Fly the biggest piece back by Steve Smith---This is a pre-owned/used book but in good condition. However, scotch tape has been placed around the edges of the dust jacket. Also, there is a name written on the inside of the front cover. (See Pictures)

*****Said one of his contemporaries of mountain pilot Bob Johnson, "He knew what he was doing, and everybody else knew it, too. That's been proved by the thousands and thousands of hours he logged in some of the toughest mountain flying anybody has ever done. There's nobody ever came close to him in that regard...." 

***Few things would come to matter more to Robert Roney Johnson than airplanes and flying. When the realization of aviation's appeal began to dawn on him he was in his early 30's, a high-school dropout looking ahead to a mundane life as a small-town gas station attendant. 

***Flying, more than flying machines, awakened Johnson to his destiny. He had been a restless 10-year-old in Missoula, Montana, when Orville Wright, 22-years his senior, momentarily lifted off the Kill Devil sand hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, aboard an awkward, motorized glider. Although news of the flight was remarkable slow in spreading because of almost total disinterest on the part of the American press, Johnson undoubtedly knew of the existence of airplanes by the time he was 12. His own recollections, however, indicate he was not overly interested. And in September, 1913, when a Missoula gas buggy racer and self-taught pilot named Walter Beck coaxed a frail pusher biplane from Bonner, Montana, to Missoula via Hellgate Canyon, Johnson, then 20 and a witness to the event, still was not sufficiently moved to become part of the exciting new era.

***Where seeing an airplane had failed to arouse Johnson's interest, riding in one succeeded. His first flight came in 1923 in the windy forward cockpit of a Hisso Standard biplane flown by an ex-world War I pilot who had come to Missoula from his native California to scratch out a living in the air, hauling, among other commodities, bootleg whiskey.

***Fly the Biggest Piece Back, is a portrait in words and photographs of an extraordinary mountain pilot, traces the action-packed life of Bob Johnson and the growth---and ultimate demise--- of the Johnson Flying Service. Hohnson is the central figure, but the cast of characters is broad and includes his hell-for-leather brother, Dick, and the pioneering fliers who helped bring the U.S.Forest Service into the air age.