Stranger to the Ground

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To be written, this book had first to be flown! Whoever reads it will find himself locked in a cockpit with Dick Bach, not for a single flight but for a thousand preceding hours in which professional skills were polished to combat competency, and a philosophy of life was matured.

It is rarely realized—and this may be as appropriate a place as any to point it out—that in the achievement of flight men have perhaps had to call more deeply on resources of heart and mind than in any previous reach of experience.

There is nothing in man’s physical nature which prepares him for flight. Countless generations have rooted human instincts in earth-bound habits.

Everything pertaining to flight has had to be invented—the aircraft; the instruments; the engines; the guidance systems; the communications; the airports—everything. And beyond this, men have had to meld myriad scientific discoveries into workable compromises, lending themselves in the process to unprecedented experiments.

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