BOOK REVIEW by Ed Resnick NNA Bulletin

A 20^TH CENTURY GUY

by Jim Pearce

You will enjoy Jim’s entire life story from childhood in Detroit as the son of an automotive executive in the Great Depression to a busy retirement in Costa Rica. In between, there is a lot of flying and a lot of living. This is an inspirational story of a man that was given more than his share of life’s burdens and managed to overcome them all, not in anger, but in accomplishment!

     As a teenager, he loses his father to a horrific winter auto accident and must face these formative years without the benefit of his parent. He learns to fly, enters an apprentice program at GM, is selected as a cadet in the Navy and becomes a naval pilot. His war time experiences provide a litany of battles, close calls, loss of friends and the absorption of many deep emotions. After the war, he becomes a test pilot, first for the Navy and then for North American Aviation. He is married and happily building his life when he has to have his leg amputated due to a dangerous cancer. He continues to fly!
    Jim is a tremendous example of the human spirit’s ability to confront disaster, chaos and the cruelties of life and to overcome them all. This is the kind of book one should read a chapter every morning to pump up one’s attitude to face the day! At $22.50 a copy, it beats all other methods and medication!

Book Review by Wilson O'Neil in American Fighter Aces and Friends

    "A 20th Century Guy" is about Jim Pearce, who went from the auto workers' world of Detroit to the dangerous skies over the pacific as a Navy fighter pilot, eventually becoming an ace.
    Jim could have stayed on the home front working for a major auto maker, but his love of flying sent him in another direction. One that would shape him into a deadly fighter pilot, one the enemy would not return from after an encounter. Although his beginnings as a pilot would be in float planes, his talent would land him the most coveted position in any air force, whether it was Navy, Marine Corp or Army air Forces.
    After the war he would go through flight testing school and become one of the Navy's top pilots and got to to fly several planes on the cutting edge of technology. Jim's years in flight testing would eventually lead him into the space program and the Apollo program. After many years in the space field, he moved into the boating field where they designed hulls that would be resistant to marine life.
    But those worlds didn't last forever and he found himself back in the aviation field, the field that relly gave him his start in the world. A world that would take him back to his combat days over the Pacific, althought this time there was no combat. how could be foreget the time when his flight of F6F Hellcat's was assigned to protect the fleet around okinawa when a flight of Japanese Betty bombers was coming in for an attack on the fleet.
    In this book, Jim describes that encounter. "The ship's radar picked up a large group of aircraft approaching the task force and we scrambled to the intercept point at full throttle. We picked up the incoming raid and spotted 18 Betty bombers were flying much slower than usual and we turned into them from above. During the intense combat, Jim notices smaller airplanes hanging from their bomb bays. The mysterious aircraft turned out to be the new Japanese kamikaza Baka bombs, which were basically a hughe flying bomb with a pilot. The Hellcats managed to shoot down all of the bombers and probably saved the fleet from serious damage and loss of life."
    Actions like these and his subsequent travels after the war have definitely shaped him as a "20th Century Guy". A book well worth the read and highly recommended.

Book Review by Bob Snedaker

    You will enjoy Jim’s entire life story from childhood in Detroit as the son of an auto executive during the Great Depression to a busy retirement in Costa Rica. In between there are a lot of challenges, risks and flying. This is an inspirational story of a man who was exposed to more than his share of life’s burdens and managed to overcome them all.

You will enjoy Jim’s entire life story from childhood in as the son of an auto executive during the Great Depression to a busy retirement in .In between there are a lot of challenges, risks and flying.This is an inspirational story of a man who was exposed to more than his share of life’s burdens and managed to overcome them all.

As a teenager he lost his father in a fatal auto accident, thus facing his formative years without advice from a successful father. While in high school he learned to fly. After high school he studied engineering at General Motors Tech. Then with WWII under way in Europe, he joined the Navy as an aviation cadet. During three tours of duty in the Pacific, two aboard aircraft carriers, during which he fought in twelve major battles against the Japanese, he became a Navy Fighter Ace.

After the war he chose work equally as dangerous as aerial combat, as a manufacturer’s engineering test pilot during the dawn of jet propulsion flight, testing new military combat airplanes before they were released to the military. In the middle of this phase of his career he lost the lower half of his left leg, but connived a way to continue flight testing for seven more years.

At the conclusion of his flight testing career he was selected by North American Aviation, manufacturer of the Apollo Lunar Command and Service Modules, as Director of Test and Operations. He then spent seven years in this job, as the early stages of this program were worked out to land and recover men on the moon.

Upon retirement from air and space work he started a successful company named American Marine, Inc., manufacturing products devoted to water purification and cleansing.

After the sale of this company, at age eighty one, he designed and built a ten home development in beautiful Costa Rica, where he now permanently resides.

This is a story of the human spirit’s ability to overcome disaster and survive. At $22.50 a copy, it is cheap educational learning.