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Because stories about airplanes are often stories of men…forgotten…
Jacques Pinier is one of those pilots whom history has left in the shadows.
To explore his career is to grasp the extraordinary revolution that French aviation underwent in less than twenty years, between the end of World War II and the beginning of the 1960s. A fighter pilot, then a test pilot, he embodies that generation of pioneers who accompanied, sometimes at the cost of their lives, aviation's entry into the supersonic era.
Died too soon, he did not have the time to commit to paper the story of an exceptional life, entirely devoted to flying.
With his career as a pilot as its guiding thread, this book traces all the major technological shifts in modern military aviation: from propeller-driven aircraft that survived the battles of 1939-1945 to jet fighters. Swept and delta wings, new engines sometimes combining jet and rocket power, the emergence of guided weapons with the first missiles, dizzying speeds reaching Mach 2, flights to the edge of the stratosphere, and even the first experiments in vertical takeoff. Never before had so many new technologies emerged in such a short time, imposing on test pilots an unprecedented array of experiments to conduct, risks to take, and limits to push.
With Jacques Pinier, the little-known pilot, let's delve into this fascinating post-war period. It's the story of a man who experienced, at the controls, an unprecedented acceleration: in the space of ten years, the speed of fighter jets tripled, going from 600 km/h on propeller-driven aircraft to Mach 2 on the Mirage III.
Through the story of Jacques Pinier, a whole chapter of French aeronautical history is revealed, that of a golden age of audacity, innovation and courage, where each flight wrote a little more of the future of the sky.
