Higher, Further, Faster, Baby!

Quick. Name a famous female fictional pilot.

Drawing a blank? Don't feel bad. I could rattle off a half dozen real ones off the top of my head. Amelia Earhart. Bessie Coleman. Jackie Cochran. Patty Wagstaff. Eileen Collins. The White Rose (Lydia Litvyak, who, fair enough, I had to google her name, but still I knew who she was, generally speaking)

But fictional? Until a few months ago, I would have drawn a blank.

Enter Captain Carol "[REDACTED]" Danvers, United States Air Force.

(Yes. Her callsign is a plot point/spoiler. Just go see the movie. I'll wait)


Photo Credit: Marvel Studios 

As a pilot, as an animal lover, as a kid who grew up in the 90's, and as a huge Marvel Cinematic Universe fanboy, my expectations for Captain Marvel were sky-high (pun absolutely intended).  Having seen it over the weekend, I'm pleased to report they were met.

There's a lot to love. Brie Larson was perfectly cast, and she nails the attitude, full of confidence and swagger without coming off as cocky. I loved the buddy-cop chemistry she has with Samuel L. Jackson (who as a much younger Nick Fury was an absolute delight). Phil Coulson is hands-down my favorite MCU character, and it was so awesome getting to see him in his rookie days at SHIELD. Ben Mendelsohn was the surprise MVP of the movie, especially given Marvel's checkered history with compelling antagonists.

And Goose the Cat. Oh man. I kinda knew about the twist, but it was still delightful.

Last but certainly not least, Maria Rambeau and her young daughter Monica. The relationship between the two pilots is the emotional anchor of the movie. And Maria gets to show off some serious stick and rudder skills in a dogfight chase through a canyon very similar to the one in Independence Day.


Photo Credit: Marvel Studios

The movie isn't perfect. It's one of the shortest MCU films, and it sometimes feels like they cut too much out. I'd have loved to see more of Carol and Maria's time in the Air Force. We're shown tiny snippets of it and told more than shown how close the two women are. I would like to have seen that shown more than told. Seen how they met, how they became close and what they supported each other through.

I'd have also liked to have seen more of the Air Force in general. If you saw the trailers, you saw just about every clip of Carol's time flying fighters that appears in the movie. I suppose it's enough to get the narrative point across, but Larson spent a lot of time training with the USAF, including backseat rides in a two-seat F-16D, and I would have liked to see more of that translated on screen. If you're hoping for some Top Gun-level aerial cinematography, you're in for a bit of a disappointment. 

Which is not to say the USAF hasn't tried to capitalize on the marketing for the film, especially since they are hurting for pilots right now:

Overall though, it's a solid entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Carol is a ray of hope going into the bleak beginning of Avengers: Endgame. She's the future of the MCU going forward, and the future is bright. 😎

Nothing But Sky, reviewed

Alright gang, it's time to set the Way Back Machine to the Roaring Twenties, back to the glory days of barnstormers and wing walkers, in Amy Trueblood's debut YA novel, NOTHING BUT SKY.

At a time in history where women had very limited options, eighteen year old Grace Lafferty finds herself in a most unusual place: strapped atop the wing of a rickety wood-and-cloth biplane. The sole survivor of her immediate family due to the Spanish Flu epidemic, she's been raised by her uncle Warren. She's become an integral part of his "Soaring Eagles" flying circus, and the team of pilots and mechanics have become her surrogate family. 

Her immediate goal is to get to the World Aviation Expo in Chicago, to compete on the national stage for a big Hollywood contract, a contract that represents the only real chance of her found family staying together and her getting to stay in the air. 

Standing squarely in her way is Alistair Rowland, the smarmy owner of her chief rivals, The Skyhawks, who constantly schemes to muscle out the Soaring Eagles and use Grace's talents for his own ends. Rowland comes off as a mustache twirling villain, but Trueblood gives him some surprising depth as part of the book's big twist that I won't spoil here. 

Perhaps the greater complication comes in the form of Henry Patton, the handsome, headstrong mechanic who's haunted by the ghosts of the trenches of World War One. Grace and Henry butt heads constantly, even as she starts to feel a growing affection for him. 

This book is a fun read. Grace is a plucky heroine who's easy to root for, even when she screws up, and Henry makes for a good romantic lead. Historical fiction can be tricky, but Trueblood gets the details right, and does a good job of pulling you in to the time period. 

And what a fascinating time period. Powered flight was less than two decades old at the time, and aviation was like the Wild West, with the government just beginning to dip its toes in the idea of regulating it. Barnstorming was a dangerous way to make a living. 

It was a time of great social upheaval to, with the nation reeling from the twin horrors of the Great War and the Spanish flu pandemic. Women were fighting for more rights and independence, race relations were strained, and Prohibition was in full swing. The book does a great job of capturing all this, and giving some lesser-known historical figures their rightful turn in the limelight.

Overall, two thumbs up! You can check out NOTHING BUT SKY here.

-Mike, out.  

"I have told the truth"

Hey all

No discussion of aviation in young adult fiction is complete with mentioning the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room, the book by which all others in the genre are usually compared to, and while this post is largely a repost from my previous blog, I think it's a great place to start. 

Code Name Verity tells the story of Julie Beaufort Stewart and Maddie Broddart, two young women who could hardly be more different, yet quickly become the closest of friends. Both are members of the Royal Air Force’s Women’s Auxiliary, though both eventually find their way to the roles they were meant for: cool, aristocratic Julie, a Scot descended from no less than William Wallace (AKA Braveheart) who can effortlessly be anyone she wants to be, is recruited into the British Special Operations Executive. Maddie, daughter of eastern European Jewish immigrants, is one of the few prewar women pilots in England and is eventually allowed to join the Air Transport Auxiliary, Britain's equivalent to the US WASP program. One fateful night they find themselves on an ill-fated mission to occupied France.


The first half of the book is told through a diary written by Julie as she is interrogated by the Gestapo. Her mission in France was over before it began, bailing out of a burning plane and quickly captured by the enemy, though even by these meager standards she has fared better than Maddie, based on the pictures of the wrecked plane and its remaining occupant her Nazi interrogators show her. The diary is supposedly for the Gestapo captain in charge of her interrogation, but mostly it’s a meandering narrative about how Julie and Maddie met, and how their friendship grew, and perhaps most of all, how Maddie came to fall in love with flying.

The second half of the book comes totally out of left field and it’s an emotional roller-coaster. You’ve written off both of these girls from the very beginning, Maddie in the plane crash and Julie marked for execution, and with D-Day more than six months away you know there’s no cavalry coming. Yet the plot twists come fast and furious and author Elizabeth Wein could give a master class in suckerpunching your readers. You have forgotten that Julie is a spy, and in a spy’s world no one is who they say they are and nothing is what it seems.


This book is a wonderful piece of genuine literature, ad as such has become a modern classic. It is beautifully written (and if you get the audiobook, which I highly recommend, beautifully narrated). I’ve heard it said that even the most articulate American sounds crass by English standards, and this book kind of makes me think whoever said it might be on to something. Though Wein is American by birth, it should come as no surprise that she’s spent much of her life in England, Scotland, and other places with significant British influence.


It should come as even less of a surprise that Wein is a pilot herself. I don’t think any non-pilot could have truly captured the love Maddie has for flight, or how magical, beautiful, exhilarating, and sometimes terrifying it can be.

Several years ago I was manning a recruiting booth for the Coast Guard Auxiliary’s Aviation program at a local Women Can Fly event, and I thought of Maddie as I saw these young girls stream in and out of the building. You could quickly tell who had just been up for a ride, it was written as plain as day on their faces. One girl and her father came up to talk to me, she couldn’t have been more than a freshman in high school, and said she wanted to be a pilot in the Coast Guard when she graduated from college. It is heartening to see how far we have come; yet disheartening to see how long it has taken. Women have been pilots for almost as long as there have been pilots, yet they still make up less than ten percent of the pilot population.

Some people seem to think there is some magical quality one needs to be a pilot, and while they’re wrong about the specifics, they’re not wrong in general. It’s a quality that transcends race, sex, creed, or religion: It’s love. Love of flying.


“But it ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. You know what the first rule of flying is? Well, I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say.”


“I do. But I like to hear you say it”


“Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.”

(-Malcolm Reynolds and River Tam, Serenity)


I’ve flown with men who have flown in places I have only read about in the history books: Guadalcanal; The Chosin Reservoir; Hanoi. I have flown with men who have flown counter-narcotics in Central America in a 4-engine piston plane, where 100 feet above the ground was considered “too high”. I have flown with men who have flown rescue aircraft into superstorms so others may live. Yet probably the best pilot I have ever flown with was a young woman, just a few years older and a few hundred hours more experienced than me. She was one of my instructors at Embry-Riddle, and it was her passion for flying that showed through in every aspect of everything she did. That passion was relentless, and it made her relentless. When she wasn’t flying (6 days a week, weather permitting), she was in the maintenance hanger, soaking up every bit of knowledge about each of the different types of aircraft we flew. She was very demanding, of herself and her students, and that meant sometimes she was a royal pain to fly with and learn from, but I never learned more, or was a better pilot, than when I was flying with her. Yet despite all her professionalism and just generally being a hard-ass, there was no hiding her exuberance that came from flying, like her giddiness when we (flying a light piston twin) received ATC instruction to reduce speed to follow a Citation private jet on approach (“Dude! We just got told to slow down to follow a jet!”)


My point in this rambling mess is that aviation should be the most, not the least, inclusive community in the world. We have all looked up at the sky, at the birds, and wondered what it’s like in their world. Those of us who know have been granted a special privilege, and we should extend a welcome invitation to all who want to join us.


Also, Codename Verity was a very good book and you should go read it.

-Mike, out. 

Radar Contact...

Writing blog, take two!

Welcome to my new blog, where I'll be taking a look at all things aviation-related in young adult fiction and other forms of arts and entertainment. Look for book/movie reviews and recommendations, hopefully some author interviews, and the occasional toot of my own horn. Writing and flying and have been two of my oldest passions, and from a very young age I've found how easily they intertwine.

I have long believed in the power of the arts to inspire us. The things we read, the things we watch, especially in adolescence, can have a huge impact on our lives. When I was young, I read every book I could get my hands on about flying and space travel, dreaming one day I'd slip the surly bonds of earth", as the famous poem by John Magee. Decades later, I'd find myself strapped to an ejection seat, staring up (yes, up) at the ground from 17,000 feet above the Earth, or leaning out the open cabin door of Coast Guard helicopter, or cruising serenely over turquoise Caribbean waters.

Tomorrow's pilots, engineers, astronauts, and other aerospace professionals are today's young adults, and I look forward to helping inspire the next generation!

 -Mike, Out.