NONFICTION - Aug. 25, 1991

PILOTS: The Romance of the Air by William Neely (Simon & Schuster: $19.95; 229 pp.) . In a country that sometimes seems to have more problem books than problems, it’s a delight to happen upon this joyous celebration of flight. William Neely’s previous books on race-car driving have inhabited a masculine ethos of shiny chrome engines and exhilarating fear, and similarly, “Pilots” transports us to the heart of a super-macho world where egos, if not airplanes, “escape the surly bonds of Earth/and reach for the stars.”

A vivid flight-simulator, Neely’s tales put us on board planes like the B-17 bomber that has just lost two engines. Trying to gain some distance from the looming whitecaps of the North Sea, we throw guns and ammo cans into the sea while watching a German ME-109 pilot approach within three feet of our wingtip--not to shoot us down, it turns out, but to offer an affectionate nod for a battle well fought.

The commercial pilots profiled by Neely, in turn, can only dream of such heroism. Their machismo seems undermined daily by everything from water buffaloes (one breaks out of its cage in flight, rocking the plane as it charges “like a bull at Pamplona”) to passengers who act like water buffaloes. One particularly ruffled captain longs to pilot food-cargo planes instead: “Hey, I’d rather fly pigs. No one to bitch if you’re late taking off or if the weather is rough. . . . Everybody can handle it. All we’ve got is a bunch of dead pigs.”

Like most macho men, though, “Pilots” is marred by an inability to convey emotion. Nowhere is the limitation of its language of gadgetry and action more evident, for instance, than in the description of Richard Nixon’s last flight home on Air Force One, where the drama is all but lost in mundane observations about touchdown speed (125 m.p.h.) and meals served (shrimp cocktail).