Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator

by Samuel Hynes

Paperback, 2003

Status

Available

Genres

Collection

Robert Ames Collection

Publication

Penguin Books (2003), Edition: Reissue, 270 pages

Description

Samuel Hynes served as a consultant on "The War", directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and appears on camera in several episodes. "The War" is a seven-part, 14-hour documentary series that debuts on PBS on Sunday, September 23, 2007. Sam Hynes was eighteen when he left his Minnesota home for navy flight school in 1943. By the time the war ended he was a veteran Marine pilot, still not quite twenty-one, and had flown more than a hundred missions in the Pacific theater. In this eloquent narrative, by turns dramatic, funny, and elegiac, Hynes recalls those extraordinary years during which he came of age. he makes real the places--the training fields and the liberty towns and the Pacific islands, and the people--the other young pilots, the girls and the young wives, even the enemy pilots. He remembers friendship, and the excitement and tedium of war, the high exhilaration of flying, and the dying. More than a tale of combat, Flight of Passage is a story of one boy's growth to manhood in the turbulent, testing world of war in the air.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jamespurcell

Candid, elitist(from a commissioned marine flyer) perspective on war in the Pacific. Often reads like the frat house goes to war. Let's drink all night and fly in the morning. His reflections on his crew, never saw them except when flying, never shared a meal and disparaged them with his comment

about how they rode in the back, probably reading their comic books. accurately forecast his future role as a professor at Princeton. WW2 in the Pacific was ugly, often boring with moments of terror but it was clearly better to be a marine pilot than a doggie, or a crunchie as they called the ground troops. More personal and realistic counterpoint to Ambrose's book, The Wild Blue, about the men and boys that flew bombers in Europe.

Show Less

3 more

LibraryThing member TimBazzett

I didn't discover this book until around 2003, I think it was. I'd just read Hynes' other memoir, The Growing Seasons, and wanted to know what happened next. I ordered Flights of Passage and absolutely loved it! I've read it a couple more times since then and even wrote to Sam asking him what

happened next? More story, please! He did tell me that he was reactivated briefly by the USMC during the Korean War, but never got to Korea. Said he thinks he may have been the only active duty marine at that time working on a dissertation in English Lit. Sam showed up as one of the principals on Ken Burns' PBS special, The War. His presence and his part of the narration added a special kind of added "class" to the production. He tells me he's been working most recently on a book about aviators from the First World War. Hope he gets it done soon. I know I'll read it. Sam Hynes makes good writing look easy.

Show Less

LibraryThing member lamour

I first heard of this book when I listened to a rebroadcast of a 1989 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program on what it was like to fly in wartime. Symes was one of the flyers interviewed and the interviewer mentioned his book. After some searching, I found it via inter library loan.
Ironically I

was reading Hynes other book about war entitled The Soldiers' Tale when I heard the interview.
I found this book surprisingly unsatisfying. It may be the negative view of women that appears through the book or the way he avoids making any comment on the racism of the South. His descriptions of flying and the various aircraft he flew are well done.

Show Less

LibraryThing member napgeorge

An excellent look at what war is really like. A great nonfiction read to complement "The Cellist of Sarajevo."

Fewer