BY ANDY TAYLOR
chronicle@taylornews.org

The lastest non-fiction book that chronicles a key event of World War II is written by a Montgomery County native.

Author, aviator and Coffeyville native Robert Gandt, now living in Daytona Beach, Fla., wrote “The Twilight Warriors,” which chronicles the Allied invasion of Okinawa, the largest naval operation in history. The book was published and released by Random House last month and is available through a variety of online sources and bookstores.

Gandt, who was born in Springfield, Mo., was raised in Coffeyville where his father operated a flying school at the South Coffeyville Airport after World War II. The elder Gandt eventually went into the crop dusting business in the 1950s, which is when Robert got a taste of aviation first hand.

Robert’s father later moved the business to the old Coffeyville Airport, now Pfister Park, and later to the current airport location, which was an Army Air Force training ground for bomber pilots during World War II.

Those years in Coffeyville in which Robert Gandt was exposed to airplanes are what led him to enter aviation as a full-time career.

However, he also gained a love for books while spending countless days and weeks in the Coffeyville Public Library.

“I was only about age 8 when someone introduced me to the Carnegie Public Library on Eighth Street,” said Gandt in an e-mail interview this week. “It was a wondrous discovery for me, endless rows of books, all available.  I discovered Dr. Doolittle and Tom Sawyer and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The kids’ section was in the basement, but I quickly learned that the real treasures — I was into Hemingway and Steinbeck at an early age — were all upstairs. Bless those librarians . . . they let me check out whatever I wanted.”

Gandt said he recalled his family lived most of their years on First Street although he cannot recollect the exact address. He does remember that the walk from the front door of his house to the Roosevelt Middle School was exactly 15 minutes.

Gandt attended Coffeyville Community College for one year before the family moved to Houston, Texas, when he was age 18. Gandt did not return to Coffeyville until some 20 years later.

“I was struck by how lucky I had been to grow up in a classic American small town like Coffeyville,” said Gandt. “As kids we were sheltered from a lot of bad stuff, naive perhaps, but we were raised in an environment of solid, down home, middle-American values.  Our public school education was top notch.  I’ve come back every few years, mostly for reunions, and I will always think of Coffeyville as my hometown.”

While he learned to fly in Coffeyville, Gandt furthered his aviation experiences in the U.S. Navy, where at the age of 20, he was the youngest commissioned U.S. Navy aviator after graduation from the Naval Air Cadet program.

After a stint in the U.S. Navy, Gandt spent more than 25 years as a commercial pilot for Pan American Airways and then Delta Air Lines before finally retiring.

Over the years, he has written 13 novels and historical books, most of which are influenced by his love for aviation and military history. Prior to releasing “The Twilight Warriors” in November, Gandt wrote “China Clipper: The Age Of the Great Flying Boats” in early 2010 and “Intrepid: The Story of America’s Most Legendary Warship” in 2009.

His interest in aviation isn’t just devoted to military history. In 1995, he wrote a critical analysis of the fall of Pan American airlines in “Sky Gods: The Fall Of Pan Am,” using the years he spent as a Pan Am pilot as a background for the book.

However, it is “The Twilight Warriors” that is gaining acclaim from military scholars and historians for its thorough and detailed stories of the Allied battle over Okinawa.

After its release from the publisher in November, Gandt traveled to Washington, D.C., for a Veterans Day observance at the National Air and Space Museum, where he signed copies of the book for aviation buffs.

Throughout his years of flying and his recent career as a military historian, Gandt has been struck by the volume of aviation legacies that have come from Coffeyville.

“Coffeyville has an aviation heritage that resonates in some of my writing,” Gandt said. “My dad was a friend and business colleague of the brilliant Funk brothers, who designed and built classic airplanes in the 1940s at their South Coffeyville facility.  And many highly decorated World War II P-38 pilots were trained at McGugin Field (the current Coffeyville Airport), where I used to fly.  I remember that one of my dad’s shop spaces was a former pilots’ briefing room, and the walls were still plastered with wartime navigation charts and posters. For me, that room was a holy place.”

Gandt is now preparing for several other book ventures through his publisher, Random House. The topics range from further research into World War II naval history to possibly a book about Air Force One — the official airplane for the U.S. president.

“Life is busy for me, as it should be,” said Gandt.

More details about Gandt’s books and his life as a pilot, author and adventurer can be found at www.gandt.com.