| Born | December 15, 1939 Springfield, Missouri |
|---|---|
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service/ | United States Navy |
| Alma mater | Charter Oak State College |
Robert Gandt (born December 15, 1939) is an American author and aviator.
Gandt has written and published more than a dozen books on military and aviation history and military adventure fiction.
Gandt was born in Springfield, Missouri, and raised in nearby Coffeyville, Kansas. At age twenty he was the youngest aviator and officer then on active duty in the U. S. Navy. After accumulating over 300 carrier landings and nearly 2000 hours in the A-4 Skyhawk,[1] he joined Pan American World Airways as an airline pilot in 1965. With the sale of Pan Am's Atlantic routes in 1991, he transferred to Delta Air Lines as a captain and check airman. In 1985, Gandt was a founder and team member of the Redhawk Formation Aerobatic Team, flying SIAI-Marchetti SF.260 military trainers in precision formation aerobatic routines. Gandt's writing career began in the mid-1970s when he was based in Hong Kong. Season of Storms: The Siege of Hong Kong 1941, was drawn from the newspaper series he produced for the South China Morning Post.[2] His subsequent works were derived from his own experience and connections to military and aviation figures. Gandt's naval aviation chronicle Bogeys and Bandits (Viking, 1997) was adapted for the CBS series Pensacola: Wings of Gold, for which Gandt worked as a writer and technical consultant.[3] The first of his novels, With Hostile Intent, was published by Penguin Group in 2001.[4] With co-author Bill White and with a foreword by Senator John McCain, Gandt wrote Intrepid: The Epic Story of America's Most Legendary Warship (Random House, 2009), which won the Admiral Farragut Book Award.[5] His multi-viewpoint account of the World War II battle for Okinawa, The Twilight Warriors (Random house, 2010) was the winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature.[6] Gandt’s best-selling book Angels in the Sky (W.W. Norton, 2017) recounts the saga of the volunteer airmen who fought in Israel’s 1948 war of independence. He is a graduate of Charter Oak State College with a B.A in History. He is a member and contributor to The Tailhook Association, The Authors Guild, Mensa International, the Experimental Aircraft Association, Quiet Birdmen and the Naval Order of the United States. Gandt holds a black belt in Shaolin Kempo Karate.
