Flights of Passage

by Samuel Hynes

Book Overview

Perceptive, honest, and often very funny, this immensely readable account of a young pilot's rites of passage from an untrained cadet to warweary aviator, from youthful innocence to manhood is certain to become a classic. Fellow World War II flier James Dickey calls it, a profound human document of a terrible and heroic time.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087021215X
• ISBN13: 9780870212154
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

very sweet, too short

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.

An Interesting Tale of Aviation Service in the Pacific

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.

Samuel Hynes's book

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.

absorbing account of young man's passage from peace to war.

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.

Samuel Hynes becomes a Marine Aviator during WWII.

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.