The adventure-filled life and heroic death of an almost-forgotten aviation pioneer is recounted in a recently released biography.
“Whispering Duke Schiller — The Forgotten Hero of Early Aviation,” written by Tom Douglas, tells the story of Clarence Alvin (Duke) Schiller, who was born in Onawa, Iowa, in 1899 and lived most of his short but action-packed life switching between Canadian and U.S. residences, depending on where his peripatetic flying career took him.
Schiller trained as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps at the outbreak of World War I, hobnobbing with fellow cadets such as future author William Faulkner and Broadway dancer Vernon Castle.
In 1928, Schiller made world-wide headlines when he used the dead-reckoning skills he had learned as a bush pilot to locate the stranded three-person crew of The Bremen, the first aircraft to make a successful, non-stop flight from east to west over the Atlantic.
After a flying career that kept him in the headlines throughout the 1930s, Schiller offered his skills to the Royal Air Force Ferry Command during World War II.
He flew dozens of unarmed military aircraft to Great Britain from the factories of North America. During one of those flights, he was killed when the Canso amphibian he was flying crashed off Hamilton, Bermuda, in March 1943.
The book, containing many never-before-seen photographs from the Schiller Family collection, is available for $29.95 in softcover and as an eBook for $9.95.
For more information: TagonaPress.com
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