Customer Reviews

Flight to Everywhere

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"Flight to Everywhere" neatly covers the same locations and airplanes as the WWII Air Transport Command portions of Earnest K. Gann's "Fate Is The Hunter". If you loved that book, here are the photographs to back up Gann's stories and descriptions. The C-87, a cargo-hauler based on the Consolidated-Vultee B-24, is the subject of most of the book, with some C-39,47,53 (DC-3s) and C-46s, and a C-54 (DC-4) and other transports appearing. But Dimitri also photographs B-24D squadrons in North Africa, both sand over gray colors and olive drab over gray. Also in color are a Navy PB4Y-1 in 3 tone white/intermediate blue/sea blue with the dividing lines at the top of the fuselage, F-5s (P-38 photo reconnisance variants), a regular P-38, P-40s.

As many of us know, a small cottage industry now exists in locating and printing color photographs taken during WWII. Kodachrome slide film did exist and was being used by professionals and amateurs as well. The late Jeff Ethell was an early organizer of these sort of volumes and Motorbooks and others happily publish them. But there are similar references that have been awaiting (re)discovery since the 1940s and Ivan Dimitri's "Flight To Everywhere" is a good example of what's worth searching out at used book stores, library reference sections. Both "Life" magazine and "The National Geographic" were publishing color photographs during the 1940s and a searchable datebase of their photos would be very useful.One wonders about the photoarchives that "Time/Warner" has put on the internet too...

This is a real slice of wartime as it was lived in the USA- only planes in US markings appear in North Africa, India, Sicily, Greenland, , etc. No US or Canadian production going east to the ETO, no RAF, no SAAF (or is that ZAAF?), no Free French. But that's the way we wanted to see it and one nations censors were probably a belly-full. Really joint command didn't start until Sicily...

I strongly recommend this for anyone who wants to nail the colors and weathering of the real ATC, real Ploisti raiders, real over the Hump airlift, etc. Consider source and time, but the pictures are gold.

The best and most informative single source I've found about ATC, even though it makes no mention of the Pacific, Alaska or CONUS routes. An account of war correspondent/photographer Dmitri's travels with it from New York across the South Atlantic, Africa, Mid East and India to Chabua; and the return via North Africa, Prestwick and the North Atlantic, this latter including his account of an earlier tour to Goose Bay and Greenland. Photos in abundance, many in color, including several interior shots in C 87s. In the North Africa section, there is also a lengthy chapter on IX Air Force B 24 ops, again lavishly photographed. Well worth the price; and a must-have for those of us interested in the Air Transport Command

This is an outstanding must have book for any aviation historian.
The author skillfully puts you up close and personal with the maintenance and Aircrews of the USAF and ATC
during the crucial months of WWll.
The book was written during WWll and is no longer in print so it must be ordered used. Mine arrived on time and in surpurb condition