The Flight of the Wild Oats

"It seems so long ago we were that young and aviation was young too. The world has grown smaller, planes have grown bigger and faster. The globe is enmeshed in a network of flying routes, but private flying has not increased in quite the way we visualized when we decided we would like to learn to fly and when we set out on an adventure to prove to everybody that it was perfectly safe, easy and not too expensive for ordinary folk like us to fly anywhere and everywhere...." Thus begins a vivid account of the remarkable flight of a young English couple, Fred and Marion Goodwin, who in 1936 flew "Wild Oats," a two-seater de Havilland Puss Moth, from London to Karachi and back. At that time, few people flew solo over long distances, but these intrepid aviators crossed from England over Germany and Austria, down through the Balkans, across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Persia, into India, and returned within the month. Their adventures are captured in an enthralling series of letters home, collected and published here for the first time.