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Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator

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"Flights Of Passage" by Samuel Hynes. Subtitled: "Reflections Of A World War II Aviator". Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1988.

Samuel Hynes flew for the United States Marine Corps in the Second World War. God bless him. His personal memoir follows the usual pattern for many servicemen of World War II, where an entire generation left high school, received aviation training in some forsaken Southern state, and then went overseas to fight the war. Much of his book, however, is devoted to how these individuals, this special generation, grew from teen-aged youths into mature individuals: "The Flights Of Passage".

With excellent writing, Hynes recounts his leaving his home state of Minnesota, his passion for flying that lead him into Naval Aviation and, incidentally, his encounters with different people, persons, as an example, with "...soft-slurring speech that at first we couldn't understand". Shopkeepers welcomed the Naval Pilot trainees as if they were old friends and said good-bye with "Y'all hurry back, heah?" As training progressed, Hynes began to sort out individuals, as an example, the city slicker and the rube. His telling comment about the know-it-all from South Dakota was how could you be a city slicker if you were from a state that had no cities? His most astute writing deals with the classification of the newly winged pilots into "Crazies" and "Sanes". Happily, the "Crazies" stayed back in the States and the "Sanes" carried the war to the enemy.

Too much of the book is devoted to sexual encounters and to drinking. Samuel Hynes reflects the mores of his time when he begins with "Alice' who was pretty and in a sorority (both good), but who was a Catholic (bad). His characterization, not mine. The book is then littered with accounts of attempted sexual conquests, (not going-all-the-way), sexual conquests and then marriage. Explicit encounters with whores are described, as when "Green" tells how he got his money's worth from a prostitute. What ..."you might expect from a guy from New York who had gone to CCNY and wore a lavender sweatshirt".

(City College of New York, along with Brooklyn College, Hunter College and Queens College, as part of the City University of New York, all had the colors of purple and white...NOT lavender. Further, Jesuit Fordham University and private New York University had the colors of purple and white. However, my alma mater, Manhattan College, a Catholic college in The Bronx, had the colors of Kelly green and white.)

Also, there were many tales of drinking bouts and drunks. The locals were tolerant of Navy Fliers, as Hynes narrates: a drunken Naval Aviator climbs up an awning to get at a pretty girl. While climbing, he pulls down the awning and then simply walks away. No charges were pressed by the townsfolk.

Little enough action is reported in this book. One pilot finally shots down a Jap plane by using air-to-ground rockets. Another pilot goes slightly daft and begins to paint everything blue: his Mae West, his helmet, his flying suit, and finally, his tent. Perhaps the most interesting event is when Hynes, and his two crew members in the TBM, wake up to find the engine off, due to lack of fuel. Hynes switches to another tank to fly safely home. Good for him.

Since I first read this book back when it first was published in 1988 by the Naval Institute Press, this review is not based on immediate memory.
The story covers the author's service as a fighter pilot in the Central Pacific Theatre, both on carriers and on dusty tropic atolls. It is excellently written and is one of the few aviation personal narratives in my collection as most of my interest is in the ground wars in the Pacific and SW Pacific Theatres of WW II.
I remember it as well worth my reading and it should be sought out if you are interested.