THE WARBIRD'S FORUM
I don't know how
I missed this book, but better late than never! A profile of James
Salter in The New Yorker inspired me to download it while
recuperating from knee surgery, and from the very first page I was
enthralled and transported to the Yalu River, flying F-86 Sabre jets
against Russian-piloted MIGs. It seems that Salter is the best American
writer we have never heard of, and his genius was already apparent in this, his
first novel. (Salter is not his name; he was still in the Air Force,
stationed in Europe, when the book was published, and he wanted to
distinguish his day job from the one that would put him in the top
ranks of postwar American writers. He reminds
me most of all of Hemingway, in the spare way he can create a scene
that springs from the page. Yet at the same time he is very unlike Papa,
in that he is as interested in the mind as in the body.
In the end, I was a bit disappointed in the way the story turned out. It was as if Mr. Salter trapped himself with the inevitable rise of the smarmy and possibly lying ace, and the inevitable fall of our hero, the Good Captain, that he just gave up and took the easy way out. But that doesn't dim the brilliance of what he has written here.
Shantih (peace) to Ken Jernstedt, who died
in February at the age of 95. He was the last surviving Flying Tiger pilot
from the AVG's early combats at Rangoon and Kunming.
Ken was one of several Marines pilots to join the American Volunteer Group
in the summer of 1941. Assigned to the 3rd Squadron
"Hell's Angels," he went to Rangoon in December to help defend
Burma against Japanese invasion, putting him in the thick of the
Christmas battles over the capital. During his months with the AVG he
was credited with 10.5 Japanese planes destroyed, of which three were
air-to-air victories. After the AVG was disbanded in July 1942, Ken became a test pilot for
Republic Aviation. Postwar, he worked for Coca-Cola Bottling and served
for many years as mayor of Hood River, Oregon, and as a
state legislator. He was one of the first Flying Tigers that I interviewed,
and one of the nicest. Blue skies, Ken! - Dan Ford
Welcome to the Warbird's Forum!
Here are nearly a thousand files on airplanes, pilots, and military history, grouped under these headings:
- Annals of the Flying Tigers
- Annals of the Brewster Buffalo
- Annals of Poland: war and exile, 1939-1948
- Japan at War, 1931-1945
- Annals of the Chinese Air Force
- Glen Edwards and the Flying Wing
- Remembering Bluie West One
- The Spadguys Speak (carrying a nuke to Sevastopol)
- Annals of Vietnam
- War in the Modern World
