Stranger to the Ground

INTRODUCTION

Stranger to the Ground, above all else, is an insight into the character of a man whose great compulsion is to measure himself against storm and night and fear.

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, probing outward, but even more significantly, inward.

To be written, this book had first to be flown! Whoever reads it will find himself locked in a cockpit with Dick Bach, not for a single flight but for a thousand preceding hours in which professional skills were polished to combat competency, and a philosophy of life was matured.

It is rarely realized—and this may be as appropriate a place as any to point it out—that in the achievement of flight men have perhaps had to call more deeply on resources of heart and mind than in any previous reach of experience.

There is nothing in man’s physical nature which prepares him for flight. Countless generations have rooted human instincts in earth-bound habits.

Everything pertaining to flight has had to be invented—the aircraft; the instruments; the engines; the guidance systems; the communications; the airports—everything. And beyond this, men have had to meld myriad scientific discoveries into workable compromises, lending themselves in the process to unprecedented experiments.

As I contemplate all this after a lifetime of intimate association with it, I marvel at the depth of man’s spiritual and intellectual resources more than at the altitudes and speeds of his flight.

Our modern triumph in reaching toward the stars is as much an extension of the human spirit as it is a breakthrough in science. Science is the servant. Spirit is the master.

This is the message of Stranger to the Ground, gleaming through the love of a pilot for his plane, the dedication of an officer to his country, the determination of a young man to pay his debt to freedom in combat with storm and night and fear.

GILL ROBB WILSON