My books have covered a long span of aviation history. Sometimes I have wondered if the effort was all worthwhile. But Colonel Charles Lindbergh reassured me in his foreword to Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book Listen! the Wind, published in 1938. He said:

'This book is about a period in aviation which is now gone, but which was probably more interesting than any the future will bring. As time passes, the perfection of machinery tends to insulate man from contact with the elements in which he lives. The "stratosphere" planes of the future will cross the ocean without any sense of the water below. Like a train tunneling through a mountain, they will be aloof from both the problems and the beauty of the earth's surface. Only the vibration of the engines will impress the senses of the traveller with his movement through the air. Wind and heat and moonlight takeoffs will be of no concern to the transatlantic passenger. His only contact with these elements will lie in accounts such as this book contains.'

And, I hope, mine too.

Don McVicar

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