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

[Pete Hill]

Part 2

I have just started another thread on the way the German air-force is depicted in the novel so I won't go into it again here.
However on another point, I greatly admire the sheer honesty of the book as Tom comes across as a character that is very human and very believable. He shows bravery through his endurance of circumstances that he is finding it more and more difficult to get through. But he also shows vulnerabilities and in-securities, making him very much a real human being.
It is interesting to compare this work with another book called 'A real good war' by Sam Helprett. Helprett served as a navigator on a B-17 in the US 8th air-force,completing a tour of bombing missions over Germany in 1944-45. This novel is a semi-autobiographical depiction of his own experiences and he only wrote it in 2001. I would not be at all surprised if Yeates novel was a big influence on Helprett as there are things the two novels have in common. The central character in Helprett's novel is a Navigator on a B-17 and he reminded me of Tom Cundall, as he is brave and wants to do his duty but he is no hero and also wants to survive this exprience and get back home.
The navigator has to fight a long-running battle with fear and he has to endure all its symptoms- sleepless-ness, mood-swings, tension, anger, resentment. Shock and grief are added to his woes when his closest friend is killed through a mid-air collision en route to target.
Like Cundall, the navigator feels a mixture of awe, resentment, admiration and a little bafflement at the more heroic and inspiring of his comrades, in this case a veteran squadron-leader. He can never bring himself to understand this apparent lack of fear, the drive for glory and the lust to strike at the enemy again and again that the officer displays. He also feels resentment because the officer's drive will drag him and all of the other men behind him into battle and danger again and again.
Again, like Cundall in Yeates novel, the central character of Helprett's book just wants to survive, get the job done with a minimum of fuss, no more, no less. He feels only relief when he sees on the operational list that his name is not included for the following days mission or when he wakes up and sees the weather is too lousy for flying. He counts each mission down until he reaches the golden number of thirty when he will be allowed to go home.
In "Winged Victory", Tom Cundall puts in a lacklustre effort on one sortie, having decided that he wants to do the bare minimum to get through this nightmare and survive. The new CO reprimands him for not putting in enough effort and Tom feels indignation and resentment at this charge which is a very human reaction for some-one who knows deep-down that they are guilty.
Like the navigator in 'A Real Good War', Tom displays the same feelings of awe and resentment at those members of his unit who achieve high stature, glory and heroism, never wavering in their determination to kill Huns and build up their victory scores. Flight-Leader Beal and Squadron-Leader Mac are the two men that Tom views in this way and as much as he grudgingly admires them, he is also baffled by their never-ending lust for combat. Not to mention, he resents that he has to follow them into danger. When Beal is killed, Tom eventually confesses with shame to a friend that the first reaction he felt was relief.
There are relatively few air-war novels and non-fiction memoirs where the central figure displays real fear and human frailties. Australian writer Don Charlwood's superb account of his experiences with RAF Bomber Command in WW2- "No Moon Tonight"; Former WW2 Luftwaffe Messerschmitt pilot Gunther Bloemertz's "Heaven Next Stop"; French WW2 fighter ace Pierre Clostermann's "The Big Show" and Roald Dahl's memoirs of his experiences as a Hurricane pilot during the Greek campaign in 1941- "Going Solo" are other examples of former pilots who have been prepared to not just write of their experiences but also bare their soul in telling how traumatic and difficult they found those times.
Most books of this genre tend to adopt either a coldly detached air or have a more heroic tone. Read Clostermann's "The Big Show" and then read Johnnie Johnston's "Wing Leader", both books dealing with fighter units flying in the same theatre at the same time and one could be forgiven that both men were fighting entirely different wars. Johnston's account is so understated, mild, even flippant and heroically detached.
In "Winged Victory", Tom Cundall, towards the end of the book, has lost both his closest friends in action and he is heading towards a nervous breakdown through exhaustion and stress. The odd thing is that as much as he was anti-heroic, Tom did achieve a kind of heroism as he did endure combat duty for a prolonged period of time and he did manage to fight and keep down his fear for so long. In the end, it is grief over losing dear friends and trauma at both suffering and inflicting death that gets the better of him. During WW2, famous English bomber pilot Leonard Cheshire wrote that he disliked and disagreed with being thought of as a hero. He admitted that he was a freak of nature, being blessed with a constitution that felt no fear. Cheshire said the true heroes were the men who were scared stiff, even petrified, but kept on flying and fighting, doing their best.
The character of Tom Cundall represents these men and perhaps symbolises the vast, silent, often over-looked majority of air-men in war. The gallant, heroic Aces may get all the attention but Yeates has let us see the air-war through the more human eyes of the rank-and-file.

[Roadhog]

Dear gang, Here is an oldie to add to the list, Flight to Victory by Richard Hough. It was written for a youth audience ans published in 1970 and republished in 1985. It is a really good read with tons of useful data on flight training in it. The author spent four years in the RAF as a pilot during WWII. Scott

[Roadhog]

Dang it! I did not see Richard Hough's book on the original list since you used the 1985 publishing date. Sorry. But I did not see a nifty little book about an S.E.5.a squadron called The Rage of Angels. Sadly I loaned the book to a friend and it moved away. No other data other than it was a decent read. VR, Scott

PS Is anybody else having a lot of trouble posting on the Forum? This was my fourth attempt.

[rainbase]

I just finished reading another novel based around our favorite subject:

Gentlemen Of Adventure
By Ernest Gann
Arbor House , NY 1983
445 pages

Having long been of fan of Gann's 1966 WW1 masterpiece "In The Company Of Eagles", over the years I've made it a point to read everything by this famed pilot/author that came my way. Gann has literally published dozens of books, most having aviation themes and with more than a few having been turned into movies (Fate Is The Hunter, The High And The Mighty, The Aviator). Gann began flying during the Great Depression and over his long career is said to have flown in everything from WW1 era biplanes to F-15's.

"Gentlemen Of Adventure" is a sprawling novel that somewhat mirrors the authors own long career in aviation. It tells the story of two mid-western buddies who, after a chance meeting with the aircraft pioneer Glenn Curtis, are "bitten by the bug" and embark themselves on a half-century journey in aviation.

Kiffan Draper and Toby Bryant are the two fictional characters Gann uses to chronicle aviation from the early pre-war years through the dawning of the jet age. Although their personalities are very different (Bryant is staid and methodical while Draper is flamboyant and rash) their love of flying becomes a common bond that has them crossing paths repeatedly through the years, despite the very different directions their flying careers will lead them.

About 100 pages of this long novel are devoted to Great War aviation. Enlisting in French Aviation. The flashy Kiffan Draper lands in a Nieuport Escadrille while the more conservative Toby Bryant finds himself pushing Caudron two-seaters around the skies over the front.

In the years immediately following the war, the friends work together briefly in barnstorming before their adventures again separate them. Bryant's career chronicles a long rise in commercial aviation, while Draper, ever the adventurer, follows a course that has him flying in Hollywood movies, as a air racing pilot, aircraft testing and even working as a mercenary pilot in China and eventually Spain.

"Gentlemen Of Adventure" is an ambitious work. Gann uses his dual characters to highlight many of the important developments and characters in aviation history, and while the novel has a bit of a "too packed in" feel to it's events and celebrities, the story remains plausible. While the wartime flying of this novel may not have have the intensity of the earlier "In The Company Of Eagles", it's a satisfying read nevertheless. The best written flying scenes though take place in the cockpits of the early airliners, a subject Gann is most familiar with: when Gann puts you in an aging Fokker Tri-Motor running low on fuel and blind in bad weather it is simply gripping.

So then, I give this work a hearty enough endorsement. Ernest Gann was easily one of the most important aviation writers of the 20th Century and this novel from late in his career is a fine tribute to the men and women who lived that history.

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I've started reading another novel, a WW1 flying tale called "Red Flight Two" by Milton Dank (1981). I'm only sixteen pages into this one and, folks, it doesn't look promising. It's 1916 and Edward Burton, an American in the RFC is a burnt out top ace. After two years at the front, Burton is now an instructor training hapless pilots in England on Sopwith Camels. Before joining the Flying Corps we learn he had learned to fly at Issudon (using his own money!). Sixteen pages into it and it seems like the author hasn't gotten much right. The character even calls the Germans "Jerry". Oh well. To it's credit, this novel is fairly short, so I might just force myself to get through it..... sigh.