frogy Posted 12 November , 2017 Share Posted 12 November , 2017 Hi everyone, I'm very interested in the air war so could anyone recommend any good books both the general history and also personal stories please? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Maria Posted 12 November , 2017 Share Posted 12 November , 2017 My favourite memoir ( apart from' Sagittarius Rising ' by Cecil Lewis of course ) is ' Sopwith Scout 7309 ' by Gordon Taylor . ' No Parachute ' by Arthur Gould Lee and ' Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps ' ( also known as 'Flying Fury' ) by J.T.B Mc Cudden are also very good . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
other ranker Posted 12 November , 2017 Share Posted 12 November , 2017 'Winged Victory', by V M Yeates is considered a classic. WW2 pilots thought it was an essential read as it was thought to give them a feeling for what they were about to encounter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sdparker Posted 12 November , 2017 Share Posted 12 November , 2017 My interest is particularly the Royal Naval Air Service. Several good reads are- In The Teeth Of The Wind by Sqdn Leader C P O Bartlett Australian Hawk Over The Western Front by Adrian Hellwig- a biography of R S Dallas Unknown Warrior by Mike Rosel- a biography of R A Little- although I haven't had time to read it yet! I Chose The Sky by Leonard Rochford A book about Samuel Marcus Kinkhead from South Africa- which I lent out and haven't got back yet- hence can't remember title! He flew in the Med and was then transferred to The Western Front where he downed many enemy aircraft. He remained in the RAF, but died testing aircraft for The Scneider Trophy in between the wars. Regards Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Scorer Posted 14 November , 2017 Share Posted 14 November , 2017 (edited) I found "Voices in Flight: Conversations with Air Veterans of the Great War" by Anna Malinovska and Muriel Joslyn very interesting and well recommended. It's a series of interviews conducted with First World War Veterans of the air war from all aspects. They were originally video recordings commissioned by the RAF Museum, Hendon, but were published in book format by Pen & Sword Publications (ISBN 1844153991) in 2006. There was also a web site by the same name which included eleven additional interviews, but this is now frozen and in fact the author doesn't now have access to them. Copies are available on Amazon, but be careful: you need to make sure that you use the complete title, because there are quite a few books with similar titles. Edited 14 November , 2017 by The Scorer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul bardell Posted 17 November , 2017 Share Posted 17 November , 2017 frogy Very much what the others have said above, could i add the following: Wings over the Somme by W/C Gwilym Lewis DFC The Royal Flying Corps in France - in 2 volumes by Ralph Barker Combat Report by Bill Lambert DFC Air Command by AVM Raymond Collishaw DSO DSC DFC Brief Glory by Alex Revell High in the Empty Blue by Alex Revell and you must read Winged Victory as other ranker says above its a classic of its kind and should not be overlooked. happy reading. Paul We Will Remember Them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robins2 Posted 18 November , 2017 Share Posted 18 November , 2017 If you are interested in the opposition I just finished reading Oswald Boelcke Germans first Fighter Ace and Father of Air Combat written by R.G. Head Brigadier General, USAF, very informative book on how German Air force evolved (Richthofen was a student of Boelcke,s)ISBN 978-1-910690-23-9 Grub Street London. regards Bob R. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perth Digger Posted 18 November , 2017 Share Posted 18 November , 2017 No one's mentioned Biggles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Beale Posted 18 November , 2017 Share Posted 18 November , 2017 Peter Kilduff's "Germany's First Air Force 1914–18" (pub. 1996) is a very readable collection of accounts from veterans, given a chapter each, including bomber and observation balloon crews. Peter Hart's "Aces Falling, War Above the Trenches 1918" is also good on the transition from the "duelling aces" era as air power matured. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Maria Posted 10 December , 2017 Share Posted 10 December , 2017 We may never know if our suggestions were helpful to the OP , but at least this thread has prompted me to read ' Winged Victory' . I'm not really a fan of novels but at least this was written by someone who was actually there and based on his own war service . I enjoyed reading the book and thought it was very good ( if a bit long winded in parts and the anti-war theme did get a bit wearing at times ) and gave a good idea what it must have been like for a scout pilot during the last year of the war . Maybe however , having read all the rave reviews about the book ( on the forum) beforehand I was expecting a bit too much from it and i was left a little disappointed at the end . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlie962 Posted 10 December , 2017 Share Posted 10 December , 2017 (edited) 2 hours ago, Black Maria said: I'm not really a fan of novels but Along the same lines I enoyed the Elliott White Springs books-American flying novels by a man who had been there and done that. Particularly worth reading 'War Birds'. Charlie Edited 10 December , 2017 by charlie962 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marilyne Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 On 12/11/2017 at 12:33, other ranker said: 'Winged Victory', by V M Yeates is considered a classic. WW2 pilots thought it was an essential read as it was thought to give them a feeling for what they were about to encounter. I might be getting a lot of heat for this but… anybody else thought it sometimes incredibly boring ??? I really had problems staying concentrated on what I was reading at times… especially when they were ranting about politics. M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Maria Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 26 minutes ago, Marilyne said: I might be getting a lot of heat for this but… anybody else thought it sometimes incredibly boring ??? I really had problems staying concentrated on what I was reading at times… especially when they were ranting about politics. M. I didn't think it was boring but I know what you mean , some parts were quite tedious . I suppose it's like all these books that you are told beforehand are 'classics', you just have to read them and judge for yourself. One of my personal favourites is ' Sagittarius Rising ' by Cecil Lewis but one reviewer on Amazon said that it "dragged on a bit " . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marilyne Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 1 minute ago, Black Maria said: I didn't think it was boring but I know what you mean , some parts were quite tedious . I suppose it's like all these books that you are told beforehand are 'classics', you just have to read them and judge for yourself. One of my personal favourites is ' Sagittarius Rising ' by Cecil Lewis but one reviewer on Amazon said that it "dragged on a bit " . au contraire… I found 'Sagittarius rising' quite fast paced and very nice to read… Very honest too… well I guess it goes to show that tastes and perception can differ… and so it should. M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Maria Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 3 minutes ago, Marilyne said: au contraire… I found 'Sagittarius rising' quite fast paced and very nice to read… Very honest too… well I guess it goes to show that tastes and perception can differ… and so it should. M. Exactly , this was brought home to me when I mentioned on the forum that I found a book called ' Blood and Iron : letters from the western front ' a bit boring ( not the letters part but the 190 pages beforehand ) . One or two people disagreed with me and one mentioned that they had found a memoir called ' Have you forgotten yet ? ' quite boring . A copy of the book had sat unread on my shelf for a few years so I decided to read it and found it to be one of the best memoirs i have read . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crunchy Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 (edited) Try Marked for Death: The First War in the Air by James Hamilton-Patterson for a general work on the air war that challenges the romantic view, and offers some interesting observations. Edited 3 September , 2019 by Crunchy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghazala Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 On 18/11/2017 at 07:51, Perth Digger said: No one's mentioned Biggles. Biggles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Maria Posted 3 September , 2019 Share Posted 3 September , 2019 I noticed that a new memoir called ' Don't Let Them Bag the Nines: the first world war diary of a De Havilland pilot ' was published yesterday . It's the memoir of Captain F. Williams M.C, D.F.C who flew D.H.4s on bombing raids in 1918 , looks quite good . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Scorer Posted 26 October , 2019 Share Posted 26 October , 2019 I was recommended elsewhere on the Forum to read the two books by Arthur Gould Lee - "No Parachute" and "Open Cockpit". I've done this, and they were my companions during the Leger Tours "Above the Battlefield - The Airborne War" trip last week. I was glad that I did, because they are both very good books. The former is better than the latter, because it's taken from diaries and letters and is a chronological record of his time on the Western Front and elsewhere in 1917 / 1918. The other one deals with much the same period, although it ends in 1919 and is extracts from the diaries which weren't included in the first one. It's split into chapters dealing with specific areas and goes into more detail than the first book did. Our guide on the tour referred to quite a few points which are confirmed by Arthur Gould Lee, and it was good to have the view of someone who was there. He filled in some of the gaps that inevitably happened because sometimes we were looking at empty fields and had to use our imagination to visualise what had been there and was now gone. They're two very good books, and I'd recommend them to anyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomcervo Posted 27 October , 2019 Share Posted 27 October , 2019 (edited) Oliver Stewart's novel Portrait of an Airman is a franker version of his autobiography Words and Music of a Mechanical Man. https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/portrait-of-an-airman-byphilip-arnall/ https://ww1.nam.ac.uk/stories/lieutenant-oliver-stewart/#.XbYtOujwa01 Edited 27 October , 2019 by tomcervo correction Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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