Product Description

Sergeivsky dictated this lively and personal memoir in 1934 when he and Charles Lindbergh were about to set eight world records in a giant Pan American Clipper. It also details many exciting and historic events of his life from his time as a Russian infantry fighter to his worldwide pioneering flights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3480815 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

W. M. Leary in Choice Magazine, June 1999
"Sergievsky led a life of high adventure. A decorated infantry officer in the Tsarist army in WWI, he went on to command a fighter squadron and was credited with 11 aerial victories. He fought on the White side during the civil war in Russia, was captured by the Bolsheviks, escaped, and ended up in the US. After a stint as a construction worker on the Holland Tunnel, Sergievsky became chief test pilot for his fellow emigre Igor Sikorsky, designer and builder of the great flying boats of the 1930s. His work took him to both Latin America and Africa, where he flew long distances under hazardous conditions that nearly cost him his life. . . His memoirs. . . . now appear in a carefully edited and handsomely produced volume that makes a significant contribution to the early history of aeronautics in Russia and the US. The editors also provide helpful material on Sergievsky's later flying career, which did not end until 1965, when he lost his medical certificate at age 77. A pleasure to recommend. General readers; undergraduates through professionals."

Harry Woodman in Skyways: The Journal of the Airplane 1920-1940, April 1999
"The subject of this book was not merely [a] young officer who was intensely brave, patriotic, daring, an inspirational leader . . . but one with the ability to survive the horrors of front line service as an infantry officer, revolution and civil war . . . and the bitterness of exile and poverty, just to mention some of the hazards that this indestructible man endured. . . .

"There must be few men who had in one lifetime led his men in a charge and fought the enemy with a saber, flown a Nieuport, sung the principal tenor role in a performance of Rigoletto, heaved a shovel in New York, worked for the National Biscuit Corporation, became a connoisseur of fine wine and women and an authority of Russian cooking, survived, among other disasters, flying into a tidal wave, and finally, testing German jet aircraft. Among this catalog of incidents he was involved in an African expedition with the once famous Osa and Martin Johnson, whose films and lectures were popular in the 1930s. After 1941 he was recruited by the OSS . . . and eventually found himself testing captured German jet aircraft. . . .

"Sergievsky lived a very full life and not just in aviation; his fondness for beautiful women was a passion of equal intensity. He had three wives and numerous mistresses. . . . A Park Avenue matron seated next to Sergievsky at a dinner party asked him to describe a high point in his life. He replied, ' . . . bathing a princess in champagne.' They just do not make them like that any more."

Princeton Alumni Weekly, Feb. 24, 1999
"In 1934, when [Sergievsky] and Charles Lindbergh set eight world records in a Pan American Airways 'Clipper,' he had flown all over Latin America and much of Africa, 'carrying every thing from mining machinery to boa constrictors.' It's a fascinating tale, set in the most glamorous era in aviation history, told by the kind of person who doesn't seem to exist any more. One envies the editors for having been lucky enough to have known him."