Geoffrey de Havilland was one of the world's true pioneers of powered flight, a man as important in British aviation as the Wright brothers were in America. Without experience, plans to instructions, he built his own first flying machine and the engine to power it nearly 90 years ago, and by painstaking trial and error taught himself to fly. From these beginnings, supposed by a loyal team hut with only a few hundred pounds capital, he was responsible for the first and many of the finest planes of the First World War, created the company that bore his name and built such widely different and momentous machines as the light Moths, the Rapids, the Mosquito fighter-bomber and the first jet airliner, the Comet. Before beginning his first hazardous experiments in flying, de Havilland spared the time to search his remote field in Hampshire for fear of destroying any larks' nests. This deep concern for natural history had grown with his enthusiasm for mechanical engineering through a troubled and colourful childhood and remained with him all his life, providing a contrast with the creative qualities of the true engineer that made him famous.
Less surprising, perhaps, but as faithfully reflected in his autobiography, were the respect and wonder he felt for the new medium of travel he was helping to open up.
Few people before him had been shove the clouds, and none had flown so high before. `As I broke clear of the damp darkness that had enveloped me during my ascent', he recounts this moment, he suddenly found myself in a hounding world of hollowing whiteness that stretched in every direction, magnificent and vast and thrilling~ De Havilland tested all his early planes himself, becoming a highly skilled pilot, and in later years he made a practice of going for long flights about Europe and Africa in light machines. But this book is concerned with much more than the story of de Havilland's planes and his own company. The people he knew and on whom is often shed a new and controversial light, span the whole history of flying, from Lindemann, Busk, Cody and Lucas in the earliest days, Amy Johnson, Nevil Shuts Norway, Jim Mollison and Alan Cobham, down to de Havilland's chief test pilots of later years, his own son Geoffrey, the late John Derry and John Cunningham. His autobiography contrives to tell the story of British aviation through these people and the events with which he was associated, while revealing his own unusually powerful, compassionate and diversified personality. Sky Fever is a fascinating and unique success
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