in the mess that listed its members' honors: 2 VCs, 6 DSOs, 14 MCs, 8 bars to MCs, and 6 DFCs. The difference is striking.
     56 Squadron gave its pilots more freedom than GM had had at 16 Squadron. He cracked up a few SEs without a word of criticism from his superiors.
     In the last 5 weeks of the war, GM scored 5 kills. He liked to fly in company with John Speaks, an American, and Robert 'Bloody Bob' Caldwell, a Canadian. After the war, he became 56 Squadron's OC until the MoW decommissioned the squadron.

 2.7. Other:
     This is a classic of the war in the air during the Great War. I have wanted to read it for many years. Shame it is not available as an ebook.
     The book contains 16 illustrations and pictures including one illustration of a Farman Shorthorn attacking a German draken (balloon).
     The Time-Life reprint contains a list that I am certain was not included in the original edition. The list is titled 'Principal Officers Identified from Nicknames' and is headed by 'The Starched Shirt -- Major H. C. T. (Stuffy) Dowding, RA (later Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, RAF'.
     The price given above is what I paid. YMMV.

2.8. Links: 

Duncan Grinnell-Milne

2.9. Buy the book:
hardback with ugly cover: Wind in the Wires
paperback with pretty cover: Wind in the Wires (used)

eBook Review: Horses Don't Fly

 

Frederick Libby, Horses Don't Fly

Product Details

• File Size: 3302 KB
• Print Length: 274 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (January 9, 2002)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004P8IWJY
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews) 
• Price: $9.99

1. Short review:    (Amazon rating: 4 out of 5 stars -- I like it.)

2. Long review:

2.1. What I liked:  The first-hand account by the first American ace in the Great War.
Roller-coaster or walk-in-the-park? Both.

2.2. What I did not like: The use of present tense vice past tense.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: Air combat buffs. History buffs.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  Yes. No worries.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book?  Yes, but there are none.

2.6. The plot in a nutshell:

     There is no plot. Horses Don't Fly is a memoir. Frederick Libby wrote it many years after the war. His memoir covers his life from boyhood to the end of the Great War.
     Libby begins with his boyhood experiences growing up on the plains of eastern Colorado. His mother died when he was young. He was raised by his father and the black woman his father hired to run the house.
     Libby spent some time back east with his father's sister -- a woman who disapproved of the way her brother raised his two sons. Libby spent the time with his aunt trying to persuade his father to bring him back to Colorado. He succeeded.
     As a man, Libby's first jobs were wrangling horses and training them to saddle in Colorado and Arizona. In Arizona, he and a friend together took a notion to hire out as roughnecks in the Alberta oil boom.
     Libby joined the Canadian Army as a transport driver even though he had no experience as a driver. He persuaded a comrade to teach him to drive and was soon driving in France. 
     Libby volunteered to become an RFC observer in 1915. The training at that time was minimal. In fact, the gaining squadron trained him. Flying in the front of an FE2b, his got his first kill on his first sortie over the lines. According to Libby, he was responsible for putting gunstocks on the observer's Lewis gun.
     Libby scored 10 kills as an observer. He then took pilot training and returned to the front to fly Sopwith 1 1/2 strutters and DH4s and scored four more kills from the pilot's seat. He liked the DH4. Libby said it could outrun the German fighters.
     Billy Mitchell persuaded Libby to transfer to the USAS. It was a bad experience for Libby. Because he had sworn allegiance to the king, his American citizenship was forfeit. He had to swear allegiance to the US constitution to regain his citizenship. The US Army was, by presidential order, a teetotaling organization in those days. This did not sit well with Libby who had grown accustomed to toasting the King's health in the mess.     
     Libby spent almost all his time in American service in bad hospitals or good spas recovering his health. He did not enjoy the experience. He had nothing good to say about the USAS.

 2.7. Other:
     The book ends with a summary of Libby's accomplishments after the war.

2.8. Links: 

Frederick Libby

2.9. Buy the book:  Horses Don't Fly