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Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Gann was best known as an aviation writer and pioneer airline pilot. He was the scion of a prosperous family; his father was an executive with General Telephone and Telegraph. Resisting his father's strong wish that he follow in the telephone business, Ernest became interested in the then-new field of aviation, and became an accomplished pilot. He flew many aircraft, from World War I machines to the U-2 and F-15, and brought his deep love of flight to the written page and silver screen.
He graduated from Culver Military Academy (now Culver Academies) in 1930, and became a film producer as a teenager in St. Paul, Minnesota; he later attended the Yale School of Drama. After his studies at Yale, Gann worked in New York at Radio City Music Hall and as a commercial movie cartoonist, a stunt pilot and barnstormer.
A chance encounter landed Gann a job with "The March of Time," a documentary film company associated with TIME magazine. In 1936, while working on the feature "Inside Nazi Germany," Gann narrowly escaped Hitler’s advancing troops as they marched into the Rhineland. Returning to New York, he moved to a new home where the lure of a local airport rekindled his interest in aviation.
Aviation career
Earning a pilot’s license, he spent his free time aloft until the Great Depression ended his career in motion pictures. He took his family to California, worked odd jobs at Burbank Airport, and began to write short stories, but soon returned to New York, and, in 1938, began to fly the DC-2 and DC-3 for American Airlines.
Captain Gann flew for American Airlines and later, when a portion of American and other U.S. airline pilots were absorbed into the Air Transport Command of the U.S. Army Air Forces early in World War II, he flew DC-3s, DC-4s and C-87s, the cargo version of the B-24 bomber. These trips took him across the North Atlantic, Africa, South America and India, among others, and in particular was a veteran pilot of The Hump airlift. His travels worldwide would become part of his many novels and screenplays in the years to come. Gann left American Airlines, when it discontinued its wartime international flying. His adventures with Matson Airlines, a new company flying the Pacific to Honolulu, spawned ideas that were developed into one of his best works, The High and the Mighty. Matson Airlines was a venture of the Matson steamship line, but failed to effectively compete with the politically well-connected Pan American. When Matson Airlines folded, Gann began to rely on writing as his full-time occupation (with the occasional foray into other ventures including commercial fishing).
Gann's books
- Sky Roads, Thomas Y. Crowell Company 1940 Gann's first book. Non Fiction
- All American Aircraft 1941 Non Fiction
- Getting Them Into The Blue 1942 Non Fiction
- Island in the Sky, Viking, 1944
- Blaze of Noon, Holt, 1946
- Benjamin Lawless, Sloane, 1948
- Fiddler's Green, Sloane, 1950
- The High and the Mighty, Sloane, 1952
- Soldier of Fortune, Sloane, 1954
- Trouble with Lazy Ethel, Sloane, 1957
- Twilight for the Gods, Sloane, 1958
- Fate Is the Hunter, Simon & Schuster, 1961
- Of Good and Evil, Simon & Schuster, 1963
- In the Company of Eagles, Simon & Schuster, 1966
- The Song of the Sirens, Simon & Schuster, 1968
- The Antagonists, Simon & Schuster, 1971
- Band of Brothers, Simon & Schuster, 1973
- Ernest K Gann's Flying Circus, Macmillan, 1974
- A Hostage to Fortune (autobiography), Knopf, 1978
- Brain 2000, Doubleday, 1980
- The Aviator, GK Hall, 1981
- The Magistrate: A Novel, Arbor House, 1982
- Gentlemen of Adventure, Arbor House, 1983
- The Triumph: A Novel, Simon and Schuster, 1986
- The Bad Angel, Arbor House, 1987
- The Black Watch: The Men Who Fly America's Secret Spy Planes, Random House, 1989
Gann contributed numerous articles to the aviation magazine Flying. In one series he described his exotic travels with wife Dodie in their Cessna 310, the Noon Balloon, so named because of its typical late departure time.
Partial list of film writing credits
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