The Chosen Ones: Test Pilots in Action

From the dawn of aviation, Canada has produced intrepid pilots of renown. Learning their craft in some of the most difficult conditions anywhere, many of these flyers became expert navigators and mechanics as well as great pilots, and Canadians were among the highest-scoring Allied aces of both world wars. When Canada began designing aircraft for the world market in the 1950s, the best of these flyers took up a new, more exacting regimen: that of the test pilot. It was a role that was largely unheralded; as Tom Wolfe says in The Right Stuff, "They were called ?test pilots,’ and no one knew their names." With this book, Sean Rossiter sets out to remedy that. The Chosen Ones puts readers in the cockpit with pilots whose life experience involved not only dangerous Arctic bush flying and deadly aerial combat over Europe but also many heart-stopping moments at the controls of unproven prototypes.