One of the books on my shelf that I was most excited to read, The Air Devils delivered on all fronts regarding stunt aviation’s origins and I was left almost unwilling to close the pages upon finishing the book. Covering topics that range from the rise of flying lighter-than-air craft at a time when American independence was just gained to diamond formations of gleaming F-86s dancing over European skies, this book is a must-have for any aviation historian or enthusiast, professional or otherwise. The Air Devils serves as a key reference for the widely known and some unfortunately unknown names in the barnstorming, stunt flying, movie flying, and ballooning arenas; all of which are immeasurably important to the history of powered flight. It is our job as pilots to learn, understand, and remember this history to not only show appreciation for their sacrifices and roles in our lives but to spread their almost mystical wisdom into the flying world of today. This book will undeniably help whoever reads it achieve these goals.
As an enthusiast of early aviation, I had many takeaways from this book with the first being a reminder of just how costly it could have been to climb into a machine of the air and take it aloft into another dimension still mostly unfamiliar to the terrestrial man. The relative safety of aviating is something taken for granted these days but in the early years of pioneering, every flight could mean tragedy. Almost every aviator is familiar with the madness of those unforgiving years of trial and error but Don Dwiggins does an excellent job of highlighting this fact with detailed stories that drag the reader to the edge of their seat. A premium example of this is the story of Lincoln Beachey’s final flight in an experimental monoplane he built himself. After the complete story of this birdman’s career, Dwiggins describes his final moments: “He sucked the stick back harder and harder, watching the world rush up to strike him dead. The Beachey Special shuddered, and something broke. Linc looked left; the wing had torn away…. The crowd rushed forward, across the grass field, to the water’s edge, and there it stopped. The waves had subsided: beneath them, the worlds’s greatest stunt flyer was dead, trapped in the tangled wreckage…” (Dwiggins, The Air Devils, p.102). In the blink of an eye, the world lost one of it’s leading aviators due to structural failure. This story is only one of the many shocking accounts included in this book that shows how incredibly dangerous the evolving years of heavier-than-air flying were.
Another lesson that is quite discernible in this book which is synonymous with my previous point is just how much these airmen were willing to sacrifice, or lay on the line if you will, to sharpen their flying skills as fine as obsidian and for the betterment of aviation as a whole. One must remember that for so long, aviation was a widely unregulated business and lots of unnecessary tragedies were the result of this fault. Throughout this book you will read the most unbelievable stories of aviating that ever took place to include flying Curtiss Jennys off city rooftops, climbing onto fabric wings while blindfolded and thousands of feet in the air (only to climb onto another airplane while still blindfolded…), landing biplanes on moving trains, taking off from tennis courts while flying across a continent, and so many others that I frustratingly cannot fit in this article. One cannot help but to read these incredible adventures and compare them to what we view as extreme and how general aviation airplanes are used today. These men and women flew their aircraft from the top of the airspeed indicator, which probably didn’t even work, to the last decimal of their critical angle of attack and did it all as one with their machine. These courageous pilots gave us footsteps to follow in this regard and due to their commitment to flying, the aviation safety standards have multiplied exponentially since those horrifically deadly years. Although this is true I could not help but to read about these magnificent individuals and think of the artificial drama that is created in airplanes today for phone cameras and social media views, however that is a topic for another day.
As I hinted to earlier, there is no shortage of heroic stories from names such as Frank Clarke, Paul Mantz, Mort Bach, Doug Davis, Mabel Cody, Frank Tallman, and so many other aviators and flying circuses. My final takeaway, that I shall mention here, is how Dwiggins emphasizes the fearlessness of these individuals when in the cockpit of their flying machines. Balloonatics are not to be left out of this most honorable list, and the author includes a multitude of jaw-dropping, heart-pounding stories about these now mostly unknown figures. One such story recounts how in 1862, Henry Tracey Coxwell and James Glashier ascended in their gas bag from Wolverhampton, England on a purely scientific mission to probe the stratosphere. Without giving too much of the book away, the men fought for their lives nearly eight miles high while battling freezing temperatures and punishing fits of hypoxia. Pulling themselves out of unconsciousness and solving emergency after emergency with their craft, the two men struggled to return to that earth where man had struggled to join those clouds in the sky for so long. In a miraculous turn of events, they eventually did land with an astonishing feat under their belt-reaching an altitude of 39,000 feet! Not only should these names and their associated fearlessness go down in the books of history forever, they shall be remembered by all in the advancement of aeronautical science and serve as an example of dedication and dauntlessness to aviators everywhere.
To conclude this article, I must say I have nothing but stellar things to say about Don Dwiggins’ The Air Devils. This book is one that I cannot recommend enough for both the professional and the amateur. Its message, and why I think it belongs in any early aviation enthusiasts library, is that it serves as a key reference for both popular and unknown names in the early years of flying and brings to light their contributions to aviation which may go unnoticed otherwise. Not only this, but this book may remind today’s flyers that they should take time to remember their roots and push themselves to be the best pilot they can be, in good conscience, and enjoy flying for the sake of flying. Knowing the history of those pioneering years opens ones eyes to the sacrifices our forefathers made, how dangerous it was to fly, and how they regularly sharpened their skill and prowess in the air despite the danger.
Sources: Don Dwiggins. The Air Devils. J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966.
