North Star Over My Shoulder

Pilot and author Bob Buck discussed his memoir, North Star Over My Shoulder: A Flying Life, published by Simon and Schuster. A former chief pilot, Mr. Buck began his flying career during what has been called “the golden age of flying.” He worked with and learned from some of the pioneers of aviation, including Howard Hughes. In 1936, Mr. Buck flew a 90-horsepower Monocoupe nonstop from Burbank, California, to Columbus, Ohio to establish a world distance record for light airplanes. He joined Transcontinental and Western Air (which later became TWA) as a copilot in 1937. When he retired in 1974, he had made more than 2,000 Atlantic crossings and his role had progressed from such tasks as retracting a DC-2's landing gear with a cockpit-based hand pump to the piloting of a wide-body 747. A world expert on weather and flight, Mr. Buck flew a B-17G to monitor thunderstorms globally as part of a TWA-U.S. Air Force research project during World War II. The book recounts these and other exper close