Knights of the Air.

MAITLAND, Lester J.

Item Number: 108634

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1929.

First edition of Air Corps Commander Lester J. Maitland’s history of early aviation. Octavo, original cloth, pictorial endpapers, illustrated with photographs including frontispiece. In very good condition.

Aviation pioneer and career United States Army Air Force officer Lester J. Maitland began his career as a Reserve pilot in the U.S. Army Air Service during World War I and rose to brigadier general in the Michigan Air National Guard following World War II. In 1927 Maitland and Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger completed the first transpacific flight from California to Hawaii, flying the modified transport Bird of Paradise. Although the recognition accorded them was less in comparison with the adulation given Charles Lindbergh for his transatlantic flight only five weeks earlier, Maitland and Hegenberger's feat was arguably more significant from a navigational stand point.