There are times when one gets a book that is truly fascinating and this is one of them. It is the autobiography of Corky Meyers, one of Grumman's test pilots during WWII and into the mid-1950s. His story is one of a love of flight that turned into an unexpected job of test flying Grumman aircraft during 1943. Armed with several civilian ratings and looking for jobs from aircraft companies that were looking for ex-military pilots, it was pure happenstance that he went into Grumman when they had a huge increase in production sales and was immediately hired to test fly newly built Wildcats.

From there, he worked his way up to being the chief test pilot and was given his first major experimental aircraft project at a very young age. During his tenure at Grumman, he flew all the 'cats' and was involved in the first flights of many of them. This includes the Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, Jaguar, Panther, Cougar, and Tiger. He went from 300 mph Wildcats to mach 2 Super Tigers in a flying career that most pilots would only dream of having.

Throughout the book we learn of some of the mistakes made by a fledgling test pilot as well as some of the engineering problems that cropped up and were eventually solved. To me, one of the more interesting problems was that of the effects of 'compressibility' that hit the Hellcat and later aircraft as they reached critical Mach numbers during dives.

The book is written in a style that immediately puts the reader at ease. This isn't the usual rote of facts and figures, but is done in such a way that you feel the author is sitting in the chair next to you. You get the feeling of a best friend chatting with you during an evening's visit.

Perhaps this is because each chapter is more of a series of connected short stories than a long chapter of events. Few of the tales cover more than two pages. This allows the reader to absorb the tale in snippets instead of long sections, and to me, adds to the overall 'readability' of the book. You know that you don't have to set aside a lot of time for reading and can grab bits of it in available moments if you so wish.

It is a fascinating look into an interesting job during an equally interesting time in aviation: the transition from subsonic prop planes to supersonic turbojet powered aircraft. It is all here in a book that is one of the best I've ever read.

January, 2006

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