David Kirk Vaughan

Graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1962 and completed a twenty-year career in the Air Force. Flew cargo and training aircraft in Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command, including a 15-month tour flying C-130s in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Received MA from the University of Michigan and PhD from the University of Washington. Taught classes in composition, technical communication, and literature at the Air Force Academy, the University of Maine, the Air Force Institute of Technology, San Antonio College, and Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.

Has written a number of books in the area of aviation literature and history, including Anne Morrow Lindbergh: A Study of Her Writings (Twayne, 1988); An American Pilot in the Skies of France: The Diaries and Letters of Percival Gates, 1917-1919 (Wright State University Press, 1992); Runway Visions: An American C-130 Pilot's Memoir of Combat Airlift Operations in Southeast Asia, 1967-1968 (McFarland, 1998) (Second edition, McFarland, 2024); and Flying for the Air Service: The Hughes Brothers in World War I (Popular Press/University of Wisconsin Press, 1998). He was co-author, with Cecil Foster, of Foster's Air Force memoir, MiG Alley to Mu Ghia Pass: Memoirs of a Korean War Ace (McFarland, 2001). Most recent books are Words to Measure a War: Nine American Poets of World War II (McFarland, 2009); Letters from a War Bird: The World War I Correspondence of Elliott White Springs (University of South Carolina Press, 2012); and The Flying Adventurers: Juvenile Aviation Series Books in America, 1909-1964 (McFarland, 2024).

He has just published his first novel, which is about---guess what? Flying in World War I. The title is Fixed Course.