“You could be forgiven for taking Bristow’s story as the invention of an action thriller writer . . . One of the best flying books you’ll ever read.” —Pilot Magazine Alan Bristow was a truly remarkable man. As a merchant navy officer cadet during the war, he survived two sinkings, played a part in the evacuation of Rangoon and was credited with shooting down two Stukas in North Africa. He joined the Fleet Air Arm and trained as one of the first British helicopter pilots, becoming the first man to land a helicopter on a battleship and Westland’s first helicopter test pilot. He flew in France, Holland, Algeria, Senegal and elsewhere, narrowly escaping many helicopter crashes before winning the Croix de Guerre evacuating wounded French soldiers in Indochina. For four years he flew for Aristotle Onassis’s pirate whaling fleet in Antarctica before joining Douglas Bader and providing support services to oil drillers in the Persian Gulf. Out of that grew Bristow Helicopters Ltd, the largest helicopter company in the world outside America. Bristow’s circle included the great helicopter pioneers such as Igor Sikorsky and Stan Hiller, test pilots like Harold Penrose and Bill Waterton, Sheiks and Shahs and political leaders, business giants like Lord Cayzer and Freddie Laker, and the author James Clavell, a lifelong friend whose book Whirlwind was a fictionalized account of Bristow’s overnight evacuation of his people and helicopters from revolutionary Iran. Bristow and precipitated the Westland Affair when he made a takeover bid which eventually led to the resignation of Michael Heseltine and Leon Brittain, and almost to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. “Has all the ingredients of a bestselling novel.” —Firetrench

Valérie André is one of the great military aviators of the twentieth century. She was the first woman to fly a helicopter in combat and one of the first three helicopter medevac pilots. Flying more than 150 helicopter rescue missions during the French war in Indochina (including at Dien Bien Phu), and parachuting into the field twice, André was a trailblazer, a pioneer of flying helicopters in combat and an innovator of battlefield medicine, who risked her life to treat the wounded, whether they were French or Vietnamese, whether they were friend, civilian, or foe. Aviation historian Charles Morgan Evans tells her story with verve and pathos. André was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1922. From an early age, she wanted to fly, but as a woman, she faced challenges. While boys could receive government-funded flight lessons, André had to pay for hers by tutoring. During World War II, she left Strasbourg against German prohibitions in order to study medicine in Paris, where she completed her studies under threat of arrest by the Gestapo. Assigned to an army hospital in Saigon in French Indochina in the late 1940s, André trained as a neurosurgeon, performing one hundred procedures per month. When the French medical corps developed mobile surgical units to be air-dropped into military outposts, she quickly volunteered, and then when the service acquired a few primitive helicopters, she volunteered for that, which meant learning to fly helicopters in combat. Flying through bullets and bombs, fatigue, parasitic illness, and mechanical issues with the helicopters— not to mention the French army’s prejudice against a female pilot and surgeon—André nonetheless became a legend in Indochina. The Vietnamese called her “the woman who comes down from the sky” and “Mrs. Ventilator.” On one day in December 1951, she flew her chopper into the teeth of antiaircraft fire to a besieged base, where she performed emergency brain surgeries, then flew the wounded to hospitals in Hanoi, two at a time. After Indochina, she continued to be an innovator in military aviation and medicine as well as an advocate for women’s integration into the French military. In the early 1960s, she flew another 236 missions in Algeria. In 1975, she became the first female general in the French army, and at her retirement, she had flown nearly 500 combat missions, logged 4,000 hours in helicopters, and won the Croix de Guerre five times, the Cross of Military Valor twice, and the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit. André, who just turned ninety-nine, is still alive and lives near Paris, and this book is based on a series of author interviews with her and comprehensive research in other sources.

"Looking back over thirty years of flying for Okanagan, I see the experience has given me an interesting life. I have never really considered flying as work. It is more a way of life, a way of life that nourishes a free spirit, something that not many jobs can give you. I just cannot imagine anything I would... rather have done or any company I would have rather worked for." --Jim Reid, pilot In 1945, following years as an instructor, Carl Agar was honourably discharged from the British and Commonwealth Air Training Plan and moved to Penticton where he began looking for flying opportunities. A first attempt to start a flying club never took off but Agar and his partners Barney Bent and Alf Stringer were determined to get off the ground. They began looking at commercial ventures and in 1947 Okanagan Air Services (OAS) was formed to provide instruction and contract work. After a rough start--while demonstrating fruit spraying, Agar crashed a helicopter into power lines--the company got a break in May 1948 when the Fraser floods swamped the valley and OAS received a mosquito-spraying contract. From there the company flourished, going on to fly the first unaccompanied commercial helicopter ferry flight from Canada to the UK, monitor polar bears in the High Arctic, provide offshore oil rig support during monsoons, and, at the company's high point, operate in over 33 countries with 600 employees and 126 helicopters. Back home, Agar opened the Mountain Flying School in Penticton, which is still in operation today and has trained thousands of civilian and military pilots from all over the world. Vertical Horizons is also the story of the employees who were pivotal to the success of the company. Individuals' experiences range from tragic to humorous and include a UFO sighting in the Arctic, witnessing the Jonestown massacre and a rescue of Vietnamese refugees off the coast of Thailand. Featuring first-hand accounts, extensive research and a multitude of photographs, Vertical Horizons is the first-ever history of the company that pioneered flying high-mountain terrain--making it a must-read for any aviation buff.

Annotation This multi-volume series provides detailed histories of more than 7,000 of the most influential companies worldwide.