Bøger af Robert Gandt

This first-ever insider foray into the world's fastest and most dangerous aviation sport is as thrilling as Ernest Gann's classic Fate Is the Hunter or Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff In Fly Low, Fly Fast, Robert Gandt takes us into the high-risk world of the Reno Air Races, attended every year by more than 100,000 spectators and featured on scores of web sites. Flying wingtip to wingtip around pylons at 500 mph, just feet above the sagebrush, Reno's killing machines are piloted by an adrenaline-addicted, type-A elite whose big talent and big egos spawn a hundred stories. With the same vivid reportage of his Bogeys and Bandits --"about as close as you can get (to the cockpit) without arming the ejection seat," said the San Diego Union-Tribune--Gandt traces the history of this exhilarating but often deadly sport. He follows the evolution of competition planes from the 1930s custom exotics to today's big, throaty warbirds like the Mustang and Bearcat, still the fastest piston-engine planes ever built. Gandt also looks at the evolution of the pilots from famous laconic old-time air cowboys to the younger, slicker hot shots, the jet-fighter-trained "top guns." Fly Low, Fly Fast ignites with fierce rivalries, the struggles to keep the vintage warbirds flying, the heart-stopping drama of the races themselves...with winners, losers, close calls, spectacular crashes, and glorious victories. It's a book for aviation buffs, armchair adventurers and anyone fascinated by the passions that drive men and women to test their limits--and risk their lives--in the quest for speed.

A year and a half into her first term as President of the United States, Libby Paulsen is in a world of trouble. Her controversial agenda has placed her in a doomsday clash with a right wing cabal led by an enigmatic Air Force general. The conspirators will stop at nothing-including assassination-to remove Libby Paulsen from office. When the cabal targets Air Force One, Libby's Presidency-and her life-rest in the hands of a maverick pilot named Pete Brand, a man with whom the President shares a long-smoldering secret. The President's Pilot is a high stakes political and military thriller drawn from today's-and tomorrow's-explosive headlines.

"When the China Clipper shattered aviation records on its maiden six-day flight from California to the Orient in 1935, the flying boat became an instant celebrity. This lively history by Robert Gandt traces the development of the great flying boats as both a triumph of technology and a stirring human drama."--

"Reads like a World War II thriller, only better because every word is true.... One of the great untold stories of history. Robert Gandt has brought it vividly, unforgettably to life." -Steven Pressfield, best-selling author of Gates of Fire

Winner of the 2011 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature, The Twilight Warriors is the engrossing, page-turning saga of a tightly knit band of naval aviators who are thrust into the final-and most brutal-battle of the Pacific war during World War II: Okinawa.April 1945. The end of World War II finally appears to be nearing. The Third Reich is collapsing in Europe, and the Americans are overpowering the once-mighty Japanese Empire in the Pacific. For a group of young pilots trained in the twilight of the war, their greatest worry is that it will end before they have a chance to face the enemy. They call themselves Tail End Charlies: They fly at the tail end of formations, stand at the tail end of chow lines, and now they are catching the tail end of the war. What they don't know is that they will be key players in the bloodiest and most difficult of naval battles-not only of World War II but in all of American history.The Twilight Warriors relives the drama of the world's last great naval campaign. From the cockpit of a Corsair fighter we gaze down at the Japanese task force racing to destroy the American amphibious force at Okinawa. Through the eyes of the men on the destroyers assigned to picket ship duty, we experience the terror as wave after wave of kamikazes crash into their ships. Standing on the deck of the legendary superbattleship Yamato, we watch Japan's last hope for victory die in a tableau of gunfire and explosions.The fate of the Americans at Okinawa, including a twenty-two-year-old former art student, an intrepid fighter pilot whose life abruptly changes when his Corsair goes down off the enemy shore, and a young Texan lieutenant who volunteers for the most dangerous flying job in the fleet-intercepting kamikazes at night over the blackened Pacific-is intertwined with the lives of the "young gods": the honor-bound kamikaes forces who swarm like killer bees toward the U.S. ships. The ferocity of the Okinawa fighting stuns the world. Before it ends, the long battle will cost more American lives, ships, and aircraft than any naval engagement in U.S. history. More than simply the account of a historic battle, The Twilight Warriors brings to life the human side of an epic conflict. It is the story of young Americans at war in the air and on the sea-and of their enigmatic, fanatically courageous enemy.

When the China Clipper shattered aviation records on its maiden six-day flight from California to the Orient in 1935, the flying boat became an instant celebrity. This lively history by Robert Gandt traces the development of the great flying boats as both a triumph of technology and a stirring human drama. He examines the political, military, and economic forces that drove its development and explains the aeronautical advances that made the aircraft possible. To fully document the story he includes interviews with flying boat pioneers and a dynamic collection of photographs, charts, and cutaway illustrations.