Aviation Writer Donald Dwiggins Dies

Donald J. Dwiggins, a wartime glider pilot, small airline entrepreneur and aviation editor and writer, was killed Saturday night in an automobile accident on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

The 75-year-old Dwiggins had just finished work on a four-volume, soon-to-be-published work on the development of American aviation, said Bill Lansford, a longtime friend.

Dwiggins was a pilot with 8,000 hours of flight time who studied journalism as a youth. He joined the Army Glider Corps and later the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. After his discharge, he purchased several surplus planes, hiring them out to motion picture crews going on location.

That business did not pan out, and he turned to writing, first as a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News and then as aviation editor of the Mirror News. After that newspaper’s demise, he became a free-lance writer and wrote hundreds of articles and about 40 books.

Survivors include his wife, Olga; a son, and daughter.