The Education of a Fighter Pilot

This book is a personal biography written by Austin L. "Toss" Olsen covering nearly four years of his life, ages 17 to 20, during which he trained to be a fighter pilot in World War II – and shot down five Japanese airplanes. Toss was on a team of five fliers – replacement pilots sent out to the Pacific. The five saw combat; two perished, one was shot down and became a prisoner of war, and Toss and a fellow pilot completed their service as the war ended. To write the book, he relied on 144 letters, postcards and telegrams that he had sent to his parents while he trained for some two years in six states and then finally served aboard the aircraft carrier Belleau Wood in 1945. This book tells the details of his training, of his flights in combat, and of his friendships, some of which were shattered when his comrades died during the war. The day he shot down four planes, Toss had been fired on earlier – by a fellow pilot. The bullet holes that were evidence of the friendly fire were just inches from his cockpit.

"The Education of a Fighter Pilot" is the story of how a 17-year-old was transformed from a high school senior who had never been on a train to a Navy fighter pilot who at age 20 shot down five enemy aircraft. In the years covered by this narrative – 1942 to 1945 – Austin, known to everyone by his nickname, Toss, wrote home nearly once a week. His mother kept all of this correspondence, some 144 letters, postcards and telegrams. Toss only found out about the existence of these documents shortly after her death in 1983. He did not look at the content for years, but finally he went through the box – full of the messages he had penned, which had been read all those years ago by his family members and then neatly folded and replaced inside the envelopes. Those letters told a tale, much of which he had forgotten after more than 40 years. It was the account of how he became a fighter pilot, of the steps that he had to take as part of his training, and then his many months of combat in the South Pacific aboard an aircraft carrier. His first inclination was to use the story that was narrated in this correspondence to write a work of fiction; he was already the author of two novels: "Corcho Bliss," published in 1972 by Simon & Schuster, and "Apache Ambush," published in 2000 by Kensington. But he chose to tell the real story of what he went through to become a pilot for the Navy, and how he was able to pay for his "education" by shooting down five airplanes, including a kamikaze that was headed low on the water against a U.S. destroyer with a complement of more than 200 sailors on board. In a way, this story was originally written some 75 years ago, but when he came upon the trove of correspondence, the story was reshaped into a chronicle with the author's added commentary. As he explained, the letters did not contain everything that happened: "Regulations prohibited revealing the details of where I was, or what I had done – and I myself was not always candid."

Austin LeRoy "Toss" Olsen (1924-2007) Toss Olsen was born in Price, Utah, on Dec. 20, 1924, to LeRoy and Lucile (nee Austin) Olsen. After he graduated from Highline High School near Seattle, Wash., in 1942, he joined the U.S. Navy. He flew the F6F Hellcat during World War II, shooting down five Japanese planes. He received a Silver Star, a Distinguished Flying Cross, and five Air Medals. In 1948, he married Adeline P. "Pat" Carter, and after graduating from the University of Washington in 1949 with a degree in journalism, he moved to Mexico, where he lived and worked for about 30 years, primarily in Mexico City. Early on he was a freelance writer and wrote scripts for live TV shows, but spent much of his professional life in the advertising business, capped by the sale in the 1970s of his own ad agency to J. Walter Thompson. An avid golfer, hunter and fisherman, he often took his immediate family on many outings around Mexico. His family included his sons Rolf, Kurt, and David, and two granddaughters, Pearl and Anna. His brother Guy, 10 years younger, died in 2007. Toss was also survived by three nephews and a niece, children of Guy and Shirley: Eric, Todd, Mary and Lee. Toss was the author of "Corcho Bliss" published in 1972 by Simon and Schuster, and "Apache Ambush," published in 2000 by Kensington. He also wrote "The Golden Ear," published posthumously on Amazon by his son Rolf in 2018. In 1979 he left Mexico for about 10 years, living in New Mexico and then northern California, where he wrote in a tool shed that he converted to a writer's nook by adding a desk and a wood-burning stove. The nickname "Toss" came about in his youth when he used the word or a similar expression toward his pals, understanding that in Danish it meant "crazy." He died on June 15, 2007, at age 82 in Xochitepec, Morelos, in his house near a golf course where he played with friends two or three times a week. His strategy was to shoot straight, not for great distance, but for placement, in the middle of the fairway.