Jason RyanBesprekingen

This is a book in three parts, with the Dole Air Derby coming last. Before that, we hear about the golden age of aviation in general and two sets of flights to Hawaii in particular: the U.S. Navy’s flying boats, and the race between the Army Air Corps and a civilian pilot. It’s all here: the huge fuel tanks, the inadequate or sometimes non-existent instruments, the fragile structures, the crash landings, the stunt flyers, everything you could want to know about the daredevil days of planes in the 1920s. The details are fascinating if you’re an aviation geek like me, but the chapters are on the long side and could probably have been broken up a bit more to make them easier to digest.½

The Dole Air Derby of 1927 is an event that I've been aware of forever but it's also the case that it's been literally decades since I've really thought about it, so my interest perked up immediately when I saw that there was a new book on the topic. This account is rather different in that the author is coming at the topic not as an aviation enthusiast (which he was not at the start) but as a journalist, so he's more concerned with context and how the events were covered in real time. Be that as it may what I knew of the story was that the actual race was regarded as a bloody fiasco, and it was, but not necessarily for the reasons that concerned period commentators. They tended to be fixated on the demise of Mildred Doran, the flying mascot of the plane "Miss Doran," a young woman who wound up being the Christa McAuliffe of her time and how this enterprise seemed to represent the barnstorming phenomena taken to its logically stupid conclusion.

While this is true to a degree the basic point is that while the best practice of aeronautical engineering had produced aircraft that were viable enough to make the flight from the United States to Hawaii (this is all taking place in the excitement of Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic) the hard part was that navigation techniques had a long way to go before they were truly reliable. The aircraft on the cover was not one of the Dole Derby competitors, but the Army Air Service machine "Bird of Paradise" that was purposely sent out as an "x-plane" to test long-range navigation methods and technology. The cream of the Dole competitors did their best to learn from the previous Hawaii flights (which included a USN flight of flying boats and the first civilian crossing made by the "City of Oakland") but the margins were very narrow between success and failure. Much of the rationale for the the Dole Derby was to entice Lindbergh into making another record flight, but he wanted nothing to do with the whole enterprise!

This was not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be. There was too much back and forth without enough details of how bad crime truly was in Hawaii at the time, and the story really painted the lead character as an arrogant jerk.

I must admit as a South Carolinian, I am somewhat prejudiced in my review as I recognize the coastal areas mentioned in SC, but this book is a top 3 lifetime! I do not buy many books, but I will buy this one to read again.

Poorly written, the guy was all over the place! One minute we're talking about a run in 1976 and then he's discussing the details of one in '75, no chronology at all. The story simply focused on two guys rather than taking the opportunity to discuss the drug smuggling culture of the time and region. Sure he mentions that it's going on a lot, but never gives any details.½

Reportedly the investigation that launched the task-force concept, Operation Jackpot targeted the “gentlemen smugglers” of South Carolina in the 1970s and 1980s. They avoided violence, weapons and cocaine (except for heavy personal use) but were a loose band of modern pirates responsible for bringing massive amounts of pot and some hash into the U.S. by sea. They traveled the world and spent money on boats, cars, drugs, real estate, and women. A politically ambitious U.S. Attorney and an intrepid group of investigators prosecuted scores of smugglers and supporters and brought the good life to an end. “Jackpot” brings the story to life thirty years later.