Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers: Wingsuits and the Pioneers Who Flew in Them, Fell in Them, and Perfected Them

By Michael Abrams

Book Overview

The Wright Brothers were wimps.

Or so you might think after reading this account of their unsung but even more daring rivals--the men and women who strapped wings to their backs and took to the sky. If only for a few seconds.

People have been dying to fly, quite literally, since the dawn of history. They've made wings of feather and bone, leather and wood, canvas and taffeta, and thrown themselves off the highest places they could find. Theirs is the world's first and still most dangerous extreme sport, and its full history has never been told.

Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers is a thrilling, hilarious, and often touching chronicle of these obsessive inventors and eccentric daredevils. It traces the story of winged flight from its doomed early pioneers to their glorious high-tech descendants, who've at last conquered gravity (sometimes, anyway). Michael Abrams gives us a brilliant bird's-eye view of what it's like to fly with wings. And then, inevitably, to fall.

In the Immortal Words of Great Birdmen...

"Someday I think that everyone will have wings and be able to soar from the housetops. But there must be a lot more experimenting before that can happen." --Clem Sohn, the world's first batman, who plummeted to his death at the Paris Air Show in 1937

"The trouble was that he went only halfway up the radio tower. If he had gone clear to the top it would have been different." --Amadeo Catao Lopes in 1946, explaining the broken legs of the man who tried his wings

"One day, a jump will be the last. The jump of death. But that idea does not hold me back." --Rudolf Richard Boehlen, who died of jump-related injuries in 1953

"It turned out that almost everyone from the thirties and forties had died. That just made me want to do it more." --Garth Taggart, stunt jumper for The Gypsy Moths, filmed in 1968

"You have to be the first one. The second one is the first loser." --Felix Baumgartner, who in 2003 became the first birdman to cross the English Channel

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400054923
• ISBN13: 9781400054923
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great read, but needs some fact-checking

The author has produced a book that's fascinating to read and which covers a special aspect of skydiving, i.e. the old "Birdmen" phenomena. I really enjoyed some of the stories told here. Unfortunately I think that much of the information included in this book must be based on personal experiences of those birdmen via interviews and self-serving biographies. For instance Valentin, the French jumper, described himself as joining the French Army and becoming a paratrooper in Algeria. Then came the war and the fall of Metropolitan France. He joined some of his buddies and they took a boat to England to enlist in the Free French. They were then dropped in Britanny in 1939 "with jeeps" where they attempted to fight the Germans. But wait... France fell in 1940. Plus, no jeeps could have been dropped into Europe during WWII... the technique for such heavy drops was not perfected until after the war. Vehicles and heavy equipment were sent in via gliders. It's a little thing but it detracts from the whole.

A unique survey of exotic aircraft in general and wing suits in particular

BIRDMEN, BATMEN AND SKYFLYERS: WINGSUITS AND THE PIONEERS WHO FLEW IN THEM, FELL IN THEM, AND PERFECTED THEM is a unique survey of exotic aircraft in general and wing suits in particular: those who wear often hand-made creations which defy the use of wings. Here are 'birdmen' who have attempted flight with wings of feathers, iron, leather and more. While their stories are often part of general aviation titles, it's rare to have an entire book devoted to their history, written by one who himself has jumped out of planes with wings. This alternative history of human flight is one which has long needed feature - and which will reach both aviation fans and general-interest audiences alike. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch