Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator

In his memoir With the Old Breed, Eugene Sledge writes "It’s ironic that the record of our company was so outstanding but that so few individuals were decorated for bravery. Uncommon valor was displayed so often it went largely unnoticed." In that context, it surprised me that Hynes earned two DFC's for his experience of relatively low intensity conflict. Even more disconcerting is that Hynes and his comrades were officers, when they had no command responsibility other than pilot-in-command, and did not conduct themselves with any kind of maturity. Hynes faces this irony head on: This memoir is the opposite of a coming of age story, as the behavior of these young men becomes less and less mature the farther they get from home. I found show more this book to be an excellent evocation of a certain waiting-for-Godot, waiting-to-grow-up unfinished feeling, with a perfect ending -- flying to nowhere with a stranger just to get flight pay. Hynes's coming-of-age was the realization that despite his war experiences, he was not yet an adult. This is an honest story, universal to anyone who has felt the pressure of wanting to be grown up, and beautifully written.

At the end of my time there, in November, darkness fell so early that it overtook the last flight of the afternoon. It was on one of those late flights that I learned a new thing about flying--that it makes the approach of night different. It was late as I flew back from some practice solo, and the sun was nearly set, but the air was still warm and bright. The flight must have gone well, and I was feeling at ease with the plane and, in spite of the engine's heavy racket, quiet and peaceful. Below me lights began to come on in houses and farms, and everything that was not a light became dark and indistinct, so that the ground was almost like a night sky. But still I flew on in sunlight. The surface of the plane seemed to absorb and hold the light and color of the sunset; brightness surrounded me. It was as though the earth had died, and I alone was left alive. A sense of my own aliveness filled me. I would never die. I would go on flying forever. show less

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".
Samuel Hynes served as a consultant on "The War", directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and appears on camera in several episodes."The War" is a seven-part, 14-hour documentary series that debuts on PBS on Sunday, September 23, 2007.

Sam Hynes was eighteen when he left his Minnesota home for navy flight school in 1943. By the time the war ended he was a veteran Marine pilot, still not quite show more twenty-one, and had flown more than a hundred missions in the Pacific theater. In this eloquent narrative, by turns dramatic, funny, and elegiac, Hynes recalls those extraordinary years during which he came of age. he makes real the places—the training fields and the liberty towns and the Pacific islands, and the people—the other young pilots, the girls and the young wives, even the enemy pilots. He remembers friendship, and the excitement and tedium of war, the high exhilaration of flying, and the dying. More than a tale of combat, Flight of Passage is a story of one boy's growth to manhood in the turbulent, testing world of war in the air. show less

Candid, elitist(from a commissioned marine flyer) perspective on war in the Pacific. Often reads like the frat house goes to war. Let's drink all night and fly in the morning. His reflections on his crew, never saw them except when flying, never shared a meal and disparaged them with his comment about how they rode in the back, probably reading their comic books. accurately forecast his future role as a professor at Princeton. WW2 in the Pacific was ugly, often boring with moments of terror but it was clearly better to be a marine pilot than a doggie, or a crunchie as they called the ground troops. More personal and realistic counterpoint is Ambrose's book, The Wild Blue, about the men and boys that flew bombers in Europe.

I first heard of this book when I listened to a rebroadcast of a 1989 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program on what it was like to fly in wartime. Symes was one of the flyers interviewed and the interviewer mentioned his book. After some searching, I found it via inter library loan.
Ironically I was reading Hynes other book about war entitled The Soldiers' Tale when I heard the interview.
I found this book surprisingly unsatisfying. It may be the negative view of women that appears through the book or the way he avoids making any comment on the racism of the South. His descriptions of flying and the various aircraft he flew are well done.

I didn't discover this book until around 2003, I think it was. I'd just read Hynes' other memoir, The Growing Seasons, and wanted to know what happened next. I ordered Flights of Passage and absolutely loved it! I've read it a couple more times since then and even wrote to Sam asking him what happened next? More story, please! He did tell me that he was reactivated briefly by the USMC during the Korean War, but never got to Korea. Said he thinks he may have been the only active duty marine at that time working on a dissertation in English Lit. Sam showed up as one of the principals on Ken Burns' PBS special, The War. His presence and his part of the narration added a special kind of added "class" to the production. He tells me he's been show more working most recently on a book about aviators from the First World War. Hope he gets it done soon. I know I'll read it. Sam Hynes makes good writing look easy. show less

3448. Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator, by Samuel Hynes (read May 23, 2001) I read Hynes' three books (The Edwardian Turn of Mind, read Oct 17, 1993; The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s, read Nov 4, 1993 and A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture, read 21 Sept, 1999) on the cultural history of England from 1900 to 1940. This is an entirely different type of book, being the story of Hynes' "war" from 1943 to 1945 (he was a Marine flyer). His description of the lassitude and dreariness of the non-flying time is poignant, and I thought the final pages of the book oddly moving. Flying means nothing special to me, yet I found this is a memorable and moving book, show more despite a dismay one cannot help but feel at the intellectual emptiness of the lives of the men in wartime as described. show less

An excellent look at what war is really like. A great nonfiction read to complement "The Cellist of Sarajevo."