Wings on My Sleeve (Phoenix Press)

This is an excellent book about the author's incredible career as a test pilot from mid 1943 onwards into the jet age. However, due to the very nature of this book concentrating as it does on his entire career, he doesn't have space to go into a huge amount of detail about what it was like to fly various aircraft - so if you really want to know his highly detailed thoughts on various aircraft that he flew then you need to somehow track down copies of 'Wings of the Luftwaffe' and 'Wings of the Navy'. They're both out of print, so good luck finding them, but if you do manage to track a copy or two down then you will not be disappointed.

This is a brilliant book by one of the greatest pilots of all time. His experience, especially in the field of naval aviation, is quite unequalled.One needs to ration oneself, otherwise you won't put the book down.

Royal Navy pilot Eric Brown may well have been the best test pilot of his generation, and his memoir covers World War II and the years afterward, when the Royal Navy (RN) pioneered the introduction of jet aircraft on carriers. The RN was the first navy to see that the use of jets on carriers would require a redesign of carriers themselves, and Brown was in the middle of a process that provided this understanding to the US Navy and thereby led to the development of the modern angled-deck carrier. Brown had a front-row seat to a new age, and his writing will keep you turning the pages.

Having spent the last 30 years living and working next door to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, I've heard a LOT of flying stories. "You can always tell a fighter pilot...but you can't tell him much". Eric Winkle Brown's memoir is the best compilation of flying stories that I've ever heard. Imagine getting your very first flight with none other than Ernst Udet. Imagine flying F4F's off a converted banana boat during the darkest hours of WW2. Imagine flying captured Luftwaffe jets right out of Germany. Most ironic was the idea for the angled deck on aircraft carriers. Purely by accident the idea was sketched out in a board meeting for another reason when someone said "What a great idea for launching and recovering aircraft simultaneously". Great book. I'm ordering another one for a gift to a good friend and test pilot who flew in the same era.

I thoughly enjoyed this book. The author has flown virtually everthing as a test pilot and was also a English carrier pilot on HMS Audacity under very trying conditions.