Gordon Taylor (2)

Taylor was a brilliant 1930s Australian aerial navigator who accurately steered his country's great aviation hero, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, across the width of the Pacific with the aid of a sextant and a crude drift sight. His account of the perilous 1934 oceanic flight approaches at times the beauty and narrative power of Saint-Exupéry's writing.
Sir Gordon Taylor brings the reader into the cockpit with him, sharing his adventures as he pioneered trans-ocean flights, with only the sun show more and stars to guide him. On one memorable occasion Sir Gordon saved an aircraft from ditching in the Tasman Sea by his brave actions, for which he was subsequently awarded the George Cross. Inter-war stories of riding out 2 hurricanes on the open ocean at Easter Island and in a barely-protected lagoon are mind-boggling; and his tale of the trans-Tasman inflight oil change would be unbelievable sheer fantasy if it were not well documented elsewhere. 
Much of the book focuses on exploratory flights using a PBY/Catalina in the 1930's to set up military routes for WWII and the post -war civil aviation boom. show less