Ernest K. Gann, 81, whose grippingly authentic bestsellers about aviation and flying gave a generation of readers white knuckles, died Dec. 19 at his home on San Juan Island, Wash. His wife, Dodie, said last night that he had kidney problems and "simply...

In a half-dozen previous novels, headed by "The High and the Mighty," Ernest Gann has at times effectively drawn upon his air and ground experience as a multimillion-mile pilot. The technical litany of a plane in flight. The diversely selected passengers bound by a taut situation to which they respond in diverse ways. The aloof and lonely skipper occupied with the terrible responsibility of craft and human lives. Add a bravura plot to hold dramatic material intact for passage in and out of the...

In such novels as "Blaze of Noon" and "The High and the Mighty," Ernest K. Gann struck some memorable chords in the orchestration of flight. Now, for the first time, he steps from behind the shield of fiction to stand autobiographically exposed in "Fate Is the Hunter."…. It is a tribute to Mr. Gann that in his review of his own stirring years in the skies, the reader is often quick to forget that this is not fiction. Mr. Gann's subtle technique of draw...

In "Island in the Sky," Ernest K. Gann, veteran airline transport pilot, tells a story that transmits the feelings, the thoughts, the impulses of men who come alive in the stratosphere. It possesses the understatement of individuals who need no words to explain actions, the poetry of airborne creatures who know the fulfillment of release from the earth. Mr. Gann's story is concerned with the flight of Dooley and the forced landing of his plane, the "Corsair," in the unchar...