Squadron of Death: True Adventures of a Movie Plane-Crasher

Dust jacket notes: "Dick Grace is the sole surviving veteran of the Squadron of Death, that band of daredevil movie stunt men, fliers, divers, horsemen, crack-up artists, who daily mortgage their lives to furnish thrills for the public. In this book, he tells both his own story, which is packed with thrills on every page, and the story of the other stunt men who drive horses off sixty foot cliffs, wrestle with alligators, infuriate lions, run motorcycles over precipices, jump into fire nets from six and nine-story buildings, dive through skylights, and race through steel mills, jumping over caldrons of molten metal for little more than an extra's pay. But it is in 'major' stunts that Dick Grace made his fame, stunts that have to do with the air. He is the most famous movie plane crasher alive. He has crashed over thirty planes intentionally and lived to spend the money! He broke his neck making 'Wings' and didn't see a doctor for two days!...He has made over 160 changes from speeding plane to express train, to motor-boat, to automobile, to another plane in midair....Once when he was doing acrobatics on the wings of a speeding plane the wind grew so strong that it ripped all his clothes off and he sailed naked through the air. Crashing planes for movie shots, such as Grace did in 'Wings,' 'Lilac Time,' and 'The Flying Circus,' is done scientifically, by physics and mathematics. A director specifies the kind of crash he wants just as a contractor orders building material....Miscalculations in this game are costly. Grace made only one. That slight mistake cost him four broken vertebrae in his neck. Spectators wager that Grace will be killed each time he goes up to crash a plane - he covers all sideline bets himself - so far he has never lost. Dick Grace tells his thrilling story with the same gusto and cool assurance that makes him the most famous stunt flyer in the world, and he illustrates it with a series of [twelve] remarkable photographs."