FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE : REFLECTIONS OF A WORLD WAR II AVIATOR

Samuel Lynn Hynes ( August 29th, 1924 - October 9th, 2019 ) was born in Chicago ( Illinois, United States ). He was raised in Minneapolis ( Minnesota, United States ) and upon graduation from high school was accepted in the Navy's Air Cadet Programme. 

After attending Navy Flight School, he received a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps in April 1944. As a torpedo - bomber pilot in the Pacific, he flew more than 150 combat missions against the Japanese, earning an Air Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross. Samuel L. Hynes remained on active duty until January 1946. Under the G.I. Bill, he earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota ( Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota ) in 1947. In 1952, he returned to active duty for one and one - half years ( Korean War, 1950 - 1953 ). 

After flying in the Korean War, he received his Ph.D. ( Philosophiæ doctor : Doctor of Philosophy ) from Columbia University ( New York City, New York, United States ) in 1956. 

Becoming an author, he won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for The Soldiers' Tale in 1998. He discussed his experiences as a pilot in the documentary series The War by Ken Burns ( 2007 ). The latter interviewed Samuel L. Hynes again for The Vietnam War ( 2017 ), where he discussed his experiences at Northwestern University ( Evanston, Illinois ) during its anti - Vietnam War protests.  

Samuel L. Hynes was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature emeritus at Princeton University ( New Jersey, United States ). His other books include The Patterns of Hardy’s Poetry ( 1961 ), Edwardian Occasions ( 1972 ), A War Imagined ( 1990 ), The Growing Seasons ( 2003 ), The Unsubstantial Air : American Fliers in the First World War ( 2014 ) and On War and Writing ( 2018 ). As a literary critic, he wrote extensively for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books and The Sunday Times. 

Samuel L. Hynes died of congestive heart failure in Princeton, at the age of 95. 

( sources : Wikipedia, FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE : REFLECTIONS OF A WORLD WAR II AVIATOR, www.princeton.edu )