I’ll never take the United States Postal Service for granted again. Not after reading MAVERICKS OF THE SKY: THE FIRST DARING PILOTS OF THE U.S. AIR MAIL by Barry Rosenberg and Catherine Macaulay.
Before the mail was delivered as we know it today, it made its way ever so slowly across our fine country via trains and ponies. But trains are for playing and ponies are for betting, and by 1918, some people had had enough, and came up with the bright idea to get people’s letters from one destination to another by aircraft. It took a lot of convincing the government that the plan was a good one, and even more cajoling to be allowed to test it. MAVERICKS OF THE SKY is the story of those who did, whether they succeeded or failed.
At first, the air mail test pilots had trouble on takeoff, unable to clear the treetops, and it was a fight just to get them trimmed. Once in the air, they would encounter treacherous conditions, like blinding, disorienting fog. Some paid with their lives, but the first casualty was actually a poor dog who wandered too close to a propeller and was beheaded.
MAVERICKS is full of little “didja know?” details like that, but mainly it’s about the flights, with the most important being an all-nighter from New York to Washington, D.C. on which the entire project hinged. Though I suppose we all know how it turned out, the accounts are exciting, to the point where it reads like military fiction. It also reads like military fiction in that the aircraft speak gets overly techy at times, and I had a difficult time keeping its numerous characters – particularly all the different pilots – apart. But that ultimately doesn’t matter, because it’s their collective effort as a team that got the job done, and what makes this history lesson of interest. Recommended for aviation buffs. –Rod Lott
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I found this book really showed how the Democrats threw money with no account for human life. In doing so hiding the source of funds with the goal of being the inventor of air mail.
When the Republicans took control, controlled the funding, scaled it back and made it into something which worked. In doing so they stopped the madness of killing pilot after pilot. They turned air mail into something reliable and useful yet the author finds fault in that. I guess hording money through government corruption and killing pilots for the sake of politics makes better books.