Customer Reviews

Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Watching planes fly over his Minneapolis home, young Samuel Hynes never imagined himself flying in one, let alone being a pilot. He never saw an ocean, yet before he turned 21, he would be flying and fighting over the largest of them. World War II was a transforming conflict in many ways. For Hynes, it was his ticket to a larger world.

Not that he seems too happy for the experience. Yes, Hynes writes with humor, and some nostalgia, about his experiences fighting in the Pacific Theater with the Marines air wing in the last year of the war. Yet, when he describes his feelings about his return to civilian life as "the end of something that had been good, perhaps like the breaking up of a marriage," it feels odd and wrong.

Hynes didn't see a lot of combat, but he saw a lot of waste, deadly waste, pilots in training killed attempting maneuvers, or else later on, lost at sea because they were lost in the clouds. There are attacks on a Japanese-held island tucked too deep behind Allied lines to threaten anyone. There's no glory in Samuel Hynes' war; even the deaths of Japanese foes are related with bitter resignation.

Hynes writes of his and his comrades' struggle less in terms of victory than simple survival, doing what the military asks them and no more. Hynes mentions the film classics "Wings" and "Dawn Patrol," but there's more here of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," where the carnage of World War II is played as a sick joke. Even the humor has that same acidic quality. When one pilot is lost at sea, only to be rescued, his comrades disguise their relief by pretending to have gotten rid of his belongings when he returns.

The book is three-fourths over before Hynes reaches the only real battle he participated in, Okinawa. As he hops from post to post stateside, the narrative sometimes gets dull. But the overall tone of "Flights Of Passage is what makes it worth reading. With most war books, the focus is naturally on battles, or individuals who made some difference in the conflict. Hynes, a self-described small cog in giant machine, writes of the other side of war, its boredom, pettiness, infidelity, and creeping ennui. Danger, too, and tragedy, but in such small doses one can never be ready for them, not ready enough.

While his style is dispassionate and nonjudgmental, I get the feeling Hynes didn't care much for what he saw of the war. It's not that he was a bad Marine, just not a warrior.

His best sections involve the spurts of battle he did see, his impressions of flying the different combat planes of the era. Corsairs were prized as beauties but prone to spinning out during landing approaches, while the Hellfighters were "all muscle and no guts."

Hynes spends a lot of time on his comrades, but except for one hotshot he gets close to named Joe, none really stick out, not even Hynes. Carefully written, at times beautifully, the book avoids any non-factual embellishments that might make it more readable but less true, the kind that other memoirists would defend as compensation for fading memory. The result is a flat, dry read, but one you trust to tell it like it was.

I'm glad for the service Hynes gave his country, more perhaps than Hynes himself. But his book makes clear why wars, even when fought for the most noble of purposes, leave scars and a sense of loss that outweighs any triumph, however worthy.

By the time I got to the last page of Samuel Hynes's memoir GROWING SEASONS, I had developed such an attachment to young Sam that I was reluctant to quit reading. Luckily Hynes had written an earlier memoir about his days as a dive bomber pilot during WWII entitled FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE. Imagine my surprise when I spotted the book already in my bookcase. I'd read it when it was published in 1988. I had to read it again.
Hynes writes with such humility it's easy to put yourself in his shoes. Sam is continually worried about being cut from the flight program and sent to Great Lakes to train as an enlisted man. He also doesn't shirk from describing the times he crashed his plane or did something stupid, trying to show off. Although he went on over a hundred missions on Okinawa, he isn't sure his contribution to the war effort was worth that much. He's disappointed when he's left behind when his squadron goes on a bombing run of Japan.
As an ex-Navy man myself I can relate to a lot of what Hynes went through: the depressing bus stations, the sexual braggadocio, the feeling of vertigo when changing duty stations, the hurry-up-and-wait mentality, the obsession with drinking and playing cards.
About the only problem I have with the book is that the other pilots don't really come alive for me--I had trouble remembering who they were. Sam also gets married (at nineteen) before going overseas, but we never get to know his wife. He doesn't say much about her letters; he doesn't even seem to miss her. I had an ominous feeling about that marriage.
Perhaps the most memorable part of the book is when the war ends and Hynes and his fellow pilots are sitting around waiting for orders and they're caught in a typhoon! It blows away several tents and several men are killed. Talk about situational irony.

If you think this is just another old man remembering World War Two, you would be right.But this isn't some "blood and guts" recollection from the old timer who had one too many at the VFW, it is an honest and sincere account of young men coming of age at the height of the war. Hynes sets out to become a Marine flyer in 1943 and along the way to realizing this goal he introduces us to other real people like Joe,T, Rock,and Bergie. By the time Hynes and his friends get their wings and are trained as a Torpedo Bomber Pilots it is late in the war.But they are just in time for Okinawa. I originally bought this book because my fathers brother was a gunner on Hynes' pal Bergies aircraft, and I was looking for the attitude of that generation of young men that went off to fight in the last "good war". I wasn't disappointed.

I am surprised to see no author listed for this book. It is by Samuel Hynes, and was published in 1988 by Frederic C. Beil and New York Naval Institute. It is a great book, albeit one is disturbed by the great amount of boozing and whoring (no doubt truthfully) the author describes. But the author, now a distinguished author and professor of literature--unless he has retired by now--tells a poignant and realistic story of how he trained to be a pilot and was in 1944 commissioned as a Marine Corps aviator, and went on to action in Okinawa. The closing chapter is especially thought-provoking and I was sorry to see the book end. I wish the author had told us more, about how his hasty war-induced marriage went when he returned, and how he came to his present eminent position--little in the book prepares one for his eventual success, except it is obvious that Samuel Hynes is a writer of real power. This is the fourth book by him I have read. The others are The Edwardian Turn of Mind (finished 17 Oct 1993); The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s (finished Nov. 4, 1993); and A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (finished 21 Sept 1999). Reading this book will not remind you of these other books, which are a different genre, but also eminently worth reading.

Samuel Hynes, professor emiterius of literature at Princeton University, went to war in 1943--there simply was no alternative as he says--and in time graduated from flight school as a Marine pilot of a TBM, a torpedo bomber used for several types of missions.

To those who went through flight school during WWII, his accounts of the trials, and sometimes failures, of a flying officer in training ring authentic, as does the sometimes pettiness of the armed forces and the hurry-up-and-wait process that dogged us as we impatiently waited to get into action. He also details the drinking, the sexual adventures, and other less savory, perhaps, actions of men at war. When he finally arrived overseas in early 1945, the actual combat was somewhat of an anti-climax. No great aerial battles, relatively few losses, and much relatively routine patrol work. In fact, the most terrifying event was after the war when a giant typhoon hit Okinawa and his base. As is true of those in service, he seems oblivious of the war other than his own small part. He was stationed, for example, on Saipan in April for two weeks or so awaiting assignment, but makes no mention of the many B-29 operations from there or neighboring Tinian against Japan.

A curious thing about the book is that before he went overseas, he was married. Viritually nothing is said of his wife, her letters, of the relationship. Much more is said of he and his Marine buddies trying to obtain booze and other leisure pursuits, in addition to combat.. Perhaps Hynes marriage was one of those wartime marriages that didn't last. On the other hand, maybe it's none of our business since Hynes' purpose is to try and give one a realistic view of training to go to war and the event itself. In this regard he succeeds brilliantly.

This is the story of a man who, by Fortune or Fate, became an aviator during WWII. This book is more about his transformation from boy to man than it is about the history of aviation in World War Two. Still, its an insightful piece and the imagery is fantastic. I can still see Mr. Hynes sitting in his tent during a typhoon, and the sunlight glinting off of the Mustang's wings just before it collided and fell into the ocean. If you're interested in "feeling", then this book is a "5". If you're more interested in the adventure and drama, then this book is a "2". My rating is the average of the two, as I bought it for the adventure and ended up with the feeling.

well written, a realistic portrayal of parts of the war that we really don't think that much about,

my only substantial criticism is that it is an awfully short book for the price.

A terrific account of how a Minnesota farmboy with a natural gift for writing became a Marine dive bomber pilot in the fading days of World War II. A lesser talent would not have been able to make the hum drum of navy preflight come alive but Sam Hynes makes you feel that you experienced the highs and lows of flight training and then aeriel combat in the pacific that are the backbone of this extraodinary memoir.

Mr. Hynes work originally attracted me because, as an aviation historian, I enjoy first person accounts. My interest was drawn to the book when he mentioned that some of his training was in Florida--my state of birth. Having noticed the town Deland in his account I acquired the volume for a check of conditions in the state during the was (having 2 uncles who were naval aviators). It was an interesting picture of the US in another era--a Florida I used to know. I was by the Deland airport (it is noted as "Deland Naval Air Station--1942-46) (We fought the war, finished it and shut down the war machine.) In fact the majority of now-civilian airports were built during WWII. This was a bittersweet tale of men who were part of a much larger effort; but didn't regard their contribution as telling.
The last chapter has the memorable line "You can go back in space, but not back in time. Lucius B. Gravely, IV

Good book on what young Americans experienced to become aviators during World War Two. I enjoyed the portions leading up to the war more than the actual wartime experiences, although those were interesting too. The author seems a little cynical about coming of age in the '40s, but then it was his era, not mine. I think he may actually speak for a larger segment of his generation than is realized. Nonetheless, the perspective is unique for what's in print.