gandt.com Information

These have been the dual passions of Bob Gandt's life. He published his first story at age sixteen - the same year he first soloed an airplane. Since then he has logged something over 25,000 hours, written sixteen books and published countless articles. Gandt's flying career has been as eclectic as the subjects of his books. He has been a Navy fighter/attack pilot, weapons test pilot, flight instructor, air show performer, and airline captain. At age 20 he was at the time the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy. As a carrier-based attack pilot, he logged over 300 carrier landings and nearly 2,000 hours in the A-4 Skyhawk. In his 1997 deja vu work, Bogeys and Bandits (Viking Penguin), he joins a Navy F/A-18 training squadron at the same base where he had trained years before. In 1965 he began his career as a pilot for Pan American World Airways. For the next 26 years he flew around the globe, domiciled in places like New York, San Francisco, Berlin, and Hong Kong. His 1995 book, Skygods (Wm. Morrow & Co.), recounts the meteoric descent and crash of the once-great Pan Am. In 1985 Bob and his partners, Harry Shepard and Carl Pascarell, formed the Redhawk Aerobatic Team. Flying their Siai-Marchetti fighter-trainers (rescued from a military boneyard in the Congo), they performed their formation aerobatic routine for over three million air show spectators. Bob Gandt's first book, Season of Storms, grew from his acclaimed series in the Far Eastern newspaper, South China Morning Post, about the WWII battle for Hong Kong. Bob's long association with Pan Am and its romantic history inspired the 1991 book,China Clipper (Naval Institute Press), which relives the mystique of the great commercial flying boats. His fascination with warbirds and the high-adrenalin world of unlimited air racing provides the background for Fly Low, Fly Fast (Viking Penguin), the inside account of the 1998 battle for the unlimited air racing championship at Reno, Nevada. Bob's first novel, With Hostile Intent, was released by Penguin Putnam in ...