I’ve been down the military aviation rabbit hole for most of my life (cold war era especially), and I’m having trouble finding new material to enjoy.
In the hopes of earning some good recommendations from other plane-heads on the board, here are a couple of recent items I’ve liked to get the ball rolling:
War For the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot’s View of Vietnam, by Ed Cobleigh. A short but unusually literate memoir of one pilot’s tour flying USAF F-4 Phantoms out of Thailand. For every disposable anecdote about a cocktail waitress “poured into a dress,” there are two insightful or revealing tidbits about the daily routine, tech, and psychology of war from the viewpoint of an obedient cynic.
Sea Harrier FRS 1 vs Mirage III/Dagger: South Atlantic 1982, by Doug Dildy and Pablo Calcaterra. One of Osprey’s “Duel” series, this one gets into the nitty-gritty of the Falklands air war between RN Sea Harriers and Argentine Mirage fighter-bombers. It offers more nuance than the usual victory literature that lionizes the Harrier in that confict, and it manages to illustrate that, had it not been for some tactical quirks (like flying so low that bombs didn’t have time to arm after release) on the part of the Argentines, many if not most of the British task force would have ended up at the bottom of the South Atlantic. The Harriers were too slow, and their radar too primitive, to stop low-flying bombers targeting ships.
It’s not a book and spills beyond the Cold War but I found this essay about stealth transport for Special Operations quite interesting and with lots of links to get lost in.
Have you read “Masters of the Air” by Donald L. Miller?
It’s the story of the American WWII strategic bombing offensive. It’s about the crews themselves as well as the higher strategy and decision making, as well as the effectiveness of the offensive.
Very good book- it puts it all into perspective, unlike a lot of books that focus on the industrial targeting, or the crew experiences.
This was a new angle for me - thanks! I was especially glad that the authors kept the speculative nature of their info front and center, making what few conclusions they drew more credible.
It’s actually on my shelf at home, but not read yet. I’ll bump it to the top of the heap, thanks!
If you’re into the micro view vs. the macro, I’d highly recommend Combat Crew by John Comer. One gunner’s memoir of 25 missions in a B-17 over Europe. Harrowing stuff.
I’ll endorse that one. Despite the juvenile title, it isn’t the usual hero-worship mixed with hypertechnical mission details that are the unfortunate norm for war books. It tells what seems to be the real stories of real people, in all aspects of the bombing campaign, with all of the terror and relief that the veterans would only sometimes tell about. Even the chapters about life in POW camps seemed to me to be the real stuff, not the Hollywood versions. Read this book and you’ll be happy to discard quite a few others afterward.
Only Len Deighton’s Bomber comes close, in my reading experience, and that was a novel, not a history.
Even loving the P-47 as I do, and wanting to like the book as much as I did, I couldn’t get past the first few chapters. It’s a gobbledygook of “then ol’ chappy turned to final”- style anecdotes without any framework or decipherable through-narrative, or even introductions to the myriad people mentioned. Definitely not a recommendation, although I’d understand anyone who wanted to give it a try.
I came to recommend Chickenhawk but was ninja’d. Lords of the Sky by Dan Hampton was a good read. More of a history book than an exciting collection of combat flying. But still, quite good.
The Long Way Home is about a Pan Am flying boat that was on it’s journey across the Pacific when the Pearl Harbor attack took place. The story follows the trip back to the US avoiding war-torn areas.
Off topic, but the “not where we expected to be” plot angle reminds me (tangentially) of this:
Lost in Shangri-La. It’s about a flight of US Army nurses that goes down in an inaccessible valley while sightseeing over New Guinnea. I’d highly recommend it as an adventure story and slice of history that is otherwise completely untold.