A Shower of Spray and We're Away

By Captain Fred Ladd, MBE with Ross Annabell

Published by A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1971. A first edition

Hardback with dust jacket, 233 pages, black and white photo's

Very good condition - name inside

Lso included is a certificate "Capt. Fred Ladd's Vocanic Wunderflites'

FREDDY LADD was judged too old to become a RNZAF pilot early in World War II, but by dint ofa persuasiveness that all who know him can well under- stand, he argued his way to the pilot’s seat of an Avenger aircraft in the Paci?c theatre of war and then, after a spell of ?ying Dominies for New Zealand’s National Airways Corporation in Otago/Southland, and starting Fiji Airways as operations manager and chief pilot he opened Tourist Air Travel Limited of Auckland with a Widgeon amphibian.

To begin with it was uphill and disappointing work for Captain Ladd and his wife Mabel, but the huge and succulent cray?sh of Great Barrier Island came to their rescue, and when the Ladds left Tourist Air Travel in 1967 —- the point at which this book ends -— TAT was a thriving concern operating several Widgeons, Freddy had collected an MBE, and the good people of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf had reason to be grateful for the air service which had brought them into close quick contact with the mainland.

This could be a good routine story of pioneering civil aviation, but what bring it into the VIB class* is the personality of Captain Ladd himself. Exuberant, independent, full of original humour, (and of an in?nite kindness and love of life and of his fellow human beings) he has got into and out of every imaginable kind of aerial mischief and emerged unscathed and with the broadest of grins. (Ho! Hol). The story is bump-full of hair-raising and hilarious stories and it re?ects, admirably, the style and outlook of a man who has become a legend in his lifetime. " VIB = Very Important Book