This book introduces the dynamic personalities involved in the creation, life, and demise of the great flying boat.
Flying and Writing: These have been the dual passions of Bob Gandt's life. He published his first story at age sixteen - the same year he first soloed an airplane. Since then he has logged something over 25,000 hours, written thirteen books and published countless articles.
As a U. S. Navy pilot, he logged over 300 carrier landings and nearly 2,000 hours in the A-4 Skyhawk. In his 1997 deja vu work, Bogeys and Bandits (Viking Penguin), he joins a Navy F/A-18 training squadron at the same base where he had trained years before.
For 26 years he flew as a pilot with Pan American World Airways, domiciled in Berlin, Hong Kong, New York, and San Francisco. His 1995 classic, Skygods (Wm. Morrow & Co.), recounts the meteoric descent and crash of the once-great Pan Am.
In 1985 Gandt and his partners, Harry Shepard and Carl Pascarell, formed the Redhawk Aerobatic Team. Flying their Siai-Marchetti fighter-trainers (rescued from a military boneyard in the Congo), they performed their formation aerobatic routine for over three million air show spectators.
Gandt's first book, Season of Storms, grew from his acclaimed series in the Far Eastern newspaper, South China Morning Post, about the WWII battle for Hong Kong. His long association with Pan Am and its romantic history inspired the book, China Clipper (Naval Institute Press, 1991 and 2010), which relives the mystique of the great commercial flying boats. His fascination with warbirds and the high-adrenalin world of unlimited air racing provides the background for Fly Low, Fly Fast (Viking Penguin), the inside account of the battle for the unlimited air racing championship at Reno, Nevada.
Gandt's first novel, With Hostile Intent (Penguin Putnam) was followed by Acts of Vengeance, Black Star, Shadows of War, The Killing Sky, and Black Star Rising.
In 1998 he made his screenwriting debut in 1998 on the CBS series Pensacola: Wings Of Gold, adapted from his book Bogeys and Bandits. He worked as writer and technical consultant for the twenty-two-episodes of the show, which starred James Brolin as the commander of a Marine F/A-18 training squadron.
Gandt's book Intrepid, co-authored by Bill White, with a foreword by former naval aviator Senator John McCain, was published by Random House in the autumn of 2008. The Twilight Warriors, his account of the sea and air battle for Okinawa (Random House) is the 2011 winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature.
Gandt and his wife, Anne, make their home at the Spruce Creek Fly-In in Daytona Beach, Florida, where Anne heads up the real estate firm, Country Club Properties of Spruce Creek.
