Full Throttle

Full Throttle is an entertaining account of an amazing man’s life in aviation that is sure to leave the reader laughing and head-shaking as the pages turn quickly during this enjoyable read. It is a compilation of short stories told by John Deakin over the years on Compuserve's AVSIG Forum, the oldest aviation forum in the world. Some of Deakin’s stories are funny, some are sad, and a few are shocking for the amount of trouble Deakin managed to get himself into and (barely) out of over the years. His professional career consisted of flying an assortment of airplanes for Air America in Vietnam and as an airline pilot for Japan Airlines. Non-professionally and for fun Deakin flew a wide assortment of WWII fighters and bombers.

Young Deakin started as a line boy in his teens before working as a freighter pilot (B-25 captain at 19), corporate pilot, spending five years with Air America, the CIA airline, and 32 years as a captain for Japan Airlines. His last 29 years with JAL were spent Captaining the 747; the last five years of which, John was #1 in seniority system-wide.

The first half of the book tells of Deakin’s training as a budding pilot and the experiences which formed the skills he later needed to survive the rigors of flying in a combat zone. A few of these experiences could easily have been fatal, but through them all, the young aviator maintains his sense of humor about how he got himself into such a mess! There were more than a few “messes” on various continents as he learned to survive.

Deakin’s intense experiences while flying for Air America in Vietnam are always colored with the morbid humor that accompanies stressful situations. His part ownership of the Kontiki Lounge in Gia Dinh, Vietnam, presents its own special view of life “in country.” After his Air America experience, he expounds upon his experiences as an airline captain, which range from hysterically funny to the high-stress situations that accompany weather and diversion decisions as well as dealing with unruly passengers.

The later chapters of the book are first-hand accounts and detailed descriptions of what it’s like to fly some of the World’s most interesting and rare airplanes. For those who are likely to never get the chance to do so, Deakin gives them a first-hand glimpse into the details known only to those who’ve flown such aircraft as the Constellation, Bearcat, Japanese Zero, C-46, B-24, and B-29.