Cloud travel is well and good when you have mastered the landings. I never have. I must live, not dream about living.

What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery. The flight of the buzzard and similar sailors is a convincing demonstration of the value of skill and the partial needlessness of motors.
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. This I conceive to be fortunate, for man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery...

Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? — startling, unexpected, unknown?

Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot’s seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting. But in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest and from then on the pilot had been silent, staring out the front, and the drone of the engine had been all that was left. The drone and the sea of green trees that lay before the plane’s nose and flowed to the horizon, spread with lakes, swamps, and wandering streams and rivers.

Nothing says inspiration like a plane flying over your head while you're playing.

And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere.

Remember this – we didn’t have radios, we didn’t have this, we didn’t have that, we didn’t have a lot of things. So, this going to the plaza and just listening...(to people) speak to a crowd

it almost seems to me that we lived in a kind of wilderness when I tell you what didn't exist. There were no radios, no TV, no movies, very little of advertising as we know it today, there were no plastics, no artificial fabrics, no airplanes.

I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower. The TV was obviously on. I used to fly myself and I said, "There's one terrible pilot."

One hundred years of air power led to the development of air platforms, air combatants and air command and control structures that are very difficult to integrate successfully into the ground battlefield at the lower tactical levels.

It was so surreal because you're not shooting at cardboard; you're not shooting at tires and wood, Armour said. There were people on the ground, trying to take us out of the sky to kill us. It was a huge reality check. All the training came into laser-sharp focus.

We were given nothing but unarmed sports planes with which to fight, while Russian pilots were assigned regular American army planes.

Airborne combat in Sicily and Italy had been invaluable in preparation for the Normandy operation. We learned what could be done by parachute troops and troop carrier pilots, but, more important, we learned what they could not do. The airborne troops had more than held their own against German infantry, but meeting German armor in good tank country could be disastrous. The airborne-troop carrier team had to be thoroughly trained and honed to a keen edge. Small mistakes could lead to disaster, with airborne troops badly scattered and heavy troop carrier losses. On the other hand, with hard work and thorough training, the team could be made into an extremely effective battle force, a force that could tip the scales to victory in any future combat operation. And although we had made a number of mistakes and learned costly lessons in Sicily, that had been a comparatively small operation. For OVERLORD we would be three airborne divisions, more than 1,300 transports, and 3,300 gliders. It was to be a tremendous undertaking.

The Stearman demands a lot—both in upkeep and in regular flight. There’s no autopilot, no insulation from the elements, nothing between you and the air but your own ability.