Bill Lancaster: The Final Verdict

Bill Lancaster: The Final Verdict
Author: Ralph Barker
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-11-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1473855845

Captain William Lancaster was the subject of public attention and controversy during his life as a record-breaking flyer, because of his love affair with Jessie Chubbie Miller (dubbed the Australian Aviatrix) and as the defendant in one of the most sensational murder trials of the twentieth century. His disappearance, which occurred during an attempt to break the London to Cape Town record in 1933, less than a year after his acquittal, led to speculation that his ill-prepared last flight had been driven by desperation, perhaps even guilt.Twenty nine years later, a French military patrol in the Sahara stumbled across the wreck of Bills plane and his body, along with his perfectly preserved log book. For eight days he had calmly recorded his thoughts, looking back over his life as he stoically faced death. In Bill Lancaster: the Final Verdict, we are presented with the original story in full (first published in 1969 as Verdict on a Lost Flyer), complete with an additional postscript written by the late author's daughter. Meticulously researched by Ralph Barker and written with the full cooperation of Chubbie Miller and the Lancaster family, it includes a complete transcript and photographs of the moving account contained within Lancaster's final diary a precious record that has since gone missing.

The Lost Pilots

The Lost Pilots
Author: Corey Mead
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250109256

Corey Mead's The Lost Pilots is the saga of two star crossed pilots who soar to the greatest heights of fame, tailspin into scandal and crime, and go the ultimate lengths for a chance at redemption... During the height of the roaring twenties, Jessie Miller longs for adventure. Fleeing a passionless marriage in the backwaters of Australia, twenty-three-year-old Jessie arrives in London and promptly falls in with the Bright Young Things, those gin-soaked boho-chic intellectuals draped in suits, flapper dresses, and pearls. At a party Jessie meets Captain William Lancaster, married himself and fresh from the Royal Air Force, with a scheme in his head to become as famous as Charles Lindbergh, who has just crossed the Atlantic. Lancaster will do Lindy one better: fly from London to Melbourne, and in Jessie Miller he’s found the perfect co-pilot. Within months the two embark on a half-year journey across the globe, hopping from one colonial outpost to the next. But like world records, marriage vows can be broken, and upon their landing in Melbourne Jessie and William are not only international celebrities, but also deeply inlove. Yet the crash of 1929 catches up to even the fastest aviator, and the couple finds themselves in dire straits at their rented house on the outskirts of Miami – the bright glare of the limelight fading quickly.To make ends meet Jessie agrees to write a memoir, and picks the dashing Haden Clarke to be her ghostwriter. It’s not long before this toxic mix of bootleg booze and a handsome interloper leads to a shocking crime, a trial that rivets and scandalizes the world, and a reckless act of abandon to win back former glory. The Lost Pilots is an extraordinary true story, brought to vivid life by Corey Mead. Based on years of research, and full of adventure, forbidden passion, crime, scandal and tragedy, it is a masterwork of narrative nonfiction that firmly restores one of aviation’s leading female pioneers to her rightful place in history.

The Flying Adventures of Jessie Keith "Chubbie" Miller

The Flying Adventures of Jessie Keith
Author: Chrystopher J. Spicer
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-02-06
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1476627320

Pioneer aviatrix Jessie "Chubbie" Miller made a significant contribution to aviation history. The first woman to fly from England to her native Australia (as co-pilot with her close friend Captain Bill Lancaster), she was also the first woman to fly more than 8000 miles, to cross the equator in the air and to traverse the Australian continent north to south. Moving to America, Miller was a popular member of a group of female aviators that included Amelia Earhart, Bobby Trout, Pancho Barnes and Louise Thaden. As a competitor in international air races and a charter member of the first organization for women flyers, the Ninety-Nines, she quickly became famous. Her career was interrupted by her involvement in Lancaster's sensational Miami trial for the murder of her lover, Haden Clarke, and by Lancaster's disappearance a few years later while flying across the Sahara desert.

The Examiner

The Examiner
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 848
Release: 1841
Genre: English literature
ISBN:

Open Cockpit over Africa

Open Cockpit over Africa
Author: Victor Smith
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2001-06-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1475920946

This intimate account of what it was like to fly open-cockpit, single engined aircraft over the length and breadth of primitive Africa in the early 1930s has been written by one of the pioneers of the African air-routes, Victor Smith. Smith is in fact the last of that intrepid breed of pilots who risked their lives, and their machines, in a determined bid to open up the Darkest Continent and to reduce traveling times between Africa and Europe.