The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots: Eyewitness Accounts of Air Combat from the Red Baron to Today's Top Guns

I bought this for my father-in-law, a retired air force pilot. He greatly enjoyed this book of short, first hand accounts from other pilots. He said it very much gets across the feeling that these pilots were fighters intent upon engaging and killing the enemy.

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF FIGHTER PILOTS collects 30 classic accounts of fighter combat told by the pilots themselves. The pilots range from Manfred von Richtofen to Johnnie Johnson to Mark Berent; the combats span World War I through the Gulf War. The result is a fascinating, "from-the-cockpit" view of aerial combat. Editor Jon Lewis assembled most of the stories found in this 2002 Carroll & Graf release from classic air combat books and autobiographies such as WIND IN THE WIRES, THE RED BATTLE FLYER, SAGITTARIUS RISING, FIGHTING THE FLYING CIRCUS, THE LAST ENEMY, WING LEADER and BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP; other entries were from magazine articles or unpublished diaries, letters, etc. Eleven are of WWI vintage, 14 from WWII, two from the Vietnam War, one from the Falklands fighting and one from the Gulf War. Not all of the tales Lewis assembled are mano-a-mano dogfights. Duncan Grinnell-Milne describes pilot training circa 1915. James Norman Hall and John Nichols tell of their POW experiences in WWI and the Gulf War respectively. B-17 pilot Beirne Lay relates what it felt to be at the receiving end of Luftwaffe fighter attacks. Richard Hillary, horribly burned in his downed Spitfire, tells of the harrowing treatments he underwent and so on. Yet the main draw of the book are obviously those 'yank-and-bank' accounts penned by McCudden, Bishop, Rickenbacker, Yeager, Boyington, Knoke and Steinhoff. My #1 favorite is Johnnie Johnson's evocative "Dogsbody" chapter. The man had a way with Spitfires...and words as well! Fighter buffs should enjoy THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF FIGHTER PILOTS. It doesn't get much more authentic than this! Recommended.