'Once a man has spent his time in messing about with aeroplanes he can never forget their heartaches and their joys, nor is he likely to find another occupation that will satisfy him so well, even writing novels.'

» Nevil Shute
last sentence of Slide Rule, 1954

 
short biographies of pilots
Nevil S. Norway
 

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Douglas Bader
Pierre Clostermann
Roald Dahl
Amelia Earhart
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Anthony Fokker
Cecil Lewis
A. & C. Lindbergh
Beryl Markham
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Manfred von Richthofen
A. de Saint-Exupéry
Nevil Shute
Ernst Udet

 
Listed with the author are relevant books and links on the Web;
please mail me with comments and suggestions!
(don't forget to
remove [AntiRobot] from the adress!)

 

   Douglas Bader, 1910 - 1982
Born in 1910, Douglas Robert Steuart Bader seems to have taken after a grandfather called John Steuart Amos - an adventurer who went to India in 1840 and 'was able to express himself rather forcefully'. Bader Minor could not stand second place. Games and sports were his interest, but he had the tendency to show some 'academic reluctance' at school. In 1928 he tried for and won a prize cadetship at Cranwell.

Posted to 23 Squadron, Kenley, flying Gloster Gamecocks, he was picked to be part of an aerobatics team. The stunt team was a great success at the 1931 Henley air show. The phase of over-confidence was now well down on Bader. The squadron transferred to Bristol Bulldog fighters, Bristol Bulldogwhich were less well suited for aerobatics, and pilots were killed stunting them. Late December 1931, Bader felt he had to demonstrate his superior low flying skill at a nearby flying club, and crashed coming out of the roll. "Never do anything in a temper".

Mangled under the engine, his right leg was amputated above the knee, and a few days later the left leg was cut off below the knee. When he eventually got his tin legs the fight to be able to walk again began. In this way Douglas met Thelma, his wife. Able to walk without a stick, to drive a car, to fly a Bulldog again, he hoped to get back to his old duties. But although Flying School cleared him, he was not accepted for flying duties and he left the RAF. From 1933 till 1939 he worked at a Shell office that sold aviation fuel; he hated it. He took up golf as a compensation.

But in 1939 he tried again and this time was accepted back in the RAF for flying. Of course, on his first solo flight in an Avro Tutor he was seen to fly upside down at forbidden height. February 1940 saw him posted as flying officer to 19 Squadron at Duxford, flying Spitfires. Soon after he was Flight Commander of 222 Squadron, Hornchurch, seeing action over Dunkirk. In June he became Squadron Leader of 242, the first RAF Canadian Fighter Squadron, at Coltishall. Here were Hurricanes.

No more 'follow my leader' (the text-book way of attack). Instead, he promoted tactics like using a large formation of fighters, like the Germans used to do in the Great War (so-called Circuses or Balbos), to intercept 'bandits' during the Battle of Britain. Flying Spitfires from Tangmere as a Wing Commander in 1941 this Big Wing formation evolved in a so-called Bee-hive: a circus of 200 Spits covering bombers over enemy targets. Bader and Cocky Dundas also re-invented the finger-four line abreast formation. But he still preferred machine guns over cannon. As Johnnie Johnson put it, there were no 'arguments, because no one argued with him'.

Bader Bus Company, Richard Taylor

His call-sign became 'Dogsbody', after his initials DB painted on his Spit. His three squadrons flew regular offensive sorties to France; call-sign of the Wing was 'Green Line Bus' and so became known as Bader's Bus Company.

In August 1941 his Spit was cut in half in a collision with a Me-109 over Béthune. His right leg stuck in the cockpit, dragging him down, but he was able to tear himself loose. He was captured; the tin leg saved from the wreck was repaired and returned to him. On the ground he met Adolf Galland, even sat in a Me-109. He left the prison hospital by way of knotted sheets; that night a spare leg, stuffed with stump-socks, tobacco and chocolate, was dropped from a Blenheim on a bombing raid. The next day he was captured again and sent off to a POW camp; there, he drove his captors to despair by managing to escape twice more.

Ending the war a living legend with a bag of 23 affirmed and a DSO and DFC, both with bars, he resigned from the Air Force and went back to the Shell Company who had offered him a job with his own airplane and Jimmy Doolittle as companion.
He was knighted in 1976. His old school St. Edwards in Oxford has a Douglas Bader Sports Centre. Douglas Bader died in 1982, 72 years old.

books:
Reach for the Sky, Paul Brickhill (1954): biography, made into film
Fight For The Sky (1973), Bader's own book
Douglas Bader: a biography, Robert Jackson
Douglas Bader and his Tangmere Spitfires, Dilip Sarkar (1996)
Flying colours: the epic story of Douglas Bader, Laddie Lucas
     Wing Leader (1956), Johnnie Johnson
     Flying Start (1989), 'Cocky' Dundas
     Best Foot Forward (1957), Colin Hodgkinson (another legless pilot)

on the web:
Plane Writing's comparison of tales in 'Names'; Johnson, Bader and Galland.

Robert Taylor's Bader's Bus Company lithograph for sale
article on the Battle of Britain Site: Myths of the Battle of Britain
distant relation Virginia Bader sells aviation art

pilots' biographies back to contents

 

   Amelia Earhart, (1897-1937)
Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas in 1897. Fascinated with flying, she took flying lessons and bought her first airplane in 1921. But in 1924 she went back and took a job as a social worker to support the family. Amelia EarhartFour years later she was selected by publisher and businessman George Putnam to take part in a daring publicity stunt: she was the first woman passenger to cross the Atlantic in an airplane in 1928. "Bill (Wilbur Stultz) did all the flying - had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes."

Because of her resemblance to Charles Lindbergh, an associate coined the name 'Lady Lindy', something she apologised for to Anne Morrow Lindbergh. George Putnam handled her affairs - personal appearances, speaking tours, radio programs, motion pictures, articles, books, etc. The two married in 1931, agreeing to a contract which stipulated that Amelia's aviation career would continue as before the marriage.

She succeeded to keep the media's attention:
- organised cross-country air race for women pilots: 1929,
     "The Powder-Puff Derby"
- founded 'the Ninety Nines': 1929
- women's speed record: 1930, 1931
- first woman to cross the United States in an autogiro (!): 1931
- first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic to the east: 1932
- women's non-stop trancontinental speed record: 1932, 1933
- first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to California: 1935
- first person to fly solo from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico City: 1935

Bernt Balchen described her as 'a friendly and unassuming girl, popular with fliers everywhere'. He helped her make a flight plan for her solo Atlantic crossing. 'She arrives at the field in jodhpurs and leather flying jacket, her close-cropped blond hair tousled, quiet and unobtrusive as a young Lindbergh. She listens calmly as I go over with her the course to hold, and tell her what weather she can expect on the way across the ocean. "Do you think I can make it?" I grin back: "You bet." She crawls calmly into the cockpit of the big empty airplane, starts the engine, nods her head. We pull the chocks, and she is off.'

In 1937 she had another project: a trip of 29.000 miles around the world. It seems that Amelia and navigator Fred Noonan had little practical knowledge of the use of radio navigation. The frequencies Amelia was using were not well suited to direction finding (in fact, she had left behind the lower-frequency reception and transmission equipment which might have enabled locating her). Somewhere between New Guinea and Howland Island, a tiny piece of land a few miles long, 20 feet high, and 2556 miles away, contact was lost with the plane, and they were presumed drowned in the Pacific Ocean.

books:
Twenty Hours, Forty Minutes (1928): her first Atlantic crossing in the 'Friendship'.
The fun of It (1932): solo flight across the Atlantic, tales of other women aviators
    Contains a phonograph record of her speech in New York
Last Flight. arr. George Putnam. (1937): letters of Amelia collected by Putnam

    The Sound of Wings, Mary Lovell (1989)
    East to the Dawn, Susan Butler (1997)
    Amelia Earhart: A Biography, Doris L. Rich

on the web:
pictures and story of Amelia Earhart (1897-1935) at dedicated website
search for Amelia: TIGHAR Earhart Project with gossip and conspiracy theories
commercial buy a bust of Amelia -site

pilots' biographies back to contents

 

   Cecil Lewis, 1898 - 1997
At age thirteen, Cecil Lewis loved model airplanes - together with a friend that had an attic full of models he was deep into glue, wire, veneer and solder. So in 1915 when he was barely seventeen, he tried to join the RFC, that had just raised the age for joining to eighteen. He was accepted. Learning to fly on a Longhorn, he went solo after one and a half hours dual. Final training was on Avros, BE 2c's and FE's; in March 1916, 22 Squadron was ready to go overseas. He had fourteen hours to his credit.

April 1916 was spent with putting in time, and when he reachted fifty hours, he was ordered to no. 3 Squadron on the Somme. There, he flew a Morane Parasol on patrol, photographing the front between Thiepval and Montauban, thus having a front row seat to view the great battle in June, flying with shells passing above and below his plane and seeing the continuous flash and rumble of hell below. He won the Military Cross. His friend 'intercepted a shell' when Cecil was away on leave.

Afte six months he was very sick and tired of the war, had trouble with his eyes, and was sent home to the Testing Squadron as a rest. April 1917 saw him back in France with 56 Squadron, flying the SE 5 on offensive patrols. This was the squadron of Albert Ball, and they were off to deal with Richthofen and his Circus. He saw Ball disappear in a cloud, never to be seen again. He was credited with eight victories during May and June of 1917. Wounded, he was sent home and posted to a Home Defence squadron, where he hunted for Gothas over Londen.

In October 1918 he went back overseas again with 152 Squadron as Flight Commander; in November the War was over. He managed to get a job with Vickers and spent a few monthes doing exhibition flights. When the firm sold planes to China in 1919, he went to Peking as flying instructor.

In 1921 the Peking - Shanghai air route was not getting anywhere and he went home. There, he became one of the founders of the BBC, working on the radio Programme Board from 1922 to 1926. In the thirties he started writing. He rejoined the RAF at the outbreak of the Second World War as flying instructor and ended the war in command of staging posts in Sicily and Greece. After the war he flew a Miles Gemini to Johannesburg, farmed sheep, worked for the UN, for commercial television and the Daily Mail.

In 'Sagittarius Rising' he wrote that 'Life is more savoured in its after-taste'. He certainly is proof of that, devoting some eleven books at a look back: poetic and philosophical, or candid, open and with humour. 'This prince of pilots had a charmed life in every sense of the word; he is a thinker, a master of words, and a bit of a poet'. (Bernhard Shaw in 1936)
Cecil Lewis died 27 January 1997, his wife Sarah Lewis Tedders died in March the same year.

books:
Sagittarius Rising (1936): flying in the Great War; China in 1921.
Pathfinders (1943); Pathfinder crew to raid target in Germany;
     resemblance to Len Deighton's 'Bomber'.
Yesterday's evening (1946)
Farewell to wings (1964)
Turn Right for Corfu (1972)
Never Look Back - an attempt at autobiography (1974)
A Way to Be (1977)
Gemini to Joburg (1984): The True Story of a Flight Over Africa
Sagittarius Surviving (1991)
All my Yesterdays: an Autobiography (1993)
So Long Ago, So Far Away: A Memory of Old Peking (1998 !!)

on the web:
sorry, haven't found anything outside Plane Writing yet.

pilots' biographies back to contents

 

   Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh
At age 16 Slim Lindbergh's hero was Eddie Rickenbacker. Charles Augustus, son of a senator, didn't like to study; he farmed, and bought an Army-surplus Jenny when he was 20, tried to make a living with barnstorming, joyrides and wing walking.

In 1924, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, lured by fast engines in new planes and the possibility to become an Air Service pilot. In the Army Flying School he learned to navigate by instrument. He graduated top of his class. But 1925 saw him flying mail between St. Louis and Chicago. Always short of money, he decided to attempt the premier aviation challenge of his day. There was a prize of 25.000 dollar for the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris, and Lindbergh thought he could do it. Backed by St. Louis businessmen to finance a Ryan monoplane, he called it the "Spirit of St. Louis."

But he was an outsider, next to great names as Commander Byrd, French ace Nungesser, and René Fonck. Nungesser was lost, Fonck never even took off but crashed in flames on the runway. In the press, Lindbergh was called the 'Flying Fool' or the 'Flying Kid', as it was generally believed he was out of his class in his tiny monoplane.

After an evening spent in the theatre, the weather had cleared sufficiently over the Atlantic, and Lindbergh decided that he would use the opportunity. May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in New York. Fokker saw him leave: he stood at the end of the runway with his car and a fire extinguisher, expecting trouble. The heavily loaded plane dipped for a moment from view, then rose and headed east across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh flew on instruments, fighting sleep all the way. He landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris, on the evening of May 21.

Now the press called him 'Lucky Lindy', 'the Lone Eagle'. He was fêted everywhere; crowds went wild. Overnight he had become a national hero and was given the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He then embarked on a career of aviation consultant and promotor. In 1929, he met the daughter of the US Ambassador to Mexico, Anne Morrow; they fell in love and married.

In 1932, their 2 year old son Charles was killed when he was kidnapped from their home. In that same year, Anne's father died. They escaped the press frenzy and moved to England. Later, they had five other children.

Over the next few years the couple made survey flights, studying air routes: - to China using the Great Circle-Polar route, described by Anne in 'North to the Orient', and across the Atlantic from West Africa to Brazil, described in 'Listen, The Wind'. Anne was the one that could write. Anne soon learned airplane navigation and how to operate the radio, her part in the 'team'. She also became the first woman in the United States to receive a license to fly a glider airplane.

Then in the late thirties Lindbergh expressed some anti-semitic views; he even (naively, I think) accepted Nazi invitations from Göring and a medal from Hitler himself, thereby giving the Nazis plenty of PR material, and cause for second thoughts about his character.

Up to Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh argued against the country's involvement in the Second World War. But in 1944, Lindbergh managed to fly some fifty combat missions in the South Pacific until forbidden by higher authorities, and shot down a Zero as a civilian consultant.

After the war the couple retreated from view. Late in his life Lindbergh, disturbed by technology's destructive bent, dedicated himself to saving exotic species in Africa and Asia and to protecting a Stone Age-era tribe in the Philippines. Charles died in 1974 on Maui.

books, Charles Lindbergh (1902 - 1974):
We (1927): -he and his plane- the Atlantic crossing
Of Flight and Life (1948): his views on the destructiveness of 'scientific materialism'
the Spirit of St Louis (1953): the Atlantic crossing rewritten
    Under a Wing: A Memoir (1998); Reeve Lindbergh (daughter)
    Lindbergh (1998) biography, A. Scott Berg

books, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906 - today):
North to the Orient (1935): to Russia and China
Listen! the Wind (1938): across the South Atlantic
    & a great many others on non-aviation subjects

on the web:
excerpt of arrival over Paris from 'the Spirit of St. Louis' at Plane Writing

Lindbergh baby story Theft of the Eaglet at CrimeLibrary.com
Discovery Channel article: from Here to Obscurity
Time article: The Once Favoured Son, about dubious side of Lindy
Charles and Anne Lindberg Foundation devoted to 'seek a balance between technological advancement and environmental preservation'.

pilots' biographies back to contents

 

   Manfred, Freiherr von Richthofen, 1892 - 1918
The eldest of three brothers, Manfred had become a cavalry officer in 1912 and welcomed the Great War as an exiting sports event, a chance to win prizes. By May of 1915 he had seen enough of the hopeless bogged down trench war and managed to be transferred to the Flying Service as an observer. He flew with Zeumer, one of the first German pilots, doing reconnaissance missions over the Russian front.

After meeting Boelcke he wanted to become a pilot too. Manfred von RichthofenHe crashed on his first solo. But early 1916 saw him as a pilot of twoseaters over the front at Verdun, and subsequently over the Russian front again. In September, he was selected by Boelcke to fly in his Jagdstaffel no. 2 (the first Circus) over the Somme, the start of his career as fighter pilot. When the new pilots of his Staffel had their first victory, Boelcke gave them a silver cup with inscription. From then on, Richthofen would present himself with small 5 cm high victory cups, until later in the war the shortage of silver put an end to it.

When Boelcke died, the Baron was given command of the Jagdstaffel. His fame rose. In early 1917, after experimenting with camouflage paint schemes, he decided to take a radical different course and from then on flew in a completely red plane, advertising himself.

In "Bloody April" 1917, Richthofen shot down four planes in one day, a personal record. Richthofen scored an incredible 21 victories during this month. In July 1917, Richthofen was shot down himself. A bullet had grazed his 'thick skull' and though he managed to land safely, his outlook on war changed from that moment on, no longer believing in his own invincibility.

Anthony Fokker described his tactics as to surprise stragglers or other lone flying planes and attack them diving out of the sun and pulling up into their blind spot below and to the rear. A typical fight would not last longer that five or ten minutes - to be able to out-turn and out-manuoevre the enemy counted more than speed, and this was why Fokker developed the tri-plane as a fighter. Richthofen shot down his sixtieth victim in the new Fokker tri-plane: a British tri-plane observer craft.

On April 21 1918, Richthofen was shot down. The plane landed without crashing. A single bullet, shot from behind him, had passed diagonally through his chest. The shot is commonly believed to have come from Australian gunners on the ground, but might have also come from the guns of Canadian pilot Roy Brown (who was coming to the aid of a novice pilot Richthofen had been chasing far over the lines). Manfred von Richthofen had eighty victories to his credit. His body was recovered by British forces, and he was buried with full military honors. The command of the Richthofen Circus was given to Hermann Göring, who with 22 victories led the Staffel from his desk untill the end of the war.

books:
Der Rote Kamfflieger; The Red Fighter Pilot (1917), re-issued 1920 with preface by brother Bolko
The Red Knight of Germany, Floyd Gibbons (1927)
    see also: Ernst Udet, My Life As a Flier (1935)

on the web:
full text of 'the Red Fighter Pilot' in English

pilots' biographies back to contents

 

   Ernst Udet, 1896 - 1941
Ernst Udet entered the war in 1914 as a motorcycle courier, but transferred to the Air Service in 1915 as a pilot, spotting for the artillery. He crashed a plane making a forbidden turn in it, and was sent to prison for seven days; but directly afterwards got transferred to a Jagdstaffel that flew the brand new single seater Fokker fighter planes. Before he could take off in one, he taxied it into a hangar. A cable had blocked the steering wheel.

The first time he actually met the enemy he did not open fire, but only watched the Caudron, frozen with fear. He then started practicing on a Nieuport silhouette to better his shooting. In March 1916, flying alone and still troubled by his initial faintheartedness, Ernst Udethe attacked and shot down two of a group of 23 Caudrons and Farmans.

Later that same year he had an encounter with Guynemer: circling to get a good shot in, he could read 'Vieux Charles' on the side of the Spad. After a few shots, his machine guns jammed, but he kept circling and dodging the enemy plane for some eight long minutes. Then Guynemer waved and flew off. Udet ascribed this to be chivalry, not jammed guns on the part of his adversary.

In the spring of 1918, when he had 19 victories to his credit, he was invited by Richthofen to transfer to his Jasta 11. Here his tally rose steeply, and he ended the war with 62 kills.

After the war, he had an assortment of flying jobs. He had got finance for an aircraft factory that would bear his name, but when in 1921 aircraft production was prohibited in Germany, they 'raised their birds' in a chicken shed. He took one of his products to South America; won an air race from Rosario to Buenos Aires. He went back to flying, lived by giving stunt-flying demonstrations round Germany. After that he flew for an expedition in the Serengeti, filming African wildlife. He crash-landed in the Sudd and was saved by Tom Cambell Black. He made an impression at the National Air Races in Cleveland, stunting his old Flamengo biplane close to the ground, and was invited to Hollywood.

There, after a bet with Mary Pickford, he picked up her handkerchief with the tip of his wing. He flew in Greenland, where he worked with Leni Riefenstahl, famous German film-maker of the thirties. In America, late 1933, he bought two Curtiss 'Helldiver' biplanes with backing from Göring and shipped them to Germany. Back home he demonstrated the dive-bombing capabilities of this plane; Junckers went on to develop the Stuka from this. Also the military use of the glider was suggested by Udet.

"The Flying Clown" rejoined the Luftwaffe in 1935 as Inspector in the Technical Department. With Görings help he made quick promotion, but was suspicious of new ideas. He sat in the cockpit of the Me-109 prototype in 1935, and looked uneasy as the mechanic closed the canopy over his head. Messerschmitt noted later: "When he got out, he patted me on the back and said, 'Messerschmidt, this will never be a fighting aeroplane. The pilot needs an open cockpit. He has to feel the air to know the speed of the plane.'" When later he saw the Me-109 in flight he changed his mind.

As elected chairman of the Richthofen Veterans Association, Udet expelled Göring (who was the units last commander). Udet accused Göring of falsifying his First World War record and victory claims and said he could prove it. Göring atmitted it was true, and was probably frightened of Udet.

During the Battle of Britain, Udet was Director of Air Armament, but could not sort out the chaos at his department. He drank too much, chain-smoked and used too many pep-pills. In the fight between Göring and Milch he had become the scapegoat and was blamed for losing the Battle of Britain. He was found dead with two empty cognac bottles and a revolver.

Awarded a state funeral, it was given out that he had died 'testing a new weapon for the Reich'. Werner Mölders would have been a pall bearer, but he was killed on the way when his plane hit a factory chimney.

books:
Mein Fliegerleben; My Life as a Flier (1935): autobiography

films:
the White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)
Storm Over Mont Blanc (1931)
S.O.S. Iceberg (1933)

on the web:
info about Udet's role in films with Leni Riefenstahl
Ernst Udet on the Aerodrome site
a site in Chech language: Udet's Page; nice pictures though

pilots' biographies back to contents

 


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