I read the books in my list decades before I started writing air war stories. My first novel was a sci-fi space opera about hot starpilots flying from what I called “spacecraft carriers” in an interstellar war. Over the years I’ve flown sailplanes, power planes, and logged time in the SNJ and the DC-3. Since I was never there, flying high-performance airplanes in combat, I try to read all the histories and memoirs and pilot’s manuals I can get my hands on, and study pictures of the people, time, place, and airplanes I’m writing about.
I wrote...
Everything We Had: a Novel of the Pacific Air War November-December 1941
When the Arsenal of Democracy is only beginning to gear up for a world war, and the obsolescent and obsolete scrapings from the bottom of the barrel have been sent, then all that is left is the courage of individuals to face the enemy.
Those individuals must give everything they have to give to buy their country time to arm. Even if they give everything they have it will not be enough.
This book was the first adult air-war novel I read, and it pulled me right into the world of naval aviation in World War II.
The protagonist was young, fresh out of flight school and barely qualified to land on aircraft carriers. The author was a navy fighter pilot during World War II, and he put this youngster’s hands on the controls during some tough flying and fighting. After that, I was hooked!
This was one of the first books I read showing how, in 1939, no one knew how to fight a major air war. I didn’t know that meant the first year of World War II would be a series of bloody, deadly experiments.
This book brings out this uncertainty and the often-fatal consequences for a squadron of RAF pilots flying Hawker Hurricanes in defense of France. I’ve always loved the Hurricane, and wondered what it would be like to fly for the RAF in that time and place, to sit in the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane, and be both hunter and hunted.
This book let me live the story, as much as any story can.
From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane's cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close. Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe's seasoned pilots. And sometimes Fighter Command, with its obsolete tactics and stiff doctrines, is the real menace. As with all Robinson's novels, the raw dialogue, rich black humour and brilliantly rendered, adrenalin-packed dogfights bring…
This book came out a few years after World War II ended and became a movie and later a TV series.
I started watching the TV series when I was quite young, and in that impressionable time I was sure when I grew up I’d fly B-17s for General Savage and the 918th Bomb Group. This despite the fact that I was well aware of modern jet bombers like the B-52!
The book itself taught me a lot about what it’s like to command a bomb group during an air war. It contains one of the most detailed and exquisitely excruciating descriptions of a bomber mission ever written, in the present tense, as it was lived by the authors themselves, during their time with the 8th AF in 1943.
I’ve always loved the Republic F-105 Thunderchief. It’s one of those jets that look like it’s going Mach 2 sitting on the ground!
I know people who flew the airplane during the Vietnam War. This book has the inside scoop, since Wilson flew F-105s during Vietnam. It’s one hell of a ride, in the cockpit and out.
I’ll probably take that ride again, soon, if only to prepare for future oral history interviews with Thud drivers.
In 1966, the tide of the air war above North Vietnam is turning against the United States. F-105 Thunderchiefs, and the elite fighter pilots who fly them, are being slaughtered. To destroy the greatest array of sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons ever assembled, the Pentagon creates the Wild Weasel. The mission of Lt. Colonel Mack MacLendon's 357th Tactical Fighter Squadron is to fly these technological demons straight into the teeth of North Vietnam's deadly air defenses and destroy the SAMs and Soviet MiGs that have killed their friends, and now seek their death.
The first few pages are a great example of how to begin a story, right in the middle of the action, trying to land a shot-up F-100 Super Sabre.
You can see in your mind’s eye the concrete rectangle of the runway, feel the stick in your hand, see the gages showing that your engine and your hydraulic systems are bleeding out, and will you really make it to the runway? That’s a pretty good introduction!
Berent is a veteran fighter pilot with all sorts of stories to tell, not only limited to the cockpit in the air.
Rolling Thunder is an historical novel about the decisive role politics played during the Vietnam War. Its characters range from men in the field to the Pentagon and the White House. Fighter pilots and Special Forces warriors try to do their best but are hampered by President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and their staff members who despise the military. Only one aging USAF general, who fought in Korea and WWII, is on their side. His clashes with his Commander in Chief, Lyndon Johnson, are epic in proportion and startling in content.
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast into homes in the emerging West, sometimes providing loving new families, other times delivering kids into nightmares. Taken by a cruel New Mexico couple, William faced a terrible trial, but his strength and resilience carried him forward into unforgettable adventures.
Whether escaping his abusers, jumping freights as a preteen during the Great Depression, or infiltrating Japanese-held islands as a teenage Marine during WWII, William’s unique path paralleled the tumult of the twentieth century—and personified the American dream.
WINNER, DA VINCI EYE AWARD FOR COVER DESIGN, ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS
HONORABLE MENTION, ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS, E-BOOK NONFICTION
FINALIST, NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, E-BOOK NONFICTION
FINALIST, NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, MEMOIRS (Overcoming Adversity)
HONORABLE MENTION, READERS' FAVORITE BOOK AWARDS, GENERAL NONFICTION
From 1854 to the early 1930s, the American Orphan Trains transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast into homes in the emerging West. Unfortunately, families waiting for the trains weren’t always dreams come true—many times they were nightmares.
