When No One Else Would Fly

Col. C. J. Tippett was an extraordinary aviation pioneer who took himself from working class origins to one of the highest leadership positions in international civil aviation. Between 1929 and 1961, he logged over 10,000 hours of flight time and piloted more than ninety-eight different aircraft models. In an untiring pursuit for access to aircraft, and in his commitment to civilian flight safety, Tip climbed into the cockpit when no one else would fly. Tip trained some of the earliest Flying Tigers, certified the first class of Alabama students who would become the Tuskegee Airmen, and shared a boarding house with Major Tooey Spaatz and Major Ira Eaker as they made plans for war. He made record-setting solo flights over the Amazon Jungle in 1943 and fished for black marlin with Ernest Hemingway in Cabo Blanco, Peru in 1956. When sixteen-year-old Tip saw his first airplane in an Ohio field in 1929, he knew that he must learn to fly. He didn't know that he would become the first Director of the South American Office of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Or that he would live in an elite world of political leaders, millionaires, socialites, and celebrities. When Tip finished his memoir, he encouraged his granddaughter, Corinne Tippett, to turn it into a book. Because by the end of his life, he knew that he'd made history.