Summary of Winston Groom's The Aviators

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In the early 1900s, Americans flocked to air shows and flying circuses to marvel at flying machines and ponder man’s conquest of the air. But flying remained an exceptionally dangerous occupation.
#2 The successes and failures of these early aviators were front-page news. Pilots featured especially prominently in boys’ magazines and comics, fueling young imaginations.
#3 The three American boys who would be among the many thousands who marveled at the spectacle of flight were James H. Doolittle, Edward V. Rickenbacker, and Charles A. Lindbergh. They were all raised on the edge of poverty, but each became a pioneer of aeronautical science in his own way.
#4 The Wright brothers’ flight in 1903 was the first example of men of the air braving the dangerous skies. The three men who visited Hitler’s Germany and warned American military authorities of the menacing buildup of German airpower were unable to convince American politicians of the danger.

Sujets

• Aviation
• History
• Military
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781669397007
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Winston Groom's The Aviators
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In the early 1900s, Americans flocked to air shows and flying circuses to marvel at flying machines and ponder man’s conquest of the air. But flying remained an exceptionally dangerous occupation.

#2

The successes and failures of these early aviators were front-page news. Pilots featured especially prominently in boys’ magazines and comics, fueling young imaginations.

#3

The three American boys who would be among the many thousands who marveled at the spectacle of flight were James H. Doolittle, Edward V. Rickenbacker, and Charles A. Lindbergh. They were all raised on the edge of poverty, but each became a pioneer of aeronautical science in his own way.

#4

The Wright brothers’ flight in 1903 was the first example of men of the air braving the dangerous skies. The three men who visited Hitler’s Germany and warned American military authorities of the menacing buildup of German airpower were unable to convince American politicians of the danger.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

On September 25, 1918, American pilot Edward Rickenbacker was flying solo along the Meuse River above Verdun, France. He had been named America’s Ace of Aces in aerial combat a few months earlier, but all previous recipients of the honor had been killed.

#2

Rickenbacker attacked the Fokkers alone, and he was soon shot at by the Germans. He then went after the LVGs, who had already seen his attack on the Fokkers and were diving to escape.

#3

Rickenbacker was the ace of aces during World War I. He was born in 1890, the same year as the Wounded Knee Massacre. He was the third of eight children of impoverished immigrants from Switzerland.

#4

Rickenbacker was a very curious boy, and he often got into trouble because of it. He once flew a flying device made out of a bicycle and an umbrella, but the umbrella immediately turned inside out, and he fell into a pile of sand.

#5

Columbus, Ohio, was a booming manufacturing city in the mid-1900s, and it was here that Rickenbacker grew up. He was often out selling newspapers as a young boy, and he and his brothers would scavenge for coal lumps by the railroad tracks and sell them for precious pennies.

#6

When he was 13, Rickenbacker’s father died. He promised he would change his behavior, and from then on, he worked to support his family. He eventually got a job at the Federal Glass factory, where he worked 12-hour shifts six days a week.

#7

Rickenbacker had a gift for engines, and he was eventually promoted to the engineering department at Frayer Automotive Company. He was eventually moved to the design and setting of specifications for automobiles.

#8

The American automobile industry was developing rapidly in the early 1900s. The most prestigious race of this era was the Vanderbilt Cup, held on October 16, 1906, in Nassau County, Long Island, and the borough of Queens, New York.

#9

Rickenbacker was a mechanical genius, and he was so personable that he was made a sales manager for the Columbus Buggy Company. He had a white roadster painted with a black coverall, which became his racing trademark.

#10

Rickenbacker was superstitious, and kept a collection of rabbits’ feet, buckeyes, and other charms to ward off bad luck. But the bat heart was supposed to bring good luck, a desperate move for desperate times.

#11

The Sioux City Speedway was a two-mile oval racecourse built across the Missouri River from the city, in Nebraska. The track was made out of dirt and thirty thousand gallons of crude oil, which was supposed to solidify into a smooth racing surface. It did not.

#12

Rickenbacker won two more races that season, and was rated the sixth best driver in the country. He had now broken into the big-time race car circuit, and his photograph was flashed on sports pages from coast to coast and foreign lands.

#13

In 1916, Rickenbacker tore up the tracks, and one of his specialties was the somewhat dubious tactic of purposely skidding into sharp turns on dirt courses to stir up an impenetrable cloud of track dust that temporarily blinded the drivers behind him.

#14

Rickenbacker was a race car driver who was extremely successful in 1916. He streamlined his race cars from the tires up, and designed a special cowl to protect drivers in rollovers. He paid his mechanics and other team members on an incentive basis.

#15

Rickenbacker met Glenn Martin, the president of the Wright-Martin Aircraft Company, who gave him a ride in his single-seat U. S. Army biplane. The engine lost power, and Rickenbacker was able to fix it. He made a friend who would change his fortunes at a most opportune moment.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

The feat of flying without instruments by Lieutenant James H. Jimmy Doolittle in September 1929 was a giant leap forward for commercial aviation. It was also a dangerous occupation, as pilots were often killed in crashes.

#2

Frank Doolittle, the father of James Doolittle, was a dreamer and wanderer who joined the Klondike Gold Rush in 1900. He prospected among the thousands of people in Nome, Alaska, and sent for his son, who arrived by steamer in 1908.

#3

Doolittle met the love of his life, Josephine Daniels, in high school. They were married in 1917, but Joe had no desire to marry someone with Doolittle’s only skill being fighting. Doolittle went to work for an insurance company, and after the United States declared war on Germany, he enrolled in pilot training.

#4

Doolittle was commissioned as a second lieutenant and military aviator. He was assigned to teach pilots how to fly, which was considered the most dangerous occupation in the world at the time.

#5

In 1921, Jimmy went to parachute school. It was optional whether or not you actually jumped, and Jimmy chose to jump in a chute he had packed. He noted that most pilots didn’t wear parachutes because they were considered sissified.

#6

Doolittle was assigned to General William Billy Mitchell’s command in 1921. He became friends with Mitchell, and the two would become tramps speaking to groups all over the country about the benefits of airpower.

#7

In 1922, Doolittle attempted to cross America by airplane. He had made a significant modification to the plane that addressed one problem of being in the air for long periods of time. He fabricated a funnel with a tube that went out a small hole in the bottom of the plane, with the tube facing aft. When the plane was airborne and the pilot needed to relieve himself, the airflow outside evacuated the tube.

#8

Doolittle was the first person to cross the continental United States in less than a day. He received accolades from the chief of the Army Air Service as well as General Billy Mitchell, whom he greatly admired.

#9

By the mid-1920s, air racing competitions had become popular, and Doolittle was a regular participant. He had to learn how to fly a plane with a new center of balance and configuration from anything he had ever flown before.

#10

By the mid-1920s, Billy Mitchell’s attacks against politicians and the army brass had become more strident and relentless, as he accused them of ignorance and even willful collaboration in the deaths of military pilots.

#11

In 1925, Billy Mitchell was court-martialed for criticizing the military, and the press slanted its reporting towards him. The public was on his side, and the trial was held in a decrepit warehouse near the Capitol in Washington, D. C. The court was composed of U. S. Army generals, none of whom had any experience with aviation.

#12

The Chilean aviators threw a party for the foreign fliers at their officers’ club, a handsome stone building in downtown Santiago. Doolittle said that he went to an open window, climbed through, and did a two-hand stand on the two-foot-wide ledge. But the laws of gravity took over, and he fell.

#13

Doolittle was blackballed from the Chilean army after the accident, but he found a German cast maker in town who fixed him up with extra heavy-duty prostheses that were reinforced by women’s steel corset stays. He flew a demonstration with all his snap rolls to the left, and the left cast broke.

#14

Doolittle was enjoying himself immensely. He knew his P-1 was faster and more maneuverable than the Dornier, and he flew around it with close passes. After the German pilot broke off the engagement, Doolittle went through his aerobatic routine and showed off his speed.

#15

In 1927, Doolittle secretly began practicing the outside loop in the Curtiss Hawk. He took it one stage at a time, going through the bottom half, then going around and under, a sensation that was unpleasant at first. The second half of the loop was the tricky part, because when the plane reached the bottom, it had to remain alert enough to put on sufficient speed and push the plane out the top.

#16

Doolittle had begun to experience what might be characterized as an organized midlife crisis by the time he returned from South America in 1928. He was thirty-one years old and still a first lieutenant, and he felt like he had no future flying jobs outside the army.

#17

Guggenheim, the founder of NASA, was also the founder of the Full Flight Laboratory at Mitchel Field, Long Island. His goal was to develop instruments that would allow pilots to take off, fly, and land blind, using only the instruments as their guide.