What's your favourite aviation literature?

[timjnf]

I suspect, based on most of the books listed by other forumites, that my tastes in books is different than most (at least of those who shared their likes.)
Tough to pick a favorite. Of all the aviation related books I've read (and the list is lengthy even when all the textbooks and pictorial books are eliminated) my favorites are, in alphabetical order...
Fiction:
Blue Max - Hunter
Bomb Run - Spencer Dunmore
Last Dogfight - Caidin

Non-Fiction:
How We Invented the Airplane - Wright
Thunderbolt! - Robert Johnson with Caidin
Unlocking the Sky - Shulman (about Glenn Curtiss)

I have yet to read "A Gift of Wings". I have a copy, but it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the stack. I'm just finishing the last few chapters of "Angels & Demons" and Robert Buck's "North Star Over My Shoulder" is next on my reading list.

I considered it a pictorial book because of it's packaging (though maybe I should not), so, consequently, it was not included in the non-fiction section above, but for those of you who like stories of pilot's not related to war, Richard King's "Skies over Rhinebeck" is a great read. And it does pertain largely to flying WWI era aircraft. I don't know if I enjoyed it so much because it is well written or due to my love of ORA.

If Historicle fiction counts then To The Last Man by Jeff Shaara.

[John Masters]

Windsock Datafiles and "No Parachute", by A.G. Lee...


John

[Gregvan]

Hi.

I'm amazed no one has mentioned "Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps" by the great James McCudden (some editions going by the re-title Flying Fury, which McCudden would have hated). Certainly one of the most important, and best, memoirs of any WWI ace and a ripping good read.

Another personal favorite is "The Way of the Eagle" by Major Charles Biddle (some editions entitled "Fighting Airman, the Way of the Eagle").

I always find myself going back to "Wings of War" (Die Jagdstaffel unsere Heimat) by Rudolf Stark, and Ernst Udet's Mein Fliegerleben, translated into English as "Ace of the Black Cross" or "Ace of the Iron Cross".

If it's fiction you want, how about "Winged Warfare", by Billy Bishop?

Greg

[stephenl]

Horses Don't Fly Frederick Libby

[greenknight]

I'd have to say that A.G. Lee's "No Parachute", Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis, and Udet's "Ace of the Iron Cross" are among my favorites in terms of personal recollections of flying in WWI.

Read Biddle's book some years ago as well as Willy Coppens' memoir "Flying in Flanders"(?) and would like to reread them as well.

As for the larger context of WWI, I am meaning to reread Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August", and loved Stephen O'Shea's "Back to the Front: An Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I."

[spacecrow]

Originally Posted by Cobby

'Recollections OF An Airman', by Louis Strange just pipping 'The Friendless Sky' by Alexnader McKee.

The Friendless Sky was my first book, still a favorite. Also as mentioned "No Parachute" and the Yeates book.

[Ginger.]

I've got a severe dose of 'Bristol Fighteritus' after this year's Flying Legends!
So my favourite book at the moment is Roger Vee's 'Flying Minnows'.

I still again and again open Greg V.s and Norman F.s Osprey books. Both profiles of aircrats and the story is perfect...only it could have more pages
Than Septemeber Evening is my favoutite as well though controversal at any passages.
Honza.

[Simba]

<finishes a 'Gift of Wings', starts re-reading Oliver Stewart and Arthur Longman's classic 'The Clouds Remember'>