Aviation Biography

Before COVID, both Qantas and its CEO Alan Joyce were flying high, the darlings of customers, staff and investors. After Covid hit, only money mattered—in particular, the company’s share price and extraordinary executive bonuses. Illegally redundant workers, unethical flight credits, abysmal customer service, antique aircraft: these became Qantas’ new brand. How did things go so badly wrong? For the first time, The Chairman’s Lounge tells the full story of how one company banked the nation’s loyalty and then cashed in on it.

A born daredevil, John Homan joined the Army Air Forces after the Pearl Harbor attack. By 1944, he was co-piloting a B-24 Liberator over Nazi Germany, raining death and destruction on the enemy. This first-person account of his harrowing missions—chronicling deadly flights through skies of red-hot flak bursts and airmen bailing out with parachutes aflame—will leave listeners staggered by the determination and grit of World War II aviators.

In the seventy years since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan during a flight over the Central Pacific, their fate has remained one of history's most debated mysteries despite dozens of books offering solutions. This book is different. It draws on thousands of never-before-published primary source documents to present a narrative that corrects decades of misconception. Ric Gillespie offers a very realistic picture of Earhart, her attempted world flight, the events surrounding her disappearance, and the U.S. government’s failed attempt to find her.

From the cockpit of an F/A-18 Hornet, U.S. Navy Commander Frank Weisser conveys the lessons he learned flying as the Lead Solo for the Blue Angels, on multiple combat deployments, and as stunt pilot for Top Gun: Maverick. Each chapter opens with a flight sequence and describes a lesson, skill, or value that Weisser learned in the sky and that carried him through a life of service with the Navy: finding focus, developing trust, opening communication, overcoming adversity, facing failure, and recognizing courage within oneself.

Caroline Johnson was an unlikely aviator candidate. A tall blonde debutante from Colorado, she could have just as easily gone into fashion or filmmaking, and yet she went on to become an F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapons System Operator. She was one of the first women to fly a combat mission over Iraq since 2011, and she was the first woman to drop bombs on ISIS. Jet Girl tells the remarkable story of the women fighting at the forefront in a military system that allows them to reach the highest peaks and yet is in many respects still a fraternity.

West with the Night is the story of a remarkable woman molded and shaped by many things: the African jungle, a certain dog, horses, airplanes, friendships with white men and black. There is no life, no story quite like it.

Book 1 is a series of stories of my company-grade years beginning with learning to be a Marine Corps officer, then naval aviator. My first squadron experiences include learning to fly the first Marine Corps CH-53, being deployed overseas to Vietnam for my first of three combat tours, which are all described in book 1.

Amelia Earhart was a woman of many "firsts." In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1935, she also became the first woman to fly across the Pacific. From her early years to her mysterious 1937 disappearance while attempting a flight around the world, listeners will find Amelia Earhart's life a fascinating story.

Sir Hubert Wilkins is one of the most remarkable Australians who ever lived. The son of pioneer pastoralists in South Australia, Hubert studied engineering before moving on to photography, then sailing for England and a job producing films with the Gaumont Film Co. Brave and bold, he became a polar expeditioner, a brilliant war photographer, a spy in the Soviet Union, a pioneering aviator-navigator, a death-defying submariner - all while being an explorer and chronicler of the planet and its life forms that would do Vasco da Gama and Sir David Attenborough proud.

The Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 is the most advanced multi-role combat aircraft in the world. Capable of flying at nearly twice the speed of sound and powering to a height of more than 10 miles in less time than it takes to boil a kettle, a single Typhoon can also deliver a heavy bombload with such lethal precision that a whole squadron of Lancasters could not have guaranteed the same result.

The Parachute Regiment is Britain's elite airborne infantry. On the 80th anniversary of their first crucial campaign, in Operation Torch in North Africa, historian and broadcaster Mark Urban combines perspectives from German and British sources to tell the gripping stories of the men who had the resilience, fitness and self-reliance to be "Red Devils"—the name they were given by their German enemies.

On February 2, 2019, the skies over Maynardville, Tennessee, filled with the roar of four F/A-18F Super Hornets streaking overhead in close formation. In each aircraft were two young female flyers, executing the first all-woman Missing Man Formation flyover in Navy history in memory of Captain Rosemary Mariner - groundbreaking Navy jet pilot, inspiring commander, determined and dedicated leader - whose drive to ensure the United States military had its choice of the best America had to offer broke down barriers and opened doors for female aviators wanting to serve their country.

Working from exclusive inside reporting, New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle tells the remarkable story of the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic’s campaign to build a space tourism company. Schmidle follows a handful of characters - Mark Stucky, Virgin’s lead test pilot; Richard Branson, the eccentric billionaire funding the venture; Mike Moses, the grounded, unflappable president; Mike Alsbury, the test pilot killed in a fatal crash; and others - in pursuit of their collective goal: to make space tourism a reality.

Eddie Rickenbacker was a World War I Flying Ace, a Medal of Honor winner, and even a racecar driver. But did you know that his first attempt at flying was to ride his bicycle off the roof of his house while holding an umbrella?

‘Without Precedent’ is the military biography of army commando and fighter pilot, Phillip Zupp. One man who served in two very different wars. During World War Two, he saw combat on the ground in the Pacific before patrolling Hiroshima and Tokyo at the war’s end. In Korea, Phillip flew 201 combat sorties amid intense ground fire and the ever-threatening MiG fighters. Peace brought an aviation career that spanned the globe and the skies above it. All the while, aviation history had overlooked this intriguing story of the search for a downed airman, a damaged jet and the first ...

There were no mission limits for a pilot in the Pacific during World War II; unlike in Europe, you flew until it was time to go home. So it was for James "Jug" Curran, all the way from New Guinea to the Philippines with the 348th Fighter Group, the first P-47 Thunderbolt outfit in the Pacific. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Curran volunteered to try flying in the blue yonder and trained as an Army fighter pilot. He got his wish to fly the P-47 in the Pacific, going into combat in August 1943, in New Guinea, and later helping start the "Black Rams" fighter squadron.

Explore the lives and achievements of the Wright Brothers.

This is a true story about a man who was passionate about airplanes—flying them, designing them and building them. His innovative designs and creative vision were so much a part of aviation history that his breakthrough biplane design, the Staggerwing, shown on the cover of this book, hangs in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Ted Wells not only designed the Staggerwing, but also the Bonanza and many other extremely popular and enduring commercial and military aircraft. Beech Aircraft, the company he co-founded with Walter and Olive Ann Beech...

Just nine years after American women finally got the right to vote, a group of trailblazers soared to new heights in the 1929 Air Derby, the first women's air race across the U.S. Follow the incredible lives of legend Amelia Earhart, who has captivated generations; Marvel Crosson, who built a plane before she even learned how to fly; Louise Thaden, who shattered jaw-dropping altitude records; and Elinor Smith, who at age 17 made headlines when she flew under the Brooklyn Bridge. Born to Fly is the gripping story of the fearless women pilots who aimed for the skies - and beyond.

Before becoming an instructor in the Navy's Topgun program, Dave "Bio" Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating from college, he joined the Navy with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot. But, his eyesight waning, he knew that he would never be able to reach that goal. Undaunted, he plowed ahead and found his niche as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new Grumman F-14 Tomcat.