This image is the cover for the book Air Bridge

Air Bridge

A daredevil pilot joins the Berlin Airlift to fight for democracy in this Cold War adventure from “a whale of a writer” (The New York Times).

When his plane goes down over Germany, Neil Fraser vows not to die in a POW camp. He tunnels out beneath the barbed wire, commandeers a Messerschmitt fighter plane, and flies it home to England. He’s been stealing planes ever since.

After the war, Fraser falls in with an international ring of thieves, lifting planes from England and flying them to the land that will soon be known as Israel. But his luck doesn’t last. The owner of a charter company catches Fraser in the act and gives him a simple choice: Work for him, or rot in jail.

His new boss, Bill Saeton, a ruthless tycoon with dreams of conquering the sky, has a contract that could make his fortune—if only he can get his newest plane into the air. Together, Saeton and Fraser embark on the most astonishing adventure of the Cold War: flying in the skyborne armada of the Berlin Airlift, to live or die in the skies above a divided Germany.

Authored by Hammond Innes, who witnessed the Berlin Airlift firsthand, Air Bridge is the incredible story of the men who fought impossible odds to win one of the most crucial battles of the Cold War.

Hammond Innes

Hammond Innes (1913–1998) was the British author of over thirty novels, as well as children’s and travel books. Born Ralph Hammond Innes in Horsham, Sussex, he was educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist at the Financial News. The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. Innes served in the Royal Artillery in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of major. A number of his books were published during the war, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1940), and Attack Alarm (1941), which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain.

Following his demobilization in 1946, Innes worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for their fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of place, such as Air Bridge (1951), which is set at RAF stations during the Berlin Airlift. Innes’s protagonists were often not heroes in the typical sense, but ordinary men suddenly thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. Often, this involved being placed in a hostile environment—for example, the Arctic, the open sea, deserts—or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. Innes’s protagonists are forced to rely on their own wits rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers. An experienced yachtsman, his great love and understanding of the sea was reflected in many of his novels.

Innes went on to produce books on a regular schedule of six months for travel and research followed by six months of writing. He continued to write until just before his death, his final novel being Delta Connection (1996). At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations to enable others to experience sailing in the element he loved.

Open Road Integrated Media