Bird Man

Ref: 4949

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sadly, flyingbooks is now closed.

{detailed description}The day of the pioneer is not past. In the twentieth century the wonder-world of the vast expanses under the sea have been opened up by aqua-lung divers, and the other day, in 1954, a man with a pair of wings glided freely like an eagle for more than three miles through the sky. Man's ancient dream of flying-just as he is, without the aid of an engine-has been realized. The blood of Icarus and all his emulators down the ages (the name of the most famous of them, Clem Sohn, the American 'bird-man' killed in 1938, will be remembered) has not spattered the earth in vain. Leo Valentin, whose story this is, has revolutionized the relation of man to the air as thoroughly as Commander Cousteau his relation to the sea.
As a child, Valentin was obsessed with the idea of flying. He became a champion parachutist in the French Air Force, an innovator, and has now reached fame as a Bird Man. During the war, in company with thousands of Allied airborne troops, he was dropped at the head of his 'stick' into occupied Brittany. He managed to survive the war, and the dangers of his peace-time work hold no greater terrors for this prudent but cold-blooded experimenter. He has tried every type of drop and holds the record for delayed-opening drops without respirator. It was a hard school and the adventures he had to undergo before mastering the parachuting art (and, in some degree, creating it, as the name of the now standard 'Valentin position' shows) are hair-raising. In this book, written in a simple, robust, and honest fashion, Leo Valentin relates his exploits and tells how he never lost sight of his original goal: true, independent flight.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Léo Valentin
published by Hutchinson 1955 1st edn. 127pp illustrated 14x22
{condition}yellowed otherwise good inc. d/j.
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