Robert Gandt

Entertaining if not very explanatory account of how Pan Am, the most prestigious airline in the world, ultimately withered and died. Its very success and global reach made it arrogant, which left it politically isolated and also without domestic routes to feed into its international ones. Also there appears to have been essentially no one able to do accounting to figure out what was actually costing too much money, or to act on it if they did find out. Another version of “private enterprise isn’t more efficient than government, there’s just survival bias because failed businesses disappear.”… (altro)

Flying wingtip-to-wingtip around pylons at nearly 500 mph, just yards above the desert floor, the Mustangs, Bearcats, and Corsairs of the Reno Air Races are the fastest, loudest, baddest piston-engined aircraft in the world. Using the same fly-on-the-wall reportage as in his Bogeys and Bandits, Gandt tells the story of Reno's 1997/1998 championship season. A wealth of anecdotal material, going back to the early days of air racing, provides the underpinning of the story, but the book focuses on the year culminating in the 1998 races. Gandt illuminates the fierce, colorful rivalries between the elite pilots, their struggles to keep airworthy their million dollar monster machines, the danger and the drama of a high-risk (often deadly) sport, and the obsessive drive for more speed. Like Wolfe, Krakauer, and Junger, Gandt explores the passions that drive men and women to push their limits -- and tells a hell of a good yarn in the process.… (altro)

At times, this book becomes rather tedious. The same facts seem to be repeating themselves over and over with little progress. From this and other sources, one has to raise the question: was it necessary to fight this battle? It is clear that while the top brass of Army and Navy saluted the same flag, they weren't always on the same course. Once into the battle, for fear of igniting another episode of Navy vs. Army leadership, a World War I type general was allowed to plod along in his own way.

But as one reads the same scenario over and over, one begins to see a foretelling of what the next step (the invasion of Japan proper) would be like. The things that might provoke a western-style leadership to think of ending the war were utterly foreign to the Japanese mind. Briefly, there was in Japanese thinking a sense that dying for the Emperor was the highest honor a person could achieve. Where the western mind would call for great sacrifice to protect home and family, the Japanese mind seems all that can possibly be done for the Emperor should be done.

If there ever was an object lesson for Harry Truman to convince him to use the Atomic Bomb, Okinawa provided that lesson. Our losses there were extraordinary for the end achieved. One would have to be very gullible indeed to think that at this stage of the war with Japan that Japan would suddenly reverse itself. The morality of dropping the bomb has to be measured against the morality of not dropping the bomb. It is argued that Japan was on its last legs and that it couldn't prosecute the war much longer -- one need only study the use of a device utterly foreign to western thinking: the kamikaze. Every type of aircraft that could get a man into the air with a bomb was used and this even included bi-planes! Okinawa proved beyond doubt that Harry Truman did the right thing.… (altro)

Robert Gandt does a fine job retelling the oft-described Battle for Okinawa through the stories of the Twilight Warriors. These men were late to WW2 and were quite concerned that they might be missing it. The conflict for this Pacific Island was the most savage and costly battle ever for the US Navy. For the first time, the Japanese defenders had all the elements for fighting a well-equipped battle against American military. power. They had 100,000+ troops, artillery, food and ammunition as well as a new and devastating air weapon, the Kamikaze. Amazingly, he was able to interview survivors in 2009 testifying to how young they were during this difficult time.… (altro)