The Great Air Race: Glory, Tragedy, and the Dawn of American Aviation

Wonderfully-written book about the early days of American aviation. I read this book after a recommendation from a friend, without having particular interest in aviation. I found it to be a fun and gripping read. The author makes early pioneers of the aviation industry come to life and tells an exciting story of the 1919 air race. 10/10 would recommend to people who enjoy history and non-fiction.

Little known aviation history. Incredibly researched with portraits of pilots and other players. Love that author piloted the race route in a single prop plane.Highly recommend to aviation and history buffs,

If you like 20th century history or aviation, you'll love this book. It's a gripping recount of a forgotten part of American history. I hope someone makes this into a movie, it'd be great.

Amazing historical details of the stories of many pilots. Entertaining. Good airplane photos and local histories. It's a good read,

Lancaster tries to turn the 1919 Army Air Service's Transcontinental Reliability Test into "The Great Air Race", which it definitely was not except perhaps in the mind of the journalists covering it. While it did display some superficial aspects of a race, it was intended to be field test for (mostly) American military aircraft and pilots, which would demonstrate their strengths as well as their shortcomings. No civilians participated except for a lone mechanic. The author castigates Gen. Billy Mitchell, who helped organize the Transcontinental Reliability Test, noting that he was obsessed with promoting aviation to the point of recklessness. The book’s narrative becomes somewhat disjointed when Lancaster tries to follow the flights of several of the more notable fliers, while mentioning others just briefly or not at all. He also fails to show the full scope of the Transcontinental Reliability Test, since he names only 32 of the 64 participants.This book owes much to a 1960 MA thesis by Ray L. Bowers, "The Transcontinental Reliability Test: American Aviation After World War I." Bowers wrote two articles based on his thesis which were published in The Air Power Historian in 1960. While Lancaster alludes to this work, he fails to acknowledge the extent of his debt to it. He does make good use of Army Air Service records for the Transcontinental Reliability Test in the National Archives, and photographs from the National Archives, Library of Congress, and the Rochester Museum and Science Center. There are footnotes but no bibliography.While Lancaster respects the bravery of the pilots participating in the Transcontinental Reliability Test , he is unable to decide if its benefits were worth the cost. In his view it had little lasting impact and is "now all but forgotten." In reality, the Transcontinental Reliability Test led to improved training, equipment, and navigation aids for American aviation, as well as drawing attention to the woeful status of U.S. Army aviation after WW I.

Enjoyable book that held my interest and I highly recommend it to people fascinated by early aviation history.The book deserves 5 Stars but I knocked one star off because the binding on this new book broke in many places and pages are falling out.

Hmm. Let’s see. Sixty-three biplanes competing in a cross-country air race in 1919. The course takes the competitors over the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. It’s October so, of course, they are dealing with rain, snow, ice, and fog. The planes don’t have brakes, gas gauges, or radios. Their wooden propellors splinter in rainstorms. There’s no real-time weather data. Pilots use rudimentary two-dimensional maps and ground-based visual reference points to navigate. They don't have parachutes. And they are flying in and out of hastily improvised landing sites. What could go wrong? I mean other than the fifty-four planes that crashed and the 9 men who died.Still, it’s a great story and John Lancaster has written a compelling and highly readable account of the pilots at the dawn of the aviation age. Clearly, these guys were wired a little differently. Were they visionaries and pioneers? Or reckless, irresponsible, and crazy thrill seekers? You could make a case for either, I suppose, but my guess is the answer is probably “a bit of all of the above.”The other major players in this story are the two men who were the driving forces behind the race itself: Billy Mitchell, Brigadier General in the Army Air Service, and Otto Praeger, Second Assistant United States Postmaster General. Both felt the race would drive public and Congressional support for investing in aviation. Mitchell was motivated by the military applications of air power while Prager wanted to establish air mail service. These guys don’t fare so well in the story. Each comes across as self-important, self-promoting, and ruthless – more than happy to write checks, so to speak, which others ended up cashing, sometimes paying for the ambitions of Mitchell and Praeger with their lives. In my view, that is the real tragedy of this story. It appears little was learned or accomplished by the race itself that could not have been achieved without the human toll of the lives lost.An important book and a good read.

To call this race between SF and NY the great air race of 1919 simply emphasizes the egocentricity of Americans. In 1919 the GREAT air race was really the one from England to Australia. Compared to that one, the SF to NY race was a puddle jump.