Jack Jefford saw his first plane in 1916 at the age of six and he was hooked. By 1937 he was flying planes in Nome, Alaska and in three short years he became the Chief Pilot of the FAA. He daily faced the dangers of Alaska’s skies, helped settle a frontier, and managed to survive long enough to share a lifetime of stories—delivering mail by plane, hunting coyotes, counting reindeer, transporting prisoners and congressmen, and rescuing the lost and injured, often at great risk to himself.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Carmen Jefford Fisher Page 11
Part 1: Riding the Grub Line Pages 15 - 58
Becoming a Pilot, The Voice from the Sky,
Riding the Grub Line, Barnstorming,
Coyote Slayer, Crossroads, Broken Bow,
Flying the Weather, Hastings, Kelly One & Kelly Two,
Part 2: Foul-Weather Flyer Pages 59 - 96
Nome, Working the Mines, Henry Gumm Goes South,
and Brother Hansen Returns Home, To Cordova in the Vega,
Foul-Weather Flyer, The Crackups
Part 3: There's More to the Job than Flying Pages 97 - 152
The Girls and the Godfather, Gold Fever,
The Reindeer Study, Progress in the Cockpit,
Crash on the Darby Mountains, Groping up the
Yukon, Guiding the Columbia, Evacuation of Jack Devine,
Stinson-A Trimotor, The Marshall and Miss Alaska,
Missing Pilots, The Reindeer Acquisition.
Part 4: Patrol Pilot Pages 153 - 196
Signed on with the CAA, General Buckner,
DLAND at West Ruby, Injured Man Aboard,
War, The Queen Mary, Horning's Ordeal,
The Boeing 247, A Tale of Two Cessnas,
Part 5: King Chris Pages 197 - 235
King Chris, Wartime Flight to Attu,
A Night at North Shore Umnak, The Waipio Inveiglement,
Shungnak Snafu, Torture Flight to Seattle, Summer
Landing, CAA Christmas, They Come and They Go,
Part 6: Gold Medalist Pages 236 - 285
Hinchinbrook Beach Landing, Tragedy at
Port Heiden, Fuel Oil Blues, The Rescue
of Cliff Uzzell, Juneau Backfire, The Black Cat's
Path, Taylor Weather, Fiddling Around in Nome,
Gold Medalist
Part 7: Into the Jet Age Pages 286 - 314
N-123, Trouble in the C-123, The Flying X-Rays,
Saberliner Jet School, McKinley Rescue,
Back to Nome on the Iditarod
Index Pages 315 - 319
Epitaph: Jack Jefford 1910 - 1979 Page 320
About the Author :
Mark Fisher is the founder of the Spring Integration project. Currently at VMware, he continues to lead the development of Spring Integration while exploring the intersection of big data and messaging. He has been a committer on a number of Spring projects, including the Spring Framework itself and Spring AMQP, which he cofounded. Mark speaks regularly at conferences and user groups about messaging, data, integration, and cloud computing.
Review :
“…a superb portrait of flying when pilots were as tough as their professional environment.” –Ernest K. Gann
“…some of the most fascinating stories ever to come out of Alaska….gripping tales of early bush flying…the colorful story of one of the great early pilots” –Lowell Thomas, Jr.
"In his classic memoir, "Winging It!," Jefford chronicles decades spent flying tens of thousands of hours in one of the most straightforward histories of Alaska aviation. . . In recently rereading "Winging It!" I was struck by how quietly significant Jefford's career was. He bridged the gap from the days of open cockpits and strapping dead bodies onto wings to the era of big powerful piston-engined aircraft roaring onto paved and lighted modern airfields. His memoir does more than bring readers back to an earlier time, it reveals how those times changed and gives readers a look into a unique aviation career that was transformative in every sense of the word." —Colleen Mondor, Alaska Dispatch News
