 Cover of 1974 Heinemann first edition | |
| Author | Wilbur Smith |
|---|---|
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Action |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1974 |
| ISBN | 0434714070 |
Eagle in the Sky is a novel by Wilbur Smith, published in 1974.
The book sold 600,000 copies in the first six months. [1]
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.(March 2019) |
14-year-old David Morgan, the handsome and academically gifted heir to a South African business empire and fortune, learns to fly with Barney Venter, a gruff but experienced ex-airline pilot. He realises that David is "bird" – blessed with a natural flying ability. David learns quickly and soon gains his pilot's licence. After school, he opts to join the South African Air Force instead of going to university and business school.
He impresses his commanding officer, the crusty Colonel Rastus Naude, who is disappointed when David decides not to accept a longer service contract and instead tries to seek out what he is meant to do. He travels widely in Europe. In Spain, he meets Debra Mordechai, an attractive young Israeli writer and university lecturer, who is traveling with her brother Joe and his fiancée Hannah. Debra rebuffs David's advances and they part on bitter terms.
David is drawn to Jerusalem to find her and meets "The Brig", her father, General Mordechai, a plain-spoken pilot in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a senior staff officer. Learning that David has much experience of flying Mirage jets, he satisfies himself of David's skills and then offers him a commission in the IDF. He accepts and is granted Israeli citizenship. He is plunged into Israel's struggle for survival.
David's memories of his own (Jewish) mother and his growing passion for Debra make his involvement with this new country's cause inescapable. He and Debra set up house together. At Joe and Hannah's wedding, a terrorist attack kills Hannah and Debra is left blind. In her grief, she rebuffs David, who only finds solace in the skies.
He and Joe get into a dogfight with Russian-trained Syrian fighters. Joe's aircraft is shot down and David, low on fuel and on the wrong side of the border, is forced to ditch. His jet catches fire and he is badly burned.
A year later, after much plastic surgery and no longer the handsome man he was, David is forced to resign his commission on pain of a court-martial. He is now an outcast, as he had brought Israel to the brink of open war. He desperately seeks out Debra, who is now willing to accept him back, not knowing what he now looks like.
They marry, despite the misgivings and anger of "The Brig" and they travel to the now virtually derelict game lodge that David's late father owned in the South African bush. Remembering all the poaching and "sport" killing that had happened there in his youth, he seeks out the game warden, Conrad Berg, and offers the whole estate as a national park to serve as a haven for animals fleeing poachers.
David falls foul of a particularly ruthless poacher and in the ensuing violence, Debra is badly injured. Pregnant, she loses the baby. But the injury has affected her brain and she can now sense some colours. They travel to Cape Town to consult a top ophthalmic surgeon, who decides to operate despite David's objections.
The procedure is successful and Debra's sight is restored. But she can now see how David really looks and in her panic, she rebuffs him. David is badly hurt and seeks consolation in the only place he feels safe – the sky. He plans to commit suicide by flying until his fuel runs out, but Debra's father, who is visiting and has friends in Air Traffic Control, establishes radio contact with him and convinces him to return to Debra.
Smith’s father had owned a Tiger Moth during the period when the family was cattle ranching. Smith followed in his footsteps gaining a private pilot’s license in the mid -to-late 1960s, which allowed him to fly himself all over Africa. However after a bad flying experience he gave up personally piloting himself in 1974. [2] As part of his research Smith was able through his friend Andrew Drysdale to get an introduction to Dick Lord, who was a senior officer in the South African Air Force. Lord was able to arrange for Smith to have access to an air force flight simulator and thus gain some appreciation of what was involved in dogfighting a Mirage against a MiG fighter. To research what it was like to serve in the Israeli Air Force Smith contacted plastic surgeon Aaron Sacks who had operated on a number of injured Israeli pilots. Sacks was able to use his connections to arrange for Smith to visit an Israeli air force base in 1973. [2] One week after he had returned from Israeli the Yom Kippur War broke out.
During Smith’s childhood he had befriended the reclusive owner of a neighbouring cattle ranch. He was a former RAF pilot whose face and other exposed parts of his body had been left badly burned when he was shot down during the Battle of Britain. As he developed the novel Smith decided to use his memories of this man in his description of the David Morgan. [2]
The novel was Smith’s first big seller in the important United States market. Up until American readers had struggled to understand his African settings and he was also tainted by being a nominal South African and thus associated with apartheid. However despite the success of Eagle in the Sky he was not to achieve similar sales with any of his subsequent novels until Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1991. [2]
Film rights were bought by the producer Michael Klinger who made several movies based on Smith novels. [3] In the early 1980s, it was announced that a film version would be shot in Israel starring Pia Zadora. [4] However, as of 2023 no film has resulted. [5]
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 mi (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. The brothers were also the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.
Iron Eagle is a 1986 action film directed by Sidney J. Furie who co-wrote the screenplay with Kevin Alyn Elders, and starring Jason Gedrick and Louis Gossett Jr. While it received negative reviews, being unfavorably compared to the similarly-themed Top Gun released the same year, the film earned $24,159,872 at the U.S. box office. Iron Eagle was followed by three sequels: Iron Eagle II, Aces: Iron Eagle III, and Iron Eagle on the Attack, with Gossett being the only actor to appear in all four films.
Porco Rosso is a 1992 Japanese animated adventure-fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is based on Hikōtei Jidai, a three-part 1989 watercolor manga by Miyazaki. It stars the voices of Shūichirō Moriyama, Tokiko Kato, Akemi Okamura and Akio Ōtsuka. Animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Japan Airlines and the Nippon Television Network, it was produced by Toshio Suzuki and distributed by Toho. Its score is by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi.
Barnstorming was a form of entertainment in which stunt pilots performed tricks individually or in groups that were called flying circuses. Devised to "impress people with the skill of pilots and the sturdiness of planes," it became popular in the United States during the Roaring Twenties.
George Frederick "Buzz" Beurling, was the most successful Canadian fighter pilot and flying ace of the Second World War.
Wilbur Addison Smith was a Zambian-born British-South African novelist specialising in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries, seen from the viewpoints of both black and white families.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1918:
Shout at the Devil is a 1976 British war adventure film directed by Peter R. Hunt and starring Lee Marvin and Roger Moore. The film, set in Zanzibar and German East Africa in 1913–1915, is based on a novel by Wilbur Smith which is very loosely inspired by real events. The supporting cast features Barbara Parkins and Ian Holm.
Gold is a 1974 British thriller film starring Roger Moore and Susannah York and directed by Peter R. Hunt. It was based on the 1970 novel Gold Mine by Wilbur Smith. Moore plays Rodney "Rod" Slater, general manager of a South African gold mine, who is instructed by his boss Steyner to break through an underground dike into what he is told is a rich seam of gold. Meanwhile, he falls in love with Steyner's wife Terry, played by York. In the United States, the film was released only as part of a double bill.
Colonel Tomb, also Nguyen Toon or Colonel Toon was a mythical North Vietnam Air Force fighter ace loosely based on a North Vietnamese pilot from the 921st Fighter Regiment named Nguyen Van Coc. Tomb allegedly shot down 13 American aircraft during the Vietnam War. According to legend, he was killed in action on May 10, 1972, by the U.S. Navy F-4 Phantom crew of pilot Lt. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and radar operator Lt.(jg) William "Irish" Driscoll. It was later revealed by historians that there had been no such colonel in the North Vietnam forces.
Ring Raiders is a 1989 animated television series based on a 1980s toy line made by Matchbox. The series began with a two-hour special by DIC Enterprises, followed by one week of five half-hour episodes syndicated by Bohbot Communications.
The Gorman dogfight was a widely publicized UFO incident which took place on October 1, 1948, in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, United States. United States Air Force (USAF) Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in his bestselling and influential The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that the "dogfight" was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that "proved to [Air Force] intelligence specialists that UFOs were real," along with the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Mantell UFO incident. However, in 1949 the USAF concluded that the Gorman dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon.
Avraham "Avi" Lanir was a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Air Force. He was the highest-ranking Israeli fighter pilot to fall into enemy hands.
The air battle of Mansoura was an air battle that took place during the Yom Kippur War between the Egyptian Air Force (EAF) and the Israeli Air Force (IAF) near the town of El Mansoura, in the Nile Delta.
Wing Commander Douglas Arthur Davies was an officer of the British Royal Air Force, who was credited with 10 aerial victories in World War I, and also served during World War II.
Power of the Sword (1986) is a novel by Wilbur Smith set before and during World War II.
Ran Ronen was an Israeli Air Force (IAF) brigadier general and fighter ace credited with seven kills. He commanded various fighter squadrons, the IAF flight academy, and Tel Nof Airbase, retiring from the IAF with the rank of brigadier general. One of his pilots later described him as "the greatest squadron commander ever".
Walter P. Manning was an American fighter pilot of the primarily African American Tuskegee Airmen. He flew 50 missions, and was awarded the Air Medal for heroism six times. After being shot down in 1945, he was captured in Austria and subsequently lynched by a mob. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 along with all other Tuskegee Airmen. Manning is the only known black man to have been lynched in Austria during World War II.
David Ellsworth Harris is the first African American commercial airline pilot and first to achieve the rank of Pilot Captain for a major U.S. commercial airline.
The Ghost of Kyiv is the nickname given to a mythical MiG-29 Fulcrum flying ace credited with shooting down six Russian planes over Kyiv during the Kyiv offensive on 24 February 2022. Various reports, including the Security Service of Ukraine, made similar claims. The Ghost of Kyiv has been credited as a morale booster for Ukrainians and as a narrative for Ukraine's success during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Two months after the spread, the Ukrainian Air Force acknowledged that he was a myth, and warned people not to "neglect the basic rules of information hygiene" and to "check the sources of information, before spreading it".