"I have learned that airplane pilots speak the same language and understand the same unspoken words, whatever their country. They face the same headwinds and the same storms.... I am one man.
Tonight, perhaps, I am Man, alive and looking out over my planet toward my galaxy, crystallizing in myself, for a span of seconds, the centuries of looking out from this little earth that Man has done.
Tonight I, who love my airplane with all its moods and hardships and joys, am looking out upon the stars.
STRANGER TO THE GROUND
Filled with the suspense of a terrifying night flight across Europe, Stranger to the Ground is totally authentic in its impact and immediacy. In Gill RobbWilson's words, "To be written, this book had first to be flown! On the surface it is the tale of a memorable mission of a young fighter pilot utilizing his skills in a lonely duel with death. Yet between the lines emerges the portrait of the airman as a breed, proving outward, but even more significantly, inward."
Based on his experience with the Air National Guard in Europe, Stranger to the Ground, Richard Bach's first book, has become an acclaimed classic. It is the story of a night mission from England to southern France-a flight in an F-84, a single-engine jet Thunderstreak, that takes him through a harrowing and deadly storm and carries him close to violent death. And as the suspense and excitement pervading the mission and story peak, the book becomes a vivid portrait of all men and women who take to the skies-and the wonderment and magnificence they find there.Like his other books on flying and flight, Bach's Stranger to the Ground is rich in the detail that captivates and haunts its readers. The eeriness of the night sky, the sound of disembodied radio voices and beacons, the unbidden memories of lost friends, the sight of the secret spinning furnace of the Thunder-streak at night, and the almost tangible presence in the air of the old fighters, the Messerschmitts and Spitfires, the Fokkers and Sopwiths... all these make Richard Bach's story "a classic of the men who sail the upper regions of the earth." —New York TimesPilot and author Richard Bach has also written Biplane, Nothing by Chance, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Gift of Wings, Illusions, There's No Such Place as Far Away, and A Bridge Across Forever.Jacket design by Anthony Russo, The Artworks Cover Illustration by Brian Knight