INTO THE BLUE
Great Mysteries of Aviation by Alexander McKee
Aviation history abounds in mysteries.
From the early days of the aeroplane and the airship, and even from the heyday of ballooning, men and women have soared off into the sky, to disappear without trace or to meet with disaster for no logical reason. Some have returned to haunt the scene of their death; others have bequeathed nothing but a story of heroism and daring. Insoluble or not, the mystery surrounding their fate remains perennially intriguing, a source of speculation many decades later.
Alexander McKee, well known as a historian and researcher, is himself a former pilot who was captivated in his early teens by the peculiar magic of flying. He is therefore well qualified to re-examine the aviation mysteries described in this book, conveying as he does the thrill of flight and the sense of risk that imbued the early fliers and brought so many to sudden disaster.
The author draws largely on stories from the present century, but he also indulges in speculation about the legend of Daedalos and Icaros, wondering if it could have been an early attempt at hang-gliding, and he looks at the disappearance of the balloonist Salomon August Andree, with his entire crew, on a flight over the Arctic in 1897. The aces of the First World War figure promi-nently, for McKee believes that several of them met their deaths under strange circumstances. There are accounts of the disappearances of record-breakers like Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart, and, coming to the Second World War, the sinister disaster that killed Joseph Ken-nedy, Jr., eldest of the famous brothers, over the fields of East Anglia in 1944.
 
What was the horrific and unseen missile that descended on Portsmouth in 1940, causing widespread devastation, and what is the truth about the death of General Sikorski?
Alexander McKee does not merely retell the stories of these and other mysteries of the air. He has researched extensively, enabling him to suggest solutions that new evidence has brought to light, or that his own flying experience would lead him to suspect. But whether or not these mysteries can be solved, Into The Blue makes compelling reading for all who enjoy tales of adventure, heroism and the unexplained. It will particularly enthrall those who, like the author, have felt something of the awe and exhilaration of flight.
ALEXANDER McKEE began writing as a teenager and was selling aviation articles to flying magazines by the time he was eighteen. During the war he wrote for a succession of army newspapers and later became a writer/ producer and broadcaster for the British Forces Network. Since 1956 he has been researching and writing books on all branches of naval, military and aviation history. He instigated the excavation of the Tudor ship Mary Rose in the sea bed off Portsmouth, which he describes in King Henry VIII's Mary Rose. In all he has written seventeen books, his most recent successes being The Queen's Corsair and Ice Crash.
jacket illustration by ANDREW SIER
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DES JORDAN ASSOCIATES