Nanette: Her Pilot's Love Story

by Edwards Park

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874747376
• ISBN13: 9780874747379
• Release Date: July 1989
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A saucy strumpet

For awhile I've had a fascination for the air war over New Guinea during WWII. To help me with this, I was visiting the website PACIFICWRECKS.COM looking for more material to read. In reading thru their listing of books I discovered this book; Nanette: Her Pilot's Love Story by Ewards Park. Nanette tells Edwards Park's story as a young airman in WWII and his time spent in the South West Pacific flying Bell P-39 Airacobra. In telling his tale, Mr. Park focus's on his aircraft and it's temperament rather than on specific battles. We get to read about Mr. Park's training in the US (interestingly, he ground looped three times and was still made a fighter pilot), his trip to Australia, preparation for combat, and then flying in New Guinea. Once in New Guinea, Mr. Park is assigned to a P-39 squadron near Port Moresby. While there (and other locations in New Guinea), Mr. Park tells us about flying P-39's. Rarely does he focus on this opponents, rather he focus's on his temperamental aircraft that seems to have life of it's own. We learn how Nanette will do anything to avoid aerial combat (the only aerial engagement he describes was when he was flying a different plane), bucking, stalling, starving itself of gasoline. Instead, Nanette lives to be at low altitude, not worrying about the Zero's and Oscar's the Japanese fly. Nanette is fabulously written! When I first got this book, I was reading another book. After sampling a few pages I became engrossed in the book. Mr. Park's writing still is first rate, his love of his saucy strumpet is shown by how clearly he descriptions her. I can't imagine having that great of a memory where I could remember every fact of how my plane performed. Because of this, I'm certain that Nanette was his first love. This book is great for those interested in P-39's, what it was like in New Guinea in WWII, or reading people's stories about going to war, this is a great book. For those wondering, I give this one a solid 5 stars!

Nanette, a story for my life

I am a veteran of New Guinea through the eyes of Edwards Park. I am seasoned and wiser for reading it. I bought Nanette in 1977 as a wild eyed 19 year old WW II aircraft fan. I found that Nanette was the first time I could relate to a story personally about WW II. Mr. Park's point of view in the book was not an aged veteran. He wrote as a young man fighting in terrible conditions while showing all the confusion, bravery, machismo, fear, and honor that a boy would have so far from home. Who knows if Mr. Park was a great pilot? But I have read books from great pilots who couldn't write. Mr. Park will make his experience your experience because he is a great writer. I wrote a letter to Mr. Park about the book back then. He even wrote a cordial reply to my questions. I have read this book at least a dozen times in almost thirty years and had to buy another copy to keep the original from falling apart. Nanette is easily one of my all time favorites. Easy reading and easier to relate to. I wish I could give it ten stars.

theoldALFER's affair with Nanette

My fascination (or should I say obsession?) with the Bell P-39 and the air war in New Guinea in WWII is fueled by the pages of Edward Park's "Nannette." Park's likening of his tour of duty as a P-39 pilot to an affair with a strumpet named Nanette is a can't put down read for any aviation buff. While short on historical details such as dates and statistics, the human drama and personal feelings of a pilot and his squadron mates come alive much as Nanette did for Parks. Life, death, and reason for being are examined through the eyes of a reluctant combatant and pilot. My favorite all time aviation book.

One of the best pilot memoirs I've ever read!

"Nanette- Her Pilot's Love Story" is distinguished from many WWII pilot memoirs by the superb writing of Edwards Park. His vivid, often wry prose truly takes you into the world of the WWII fighter pilot in the Pacific as he focuses not only on the heroic but also the mundane, the frightening and, sometimes, the downright unpleasant.But for all its worth as a detailed glimpse of the pilots' war, the real story here is the growing love of a young pilot for his first fighter aircraft. "Nanette", a P-39 Airacobra, is nondescript, skittish, often dangerous- and enlessly fascinating to her pilot. Anyone who has ever formed a bond with a machine which, inexplicably, transceded flesh and metal will find this book a superb read.

One of the best first-hand WWII fighter pilot's stories.

As an avid reader of WWII fighter pilot first-hand accounts, especially from the Pacific Theatre, this is one of the very best available. Edward is concise, a powerful wordsmith, and you will be hooked after reading just the Introduction (one-third page) and the first couple pages of the first paragraph. He was the typical WWII Army Aviation cadet, and fell in love with his Bell P-39 Aircobra. He starts, "Nanette was an airplane. That should be made clear right at the start. She was not a very good plane; actually she stank. But she did a lot for me, I realize, as I look back on her. All the planes of that old war had distinguishing looks and personalities. The P-40, the Warhawk, was knobby and arrogant, a tomboy. The P-38, the Lightning, was lean and coltish, a rich debunte. The P-47, the Thunderbolt, was massive and dull, a peasnat girl. The bombers had their distinctions, too, but I didn't know much about them. Of all the fighters, two could really excite a flyer. One was the P-51, Mustang, lovely to look at, honest, efficient, hardworking and dependable. In those days she was thought of as a wife, and I know men who married her, back then, and are still inlove with her. The other was the P-39, the Aircobra. It was slim, with a gently curved tail section, a smoothly faired in air intake, and a perfectly rounded nose cone with its ugly, protruding cannon. But the Aircobra was lazy and slovenly and given to fits of vicious temper. It was a sexy machine, and rotten. Nanette was like that, and I was a little queer for her." You can find a lot of books by fighter pilots, but you won't find many better to read than this one.