Crash Landing!

Uncle Fritz flew the Piper Cruiser higher and higher, bubbling with exhilaration at the almost forgotten sensation of flying a light flivver without instruments. Young Marty Peck, his compnion, could hardly believe that a transoceanic jet pilot could get so excited over operating a tiny plane, but this really was flying, Uncle Fritz said. As Marty felt the controls, he sensed what a thrill it could be. And when he learned upon landing that a sixteen-year-old could take instruction and obtain a pilot's license, Marty knew that that was what he wanted.
Would he be stymied again? He had desperately wanted a driver's license, but his father, the town's police chief, had witnessed too many car crashes involving teen-agers to allow Marty to drive until he was eighteen. With Uncle Fritz on his side, however, and the argument that the airways weren't as crowded as the highways, Marty surprisingly, wins his father over.
A little awed at first, Marty grows in confidence each time he and his instructor take "Squeaky" up. On the ground, though, he is a different person. His conflict with Tiger Faraday, a tough guy and former member of a city gang, makes his school life miserable. In fact, the whole community is upset by the influx of newcomers: the noise and danger from the newly started airport; Tiger and his gang who come up from the city at night; and an outbreak of vandalism near the summer lake cottages. Occupied with is own problems, Marty is unaware of the pressure being put on his father to do a better police job.
A terrifying experience from which he barely escapes alive scares Marty into the sober knowledge that he has lost his nerve forever and will never fly again, though the thriling sensation of piloting a plane is in his blood. but a dire emergency forces him, against his will, to take to the air once more.
How Marty prevents a tragic crime at the risk of his own life and how he regains his courage in the process make Crash Landing! one of Don Stanford's most exciting, authentically detailed sports stories.