The Lonely Sky

Book excerpt: "the excitement is magnificently conveyed...one reads with breathless attention..." ·New York Times·Orville Prescott "the drama, color and sheer readability of an exciting novel" ·Los Angeles Times·Henry Ladd Smith "one of the year's most fascinating adventure stories" ·TIME Magazine·Current and Choice "the most vivid account on test-piloting ever written." ·D.S. Dodson·Saturday Review Literature "this is one of the finest books on test flying the reviewer has seen." ·New York Times·B.K. Thorne "a philosophical and curiously prophetic book" ·Joseph Henry Jackson·San Francisco Chronicle "Bill Bridgeman and the Skyrocket, the stormiest, happiest, most enthralling love story you are ever apt to read" ·Scott O'Dell This is the powerful and enthralling story of a man who daily enters that lonely region beyond the speed of sound. A narrative of needle-nosed rocket powered ships flying at blistering speeds, it is also the moving testament of a man risking his life to push back the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Like St.-Exupéry, Bridgeman is capable of describing the vastness and beauty of the skies. But as America's foremost experimental test pilot, he is constantly aware of the multitude of technical information which he is called upon to use at any given instant. After the war, Bill Bridgeman left the Navy a restless man. Seeking action, he joined Douglas Aircraft as an engineering test pilot. Soon he was asked to take over the final stages of the Skyrocket testing program. The Skyrocket, a javelin-shaped experimental rocket powered ship, was a challenge to Bridgeman. The story of his day-by-day life with the plane is the substance of THE LONELY SKY. Bill Bridgeman died in an airplane accident in 1968.