The Black Watch; The Men Who Fly America's Secret Spy Planes

New York: Random House, 1989. First Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good. Darryl Zudeck (Jacket Illustration). x, [2], 210, [2] pages. Ex-library with usual library markings. DJ has been pasted to boards. Slightly cocked. Ernest Kellogg Gann (October 13, 1910 - December 19, 1991) was an American aviator, author, and sailor. He is known for his novels Island in the Sky and The High and the Mighty and his classic memoir of early commercial aviation Fate is the Hunter, all of which were made into major motion pictures. During 1942, many U.S. airlines' pilots and aircraft were absorbed into the Air Transport Command of the United States Army Air Forces to assist with the war effort. Gann and many of his co-workers at American volunteered to join the group. He flew DC-3s, Douglas DC-4s and Consolidated C-87 Liberator Express transports (the cargo version of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber). His wartime flights took him across the North Atlantic to Europe, and thence to Africa, South America, India, and other exotic places. Some of his most harrowing experiences came while flying The Hump airlift across the Himalayas into China. During the years to come Gann's worldwide travels and various adventures would become the inspiration for many of his novels and screenplays. Derived from a Kirkus review: An old master's top-flight appreciation of the US intelligence community's air arm. Gann observes that no one in authority gave him official permission to write about the men and machines of the Air Force's 99th Squadron, which has assumed reconnaissance responsibilities once handled by the CIA. With due regard for national security, the author provides an absorbing and knowledgeable rundown on America's spy planes, plus profiles of their pilots. Probably the best-known secret craft is the U-2, whose high-speed cameras have been gathering otherwise unobtainable intelligence on countries in Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, the Socialist Bloc, and other of the world's hot spots since the 1950's. Also in service, though, is the superfast SR-71, whose two-man crew operates at altitudes above those attainable by U-2s, i.e., over 80,000 feet. In the author's persuasive view, U-2 and SR-71 pilots are a breed apart, Flying missions of ten or more hours that take them to the edge of space from bases in northern California, Cyprus, South Korea, or other remote outposts. A vivid briefing on a genuinely elite unit of the American military.