Aviation and aviators, ships and sailors, spies and robbers, Romans and Jews, judges, generals... The guy certainly picks a variety of subjects. I just happen to like the ones on the air and the sea best, but the rest is just as good. Also one of the best autobiographies ever. Everybody seems to have liked Ernie as a man.
If all that was not enough, he also started producing movies at the age of 16 or so and was an accomplished painter and photographer (that work I have never seen). He worked as advisor on those old Hollywood flying movies (for William Wellman and others). Many of his books have been filmed; not all of these turned out so well. A propos, Gann explicitly mentions John Wayne as the only man in Hollywood you can trust to stick to his promises. Funny how in the 1960/70s this same man was vilified as a fascist bastard; for all I know, all fascism always is thoroughly corrupt while loudly protesting the contrary.
I have tried to avoid comparing Gann with French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, an Air France pilot who wrote Vol de Nuit and, best known, Le Petit Prince; that was going out of my way to far. The thing here is, de Saint Exupéry is so damn mystical and profound… Then, there are the books (only in Dutch, I'm afraid) by KLM captain Viruly. Comparing these three makes it obvious why the practical Americans still are aviation leaders. For the largest part of his career, Gann flew for American Airlines.
Gann was one of the men who pioneered the North Transatlantic air routes, flying DC3s to Europe. When we were making Dakota we made a stop at the same Greenland airport he describes in my favorite, Fate is the Hunter. I was reminded of the same book flying from La Guardia to Buffalo in 1994; but an MD80 just is not bugged by
iceas a DC2 is.
And finally, no superstition. What a relief. I am not anywhere near to having read all of his work. It's not that easy to find.
List of books and movies
(often hard to find as titles were changed)
| title | year | movie |
| In the Company of Eagles
Two rival aces in WWI | ||
| Of Good and Evil | ||
| Fate is the Hunter
An, over half autobiographical, story of Gann's career as a commercial airline pilot, and how he ends it. Mostly the Douglas DC2 and DC3, but also DC4 and Lockheed Electra. I would like to know a European counterpart to this, but have never found one. The closest maybe comes Wij Vlogen Naar Indië/We Flew to Indonesia by KLM pilot Viruly, but that hasn't nearly Gann's class. | Filmed but Gann didn't like it | |
|
The High and the Mighty The mother and daddy of all those stories where a plane gets in trouble aloft and is left to its own resources. Hardly an original theme in the first place, but who cares? This is aboard a DC4 flying from Honolulu to San Francisco. | 1953 John Wayne dir. William Wellman | |
| Blaze of Noon | 1983 | |
| The Magistrate | ||
| Brain 2000 | 1983 | |
| Black Watch About the men who fly America's secret spy planes | 1989 | |
| The Trouble with Lazy Ethel | 1970 | |
| Twilight for the Gods The last trip of a half-sinking schooner in the Pacific. Quite a bit like John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus. Gann sailed around a lot and my guess (wrong) was another member of one of his parties was Sterling Hayden, who also 'sort of' liked ships | Filmed | |
| Soldier of Fortune | 1955 Clark Gable dir. Edward Dmytryk | |
| Fiddler's Green | ||
| Benjamin Lawless | ||
| Blaze of Noon | ||
| Island in the Sky A DC-3 crashes in Labrador (might as well say, the middle of nowhere) and it goes without saying, the crew must be saved. | 1952 John Wayne dir. William Wellman | |
| The Antagonists AKA Masada | tv series | |
| The Triumph | tv series | |
| The Aviator | ||
| Gentlemen of Adventure | ||
| The Raging Tide | 1951, Van Heflin, dir. Joan Sherman | |
| Ernest K. Gann's Flying Circus Wonderful stories about aircraft and their manufacturers—and how it is to fly them. | ||
| The Proficient Pilot with Barry Schiff Haven't read these myself, as yet! but thry certainly smells A-OK. | ||
| Band of Brothers I love this one. A bunch of older3 pilots get together in Taiwan and make a just-as-old Junkers tri-motor Eiserne Tante fly again. Nothing to do with the 2001 TV series | ||
| Song of the Sirens with John Doane About his sea voyages with different ships. Really fine; tells you more about Gann than about his ships, as it's supposed to. | ||
|
A Hostage to Fortune Really good. If you like Gann, you owe yourself reading this one. The one thing I want to give away is that Gann's father had a large Wodehouse collection. Gann certainly picked up some hints from the master's works, but does not seem to realize it. Talk about funny. | autobiography |
 William Wellman 1954 |
 Gentleman of Adventure Lászlo Pá video on Gann 1994 |
 Island in the Sky William Wellman 1953 |
 Soldier of Fortune Edward Dmytryk 1955 Clark Gable |
the Dutch Cleopatra
If the world belonged to the leaders
and being a leader meant fighting twenty-four hours a day,
then the leaders could have it.
Soldier of Fortune
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