Stranger to the Ground

Richard Bach’s first book, Stranger to the Ground is above all else an insight into the character of a man whose great compulsion is to measure himself against storm and night and fear. On the surface it is the tale of a memorable mission of a young fighter pilot utilizing his skills in a lonely duel with death. Yet between the lines emerges the portrait of the airman as a breed, probing outward, but even more significantly, inward.

During the Cold War Richard Bach's U.S. Air Force Reserve Unit got called up and deployed to Europe. This book mainly focuses on one mission: a night flight during a storm from England to France to deliver some documents. Bach spends a lot of time talking about the airplane and his thoughts while flying, but he also flashes back to some of his other experiences while in the Air Force.

This book was harder to get into than Bach's other books because its focus was so narrow and technical. I was also turned off by the way he looks down on people who don't love to fly as much as he does. The way he looks at the world and his love of flying is usually inspiring, but for some reason he just came across as narrow-minded in this book. However, show more it was really interesting to hear about how the U.S. military prepared for a possible war with Russia during the Cold War. show less

Bach's first (I think) book: His recounting of what it was like to fly jet fighters for the U. S. Air Force in Europe at the height of the Cold War. The prose isn't as polished and lyrical as it would become in Nothing by Chance, but it's a well-turned book about an under-documented place and time. It also has one of my absolute all-time favorite flying-memoir titles: right up there with Fate Is The Hunter and Wind, Sand, and Stars.

The several pages that were about the actual flight were good. Everything else was pompous bloviating.

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