The Big Show

By Pierre Clostermann,

Book cover of The Big Show

Book description

'THE BIG SHOW is as close as you'll ever get to fighting for your life from the cockpit of a Spitfire or Typhoon. Perhaps the most viscerally exciting book ever written by a fighter pilot.' Rowland White


Pierre Clostermann DFC was one of the oustanding Allied aces of the Second…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Big Show as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is not an engineering book per se, but one written by an engineer/fighter pilot in WW2. His aircraft was a Hawker Tempest, one of the last and fastest piston-engined fighters. The following quote describes his final flight before demobilization and shows his deep love for the engineering marvel that he flew:

And in that narrow cockpit I wept, as I shall never weep again, when I felt the concrete brush against his wheels and, with I great sweep of the wrist, dropped him on the ground like a cut flower. 

As always, I carefully cleared the engine, turned…

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