Fictional Novels of the Great War in the Air (a list)

[rainbase]

"A Killing For The Hawks". I first read this years ago and liked it. I actually went back and reread it less than a year ago when I found a copy in hardcover. Here's the deal with this one: I don't find it particularly well written but think it's a terrific story. This one could make a great movie. The conflict between the young American and his squadron commander make for taught suspense.

Make this one into a movie!

[NeilE]

"Beryl Of The Biplane"? I just got to read that... hopefully it delivers all of its title's promise!

I just re-read the Robinson trilogy and I am now less complementary of these works than previously.

Looking at Goshawk squadron as the first book, written tens years before the next, it shows up as a work of a younger author. It is more angry and also more superficial in some ways. He sketches out his out his basic ideas about the nature of the air conflict here, which re-appear in a more mature form in War Story. Most of his characters in Goshawk Squadron are less developed and rarely show a lot of depth though he puts more energy in the development of Wooley as a character. The problem with that is Wooley as a character more fully developed suffers as a result of the lack of development of the support characters. Thus their interactions lack dynamism and Wooley ends up looking like an over the top clichéd caricature.

I found War Story to be the strongest of the three works. Much better character development, a more mature outlook in his interpretation of the events he develops, and a much more restrained style of writing. The placement and motivations of the characters in War Story are much more understandable than in Goshawk squadron, and it is a much more believable work as a result. Whilst Goshawk Squadron is a much more superficially bleak work (you just know the characters are all doomed), the mood of War Story is much more random and there is not a sense of over-riding logic to the events in the air, and the war in the general, which seem to happen without a sense of the author guiding it towards a central agenda. Things happen because they do and can. Characters react to events in the book without descending to cliché. Which is a big step forward beyond Goshawk Squadron.

Hornets Sting is perhaps the most pointless of the three books and Robinson retreats too often in clichéd vignettes regarding the illogicality of war and the army - creating an almost Catch-22 feel to it (as in Cleve-Cutler's relationship with the rats under his hut for example). The problem is Catch 22 has already been written, so the book comes off as derivative as a result. Its description of events in the air war are realistic however, which is good. Robinson had a problem in this book, which as a middle volume in a trilogy, he created a task of linking this book to the first and third (written first of course). Robinson the author of Hornet Sting is closer to Robinson the author of War Story, than he is to Robinson the author of Goshawk Squadron. The linkages between War Story and Hornet's sting are obvious but are far less so in the case of Goshawk Squadron. I have problems accepting the link between the rational sympathetic Wooley in Hornets Sting to the raging, almost hopeless Wooley in Goshawk Squadron. The disjuncture overall is too great and is, I believe, a result of book 3 in the trilogy being written first (whether he ever intended to writer a trilogy when he wrote Goshawk Squadron is unknown - I would think he didn't). My major disappointment with Hornets Sting was how many of the surviving characters from War Story descend into clichéd caricature in Hornets Sting (The Doctor, Lacey, Cleve-Cutler for example). I think he had difficulty maintaining the strength of these characters and descended to cliché as a result. Paxton, O'Neill and the early Wooley are strong characters - he can rely on the continuity from War Story for some of that but most of the newer characters - such as MacKenzie, are much weaker. One thing in Hornet Sting that irritated me is that it lacks an explanation of why in Goshawk Squadron, Wooley is obsessed by the dead Mackenzie. That doesn't come across in Hornet's Sting and is an example of the disjuncture I was talking about earlier.

I find Robinson's women characters in all three books to be his weakest - they seem all to be jolly good types available to the pilots for sex and little else. All of them are used as sounding boards for the war, and seem to be the same character constantly re-written.

Personally, I'd recommend reading War Story and not expending the energy on the other two books. They are largely a waste of time unless you just like reading about Great War aviation for the sake of it.

Goshawk Squadron was nominated for the Booker Prize but as I stated above, it is not the strongest work in the series, and suffers in comparison to War Story. Robinson obviously has a strong association with his subject matter and maybe he would have been better served by treating the three books as separate entities, rather than as three inter-related works.

Regards

Neil

[dpolglaze]

Peter,

See also this thread: WW1 Fiction

There are others - search fiction in books and magazines and you'll find more.

Dan

[Gregvan]

Hi,

For my money, the best parts of Peter Saxon's WWI trilogy about 'Frank Thompson" were the magnificent wraparound paintings by the superb Brian Knight which served as covers for the first paperback editions. Pete shared the first one from The Unfeeling Sky, but the image he posted for the second book the Enemy Sky must have come from a later edition. Here's the cover to my very worn copy, with the great Brian Knight art:


Not only were Brian's paintings highly accurate in terms of aircraft details and colors, they depicted very specific events and characters in the novels. The Knight art for the third book The Warring Sky, (which I've misplaced) featured SE 5a's dueling with Gothas over England in broad daylight - great stuff!

[Mark Turner]

Some more titles to add to the list:

Wings (1977) and Wings over Enemy Lines (1978) by Barry Thomas.
The Young Eagles (1979) by Ian Cameron (pseudonym of Donald Payne)
A Falcon for the Hawks (1982) by Clive Egleton
The Wings of the Morning (1989) by Patrick Garland

Regards
Mark

[karrart]

Originally Posted by Gregvan

Hi,

For my money, the best parts of Peter Saxon's WWI trilogy about 'Frank Thompson" were the magnificent wraparound paintings by the superb Brian Knight which served as covers for the first paperback editions. Pete shared the first one from The Unfeeling Sky, but the image he posted for the second book the Enemy Sky must have come from a later edition.... the great Brian Knight art.....
Not only were Brian's paintings highly accurate in terms of aircraft details and colors, they depicted very specific events and characters in the novels. The Knight art for the third book The Warring Sky, (which I've misplaced) featured SE 5a's dueling with Gothas over England in broad daylight - great stuff!

I'm not familiar with the books- but thanks for showing the great Brian Knight cover. Darn, he was good.
Robert Karr
OLD BIRDS STAYING ALIVE - THE AVIATION ART OF ROBERT KARR

[Gregvan]

Hi Again,

A few random comments:

In my opinion the best WWI aviation novels are usually those written by men who were actually there. From this select group come such classics as Winged Victory and the various Elliott White Springs novels. My personal favorite is Falcons of France by the incomparable team of Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, more famous as the authors of Mutiny on the Bounty and their authoritative history of the Lafayette Flying Corps. Both authors were veteran fighter pilots of the Lafayette Flying Corps, and this resulted in an extremely authentic novel based very closely on their own experiences; it can almost be used as a valid historical source in its own right. The young protagonist Selden follows the exact same path many of the LFC volunteers, and he crosses paths with Dr. Gros, Lufbery, Nungesser and several other actual historical characters. If you want to find out what life in the LFC was like, there is hardly a better book.

I'm probably going off-topic, but there were several German historical novels dealing with WWI aviation as well (and no doubt some French ones too, etc) in the 1930's. In some cases these were thinly-veiled autobiographical accounts by actual airmen, and others were fictionalized accounts of real people or units, sometimes with pseudonyms replacing actual names. Naturally, most were of a highly propagandistic nature. The following may be of little interest to most of our members, but just FYI, here are a few I happen to have:

Jagdstaffel 356 by M.E. Kähnert. This is an account of a German Jasta in the final year of the war, and based very loosely on the real Bavarian Jasta 16 with plenty of artistic license and incidents from other units. Oddly enough, it's even illustrated with photos of actual historical pilots such as Fritz von Röth, Brauneck, and Kurt Wolff - passed off as the characters. The Jasta commander Oblt. Olden is based on Röth. Luckily this work was translated by the ubiquitous Claud W. Sykes and published in English in London in the 1930s. A new edition was republished by Greenhill books in 1985.

Vom 'Häs'chen' zum Sturzflieger by Walther Stahn, Hamburg. This follows the tale of a typical recruit named Berg, from the cavalry into the air service as a novice pilot through to his time as an accomplished Jagdflieger flying Fokker Triplanes in a Jagdgeschwader. Again, illustrated with official WWI photos.

Wir Flieger by Otto Fuchs. The author was a real Bavarian fighter pilot who flew in Jagdstaffeln 11, 30, 35b and commanded 77b. This autobiographical novel follows his career from his days as an artillery flier piloting Roland C.II's, to his brief time in "Jagdstaffel 100" (Jasta 11) and then in "Jagdstaffel 136" (Jasta 30). He uses pseudonyms for all the other characters which are based closely on real personalities. This is a beautifully written book devoid of propaganda, with wonderfully detailed character studies. If you can read German fluently, there's no better book of this genre.

The Nazi propagandist who wrote under the pen-name 'Thor Goote' wrote a number of historical novels about real aviation heroes of WWI, very closely based on the real people and (if one can get past the propaganda) are possibly pretty accurate. Goote's book 'rangehn ist Alles is his version of the story of Manfred and Lothar von Richthofen, and includes Boelcke, Erwin Boehme, Kurt Wolff and others we know so well. It's a work of fiction, but 'Goote' consulted with the families of Boelcke, Boehme, Tutschek, and such folks as General Haehnelt, Hans Lübbert and Kurt Wolff's fiancé when he researched the book. He wrote a similar book on Rudolf Berthold called Kamerad Berthold, der unvergleichliche Franke and an episodic little book named Glühender Tag, Männer in der Bewährung which also featured such worthies as Boelcke, Boehme and von Tutschek.

I know there are many others, but these are the ones I know a little about...

[Mark Turner]

Another title I have come across is the juvenile novel Billy Barcroft RNAS by Percy F Westerman

[Doc]

A little early to really be considered a WWI novel, but due to its subject matter, you might want to include H.G. Wells' "The World Set Free", 1914. He has some great lines: "So it was that war in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like archangels. The sky rained heros upon the astonished earth. Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, besides this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph,this headlong sweep to death?"

He was certainly aware of the Balkan wars and their aerial component, and may have seen a bit of early WWI in the air (don't know exactly when it was published in 1914), but interesting to look at. Doc

[Pete Hill]

To Rainbase,
Hi Jan,
thanks heaps for that very long list. I have Googled a lot of them, trying to find out more details and I think I will try and track a few down on ebay or abebooks.
The one you mentioned- "Flight to Victory" by Richard Hough. I think I have read that one! Only I the edition I read had a different title- 'B Flight'. If I recall, it was written for younger readers and it was about a youngster of 16 named Will who is a schoolboy who is a talented long-distance runner. To the disappointment of his family, his village and his young sweetheart, he narrowly loses a championship race. To escape from the shame, he enlists under-age in the RFC and eventually ends up in France where he receives a decoration for his courage in fierce engagement with some Albatrosses. Not surprisingly, he returns home a hero.
Although essentially a romanticized adventure story, I remember there were some effective sequences such as the scenes at training school where the new cadets watch in horror as a fellow pupil is killed on his first solo.
That Arch Whitehouse must have been a very prolific author as his list of books is extensive and he seems to have written quite a few on the WW1 air war.
I also have fond memories of the John Harris WW1 novels that centred on the hero Martin Falcouner. I have read both The Professionals and The Victors when I was about 13 and my school library had them. Unfortunately, I have never seen them since although I may have more luck on abebooks. I have never read the first in the series- The Fledgelings. The only John Harris WW1 novel I actually own is Convenant with Death which is about a new Battalion of Kitchener Volunteers which the story takes from their enlistment, training and utter destruction on the first day of the Somme.
Thanks , Pete