"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...

I just picked up a copy of Flyboys at BJ's Wholesale Club. Read the
first two chapters last night.

I was amazed that the author uses the term Flyboys throughout the
book, or at least throughout the first chapter. I'd assumed it was
just a cute title, but no: "Flyboys were over Chici Jima" etc.

When I was growing up--which was about the time of these
events--"flyboy" was a derisive name. It's what a ground-pounder would
say when he complained about the soft life pilots (indeed air crews)
had, compared to the infantry in the mud.

Anyone else ever heard it this way? Any mllitary pilots here ever
refer to themselves as flyboys or Flyboys?

Thanks!

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

We may differ on other subjects, we we sure as hell don't differ on this one. I
was a pilot during WWII, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam war, and I never once
called myself or thought of myself as a "flyboy". The people I flew with may
have been young, but they were men, and the overwhelming majority of them didn't
even vaguely resemble the irresponsible bird-brains that the term infers. It
may very well be what the green-eyed ground pounders called us, but usually not
to our faces, particularly if we outranked them. I always looked on that term
as a put down, however mistaken it might have been.

When the book first came out and got public attention, I mentioned this to my
wife, and she told me that she thought I was making too much of it. I'm glad to
learn that there are at least two of us who think otherwise.

BTW, I haven't read the book nor do I plan to. If he got that wrong, I can't
help but think that the rest of his book is probably full of other things that
he didn't quite get right.

George Z.