Don McVicar Aviation Books

Words on Wings Press is proud to announce the new editions of Don McVicar’s aviation books, which are being published for the first time as paperbacks and as Kindle e-books. As of February 2024, only Ferry Command Pilot and South Atlantic Safari have been published as paperback books; they are 6″ by 9″ and illustrated with numerous photos, drawings, and maps, some of which have never before been published. It takes a significant amount of time to do right by each book, one factor being the families of the aircrew coming forth with photos of their father, grandfather, uncle and so on, brave men who flew with Captain McVicar and whose contribution to the war effort would have otherwise gone unheralded. It was important to him that their names not be forgotten.

This is the first time ALL NINE of Captain Don McVicar’s books have been made available in the same format! The new Streamlined Editions, published February 2024, are Kindle e-books with the idea to provide not just all his thrilling aviation adventures, but searchable databases for all nine books in the series. “Streamlined” means fewer photos, maps, drawings, and supplemental material to keep down the cost of each book and time each requires to be done properly.

Captain Donald McVicar was a true aviation pioneer. He lived boldly in the Golden Age of Aviation. He earned his private pilot’s license at 21 in 1936, flying a de Havilland Moth where he grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He mastered dozens of types of aircraft in his long, turbulent aviation career. While getting the hours to obtain his commercial license, he became Winnipeg’s first air traffic controller with ATC Licence #9: before they had even built the tower.

In 1941, he joined the Royal Air Force Ferry Command in Dorval, Quebec. As a Captain-Navigator, and already an experienced radio operator when he joined up, he was known as a “triple threat” and in 1943 was awarded the King’s Commendation, and then the Order of the British Empire for his “valuable services in the air.” Some of those services included a challenging 1942 exploratory flight to the Arctic along with RAFFC Capt. Louis Bisson and USAAF Lt.-Col. Charles J. Hubbard, where he landed his single-engine Noorduyn Norseman farther north than anyone had ever flown. He wrote vividly of this experience in Ferry Command Pilot. Another first was his delivery of the first American-built warplane to the RAF in Africa, which was a treacherous Martin B-26 Marauder “Widow Maker.” He described this journey, and other aviation adventures, in South Atlantic Safari.

After the war, he founded his own airline, World Wide Airways, and ran it for two decades from Dorval until essentially forced out of business by political pressure from on high. Capt. McVicar had the guts to do what many fail to do: write it all down and get it published, beginning with Ferry Command in 1981 and ending with Through Cuba to Oblivion in 1994. Only now, with the Streamlined Editions, can his story be read in full.

He passed away in 1997 at his Dorval home, not far from the airport where he made aviation history.