| Born | December 15, 1939 Springfield, Missouri |
|---|---|
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service/ | United States Navy |
| Alma mater | Charter Oak State College |
Robert Gandt (born December 15, 1939) is an American author and aviator.
Gandt has written and published more than a dozen books on military and aviation history and military adventure fiction.
Gandt was born in Springfield, Missouri, and raised in nearby Coffeyville, Kansas. At age twenty he was the youngest aviator and officer then on active duty in the U. S. Navy. After accumulating over 300 carrier landings and nearly 2000 hours in the A-4 Skyhawk, [1] he joined Pan American World Airways as an airline pilot in 1965. With the sale of Pan Am's Atlantic routes in 1991, he transferred to Delta Air Lines as a captain and check airman. In 1985, Gandt was a founder and team member of the Redhawk Formation Aerobatic Team, flying SIAI-Marchetti SF.260 military trainers in precision formation aerobatic routines. Gandt's writing career began in the mid-1970s when he was based in Hong Kong. Season of Storms: The Siege of Hong Kong 1941, was drawn from the newspaper series he produced for the South China Morning Post. [2] His subsequent works were derived from his own experience and connections to military and aviation figures. Gandt's naval aviation chronicle Bogeys and Bandits (Viking, 1997) was adapted for the CBS series Pensacola: Wings of Gold, for which Gandt worked as a writer and technical consultant. [3] The first of his novels, With Hostile Intent, was published by Penguin Group in 2001. [4] With co-author Bill White and with a foreword by Senator John McCain, Gandt wrote Intrepid: The Epic Story of America's Most Legendary Warship (Random House, 2009), which won the Admiral Farragut Book Award. [5] His multi-viewpoint account of the World War II battle for Okinawa, The Twilight Warriors (Random house, 2010) was the winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature. [6] Gandt’s best-selling book Angels in the Sky (W.W. Norton, 2017) recounts the saga of the volunteer airmen who fought in Israel’s 1948 war of independence. He is a graduate of Charter Oak State College with a B.A in History. He is a member and contributor to The Tailhook Association, The Authors Guild, Mensa International, the Experimental Aircraft Association, Quiet Birdmen and the Naval Order of the United States. Gandt holds a black belt in Shaolin Kempo Karate.
The Tenerife airport disaster occurred on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747 passenger jets collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife. The collision occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run during dense fog while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway. The impact and resulting fire killed all on board KLM Flight 4805 and most of the occupants of Pan Am Flight 1736, with only 61 survivors in the front section of the aircraft. With a total of 583 fatalities, the disaster is the deadliest accident in aviation history.
David Glasgow Farragut was a flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy. He is remembered for his order at the Battle of Mobile Bay, usually paraphrased as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" in U.S. Navy tradition.
Juan Terry Trippe was an American commercial aviation pioneer, entrepreneur and the founder of Pan American World Airways, one of the iconic airlines of the 20th century. He was involved in the introduction of the Sikorsky S-42, which opened trans-Pacific airline travel, the Boeing 307 Stratoliner which introduced cabin pressurization to airline operations, the Boeing 707 which started a new era in low cost jet transportation, and the Boeing 747 jumbo jets. Trippe's signing of the 747 contract coincided with the 50th anniversary of Boeing. He also founded InterContinental Hotels & Resorts.
The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II is a 15-volume account of the United States Navy in World War II, written by Samuel Eliot Morison and published by Little, Brown and Company between 1947 and 1962.
China Clipper (NC14716) was the first of three Martin M-130 four-engine flying boats built for Pan American Airways and was used to inaugurate the first commercial transpacific airmail service from San Francisco to Manila on November 22, 1935. Built at a cost of $417,000 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, it was delivered to Pan Am on October 9, 1935. It was one of the largest airplanes of its time.
The Douglas F4D Skyray is an American carrier-based fighter/interceptor designed and produced by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was the last fighter produced by the Douglas Aircraft Company prior to its merger with McDonnell Aircraft to become McDonnell Douglas.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1945:
Stanley Abram Karnow was an American journalist and historian. He is best known for his writings on East Asia and the Vietnam War.
A naval aviator is a commissioned officer or warrant officer qualified as a crewed aircraft pilot in the United States Navy or United States Marine Corps. United States Coast Guard crewed aircraft pilots are officially designated as "Coast Guard aviators", although they complete the same undergraduate flight training as Navy and Marine Corps crewed aircraft pilots, and are awarded the same aviation breast insignia.
Todd Boyd, aka "Notorious Ph.D.", is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race & Popular Culture and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Boyd is a media commentator, author, producer, consultant and scholar. He is considered an expert on American popular culture and is known for his pioneering work on cinema, media, hip hop culture, fashion, art and sports. Boyd received his PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa in 1991 and began his professorial career at USC in the fall of 1992.
National Airlines was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1934 to 1980, when it merged with Pan Am. For most of its existence the company was headquartered at Miami International Airport, Florida. At its height, National Airlines had a network of "Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast" flights, linking Florida and Gulf Coast destinations such as New Orleans and Houston with cities along the East Coast as far north as Boston as well as with large cities on the West Coast including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. From 1970 to 1978, National, Braniff International Airways, Pan American World Airways and Trans World Airlines (TWA) were the only U.S. airlines permitted to operate scheduled passenger flights to Europe.
Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon is an American computer scientist, professor, author, and champion aerobatic pilot who is best known as the co-inventor of the treap data structure, a type of binary search tree that orders nodes by adding a priority as well as a key to each node. She is also known for her work in data-intensive science and visual analytics of very large data sets, for which she received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
Robert L. "Bob" Rasmussen, is a noted military artist; a retired Captain of the United States Navy; a former career naval aviator, primarily in the F-8 Crusader; a former member of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, and former Director of the National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola, Florida.
Wings of the Navy is a 1939 American drama film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring George Brent, Olivia de Havilland and John Payne. Like many of the Warner Bros. features in the pre-World War II era, it was intended to serve as propaganda for the U.S. military and received heavy support from the U.S. Navy, which also considered the film as a recruiting tool.
Leslie Glass is an American author, playwright, journalist, philanthropist, and filmmaker. Along with her daughter, she founded Reach Out Recovery, a United States-based nonprofit addiction recovery organization.
The Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature is for literature about the United States Navy. The award was planned in 1982 and first issued the next year by the New York Commandery of the Naval Order of the United States, who administers and chooses the winner which is a significant book on naval history from the prior year.
Charles Edward Acker is an American businessman who was CEO of Braniff Airways, Air Florida, and Pan American World Airways. He is a principal at Intrepid Equity Group.
Airline pilot uniforms were introduced in the early 1930s by Pan American World Airways at the beginning of the airline's Clipper era. At present, mainstream airline uniforms are somewhat standardized by the industry and widely used by airlines from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa, from small regional operators to large international companies.
Bruce Gamble is an American historian, an author, and United States Military veteran. As a historian, Gamble specializes in World War II in the Pacific, and has written seven books on this particular topic.
Eyer L. "Slonnie" Sloniger was the first chief pilot and holder of pilot seniority #1 at American Airlines. He later became chief pilot and director of flight operations at Matson Airlines.
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