Here are 100 books that Fighter Heroes of WWI fans have personally recommended if you like
Fighter Heroes of WWI.
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I had finished The Bluebird Trilogy, three novels that centred on the first half of the Second World War, and I heard echoes of the Great War ringing faintly in the egos of my older characters. I started to read more of the history and was drawn to the aerial maelstrom that befell the RFC over Arras in 1917. I was also interested in working with a larger cast of characters, many transients, and telling their stories over a short stretch of time. The result was Major Claypole and Jackdaw Squadron, Glory Boys every last one.
Robinson’s tale of Goshawk Squadron battling the odds in the last year of the Great War cuts through the Biggles-style myths and legends that had dominated the public perception for many years. He shines a light on the bleak and terrifying business of aerial warfare and unflinchingly portrays the horror and helplessness of becoming the loser in a dogfight to the death. Yet from this foreboding vista he prises shining nuggets of laugh-out-loud humour, albeit of the gallows variety. Robinson’s spot-on characterisations and skilfully written battle narratives will place you in the rattling cockpit of a biplane in the hostile hunting grounds over France. This 50th-anniversary reissue is a well-deserved accolade.
Set during the height of World War I in January 1918, Goshawk Squadron follows the misfortunes of a British flight squadron on the Western Front. For Stanley Woolley, commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron, the romance of chivalry in the clouds is just a myth. The code he drums into his men is simple and savage: shoot the enemy in the back before he knows you're there. Even so, he believes the whole squadron will be dead within three months. A monumental work at the time of its original release, Booker-shortlisted Goshawk Squadron is now viewed as a classic in the…
I had finished The Bluebird Trilogy, three novels that centred on the first half of the Second World War, and I heard echoes of the Great War ringing faintly in the egos of my older characters. I started to read more of the history and was drawn to the aerial maelstrom that befell the RFC over Arras in 1917. I was also interested in working with a larger cast of characters, many transients, and telling their stories over a short stretch of time. The result was Major Claypole and Jackdaw Squadron, Glory Boys every last one.
By the measure of its daily casualty rate, The Battle of Arras was the costliest British offensive of the First World War, far higher than either the Somme or Passchendaele. One survivor described it as 'the most savage infantry battle of the war.' The strength of this history derives from the fact that Nicholls interviewed so many (now deceased) veterans of both sides and uses their words to inject a visceral dynamism into his text. He takes us from early breakthroughs by the British forces to the, perhaps inevitable, final stalemate. Cuttingly, Nicholls lifts his title directly from a comment made by an officer who rationalised the enormous slaughter as a ‘cheerful sacrifice’ on the part of the soldiers who served and died at his behest.
In this book, Nicholls provides an account o f the 39-day long battle of Arras, which remains the most le thal and costly British offensive of WW1. He reveals the hor rors of trench warfare and the bravery of the soldiers who f ought in the war. '
I had finished The Bluebird Trilogy, three novels that centred on the first half of the Second World War, and I heard echoes of the Great War ringing faintly in the egos of my older characters. I started to read more of the history and was drawn to the aerial maelstrom that befell the RFC over Arras in 1917. I was also interested in working with a larger cast of characters, many transients, and telling their stories over a short stretch of time. The result was Major Claypole and Jackdaw Squadron, Glory Boys every last one.
The First World War stripped Britain of hundreds of thousands of its young men. In an age where women’s lives were funnelled towards the certainty of marriage, this left a big shortfall on the balance sheet of matrimony, creating what became known as the Surplus Women. Now they had to find their own sources of income and become responsible for their own future happiness.
Nicholson curates many memoirs and diaries of such women from all tiers of society. Adding material from interviews she conducted herself, she tells the stories of lost potential and loneliness, together with inspirational tales of liberation, fresh-forged independence, and the unprecedented freedom that self-reliance brought for those who rose to the challenge.
The First World War deprived Britain of three-quarters of a million soldiers, with as many more incapacitated. In 1919 a generation of women who unquestioningly believed marriage to be their birthright discovered that there were, quite simply, not enough men to go round. The press ran alarming stories about the `Problem of the Surplus Women - Two Million who can never become Wives . . .'. But behind the headlines were thousands of brave, emancipated individuals forced by a tragedy of historic proportions to rethink their entire futures.
Tracing their fates, Virginia Nicholson shows how the single woman of the…
I had finished The Bluebird Trilogy, three novels that centred on the first half of the Second World War, and I heard echoes of the Great War ringing faintly in the egos of my older characters. I started to read more of the history and was drawn to the aerial maelstrom that befell the RFC over Arras in 1917. I was also interested in working with a larger cast of characters, many transients, and telling their stories over a short stretch of time. The result was Major Claypole and Jackdaw Squadron, Glory Boys every last one.
Bloody April was a month well-named. The Royal Flying Corp lost one in three of its pilots, with the average life expectancy of a newly arrived airman dropping to less than two weeks. Pushed by the commanders and planners at HQ, they continued to rise against these horrible odds in flimsy biplanes without parachutes. Their young lives were gambled away for the prize of the reconnaissance photographs that the survivors might bring back, grainy images upon which the planning for the ground battle so depended. Hart mixes the hard facts and figures with the personal recollections of those that fought this desperate battle and those that watched and waited on the ground. This book is a sharp and inciteful history that takes you on an emotional journey.
The story of the decimation of the Royal Flying Corps over Arras in 1917
As the Allies embarked upon the Battle of Arras, they desperately needed accurate aerial reconnaissance photographs. But by this point the Royal Flying Club were flying obsolete planes. The new German Albatros scouts massively outclassed them in every respect: speed, armament, ability to withstand punishment and manoeuverability. Many of the RFC's pilots were straight out of flying school - as they took to the air they were sitting targets for the experienced German aces.
Over the course of 'Bloody April' the RFC suffered casualties of over…
As an American novelist and Anglophile who enjoys writing about British history, I never planned to venture into world war fiction, but once a story led me there I was hooked. I love doing deep-dive research and learning about real men and women of the past who faced high stakes: life and death situations and having to make impossible decisions, both on the battlefield and in the hidden world of espionage. Their courage and resourcefulness inspire me, and I realize that even when we’re at our most vulnerable, we can still rise to become our best and bravest when it counts.
I was fascinated by A.J. Evans’s 1922 memoir, relating his experiences as a WWI Royal Flying Corps pilot working for Army Intelligence before his plane went down and he was captured by the enemy. His words illuminated for me the hardships he faced as a POW, and all of the energy and genius he put into planning his numerous escape attempts – and nearly succeeded. With each failed attempt, the enemy moved him to a different camp, until finally he did gain his freedom in an incredible feat of human strength. Evans’s story was as valuable as it was entertaining and offered me a personal look at his life behind the barbed wire.
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
My father was a pilot in WW2 and I learned to fly in Africa when I was 17. Subsequently I flew biplanes, some of them like the ones in these books, made of wood, glue, and fabric. Since childhood, I've been fascinated by flying in WW1. It was a time of incredible change. The dawn of aviation, when designers and pilots barely understood what they were doing. Biographies written at the time are typically laconic, “emotionally repressed” might be modern. So these novels help us understand today some of those stresses and joys of these remarkable adventurers who dared to undertake what mankind had never done before; fight in the heavens.
Smith served in WW2 in the RAF and is more famous for his 633 Squadron series set in WW2, which coincidentally is one of the best WW2 flying movies. The flying scenes are as good as they get, the aircraft details and performance are accurate, the plot twisting, and the love relationships are…complicated. But in this book, you will identify with the hero and find yourself rooting for him as he battles Germans in the air and an enemy in his own squadron while on the ground. Gripping and fast-moving.
When Norman McConnell, a young and eager American joins 55a Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps in Flanders, he is immediately captivated by the charm of his commanding officer, John Seymour — the handsome, aristocratic and brilliant flyer whose ever-increasing bag of enemy aircraft is fast making him the toast of the RFC.
Then McConnell falls in love with Helen, Seymour’s wife, and finds another, darker side to his hero’s character — a man who glories in killing and who wants women to scream out in pain as he makes love to them...
I’m a middle school science teacher, and many of my students are “readers,” the ones that constantly have their heads in books when they aren’t dragged away by classwork. I created this list because they remind me of what I enjoyed about reading when I was their age, the environment. Characters and plots were great, but I wanted a book to take me somewhere I’d never been. Whether it was the Klondike or soaring through clouds, I needed to believe it was real, someplace I might see for myself. Vivid descriptions that provide fuel for imagination make reading more dynamic.
I grew up on Air Force bases, and like most kids, I wanted to fly planes. Arthur Lee gave me the chance to not just fly, but to experience the thrilling life of a pilot during the first world war. His description of life for a fighter pilot in those early days of military aviation captured my heart. The way they lived and the realities they faced revealed on those pages I devoured without sleep. I couldn’t put it down.
From the young airmen who took their frail machines high above the trenches of World War I and fought their foes in single combat there emerged a renowned company of brilliant aces - among them Ball, Bishop, McCudden, Collishaw and Mannock - whose legendary feats have echoed down half a century. But behind the elite there were, in the Royal Flying Corps, many hundreds of other airmen who flew their hazardous daily sorties in outdated planes without ever achieving fame. Here is the story of one of these unknown flyers - a story based on letters written on the day,…
My books and articles of narrative history written for general audiences explore how American society has gone to war and the fraught yet essential relationship between military and civilian life. I use the techniques developed in my work as a journalist to bring to life individuals and tell true, deeply researched stories with vivid characters and the page-turning propulsion of a thriller.
Pilots in World War One were a breed apart. They had embarked on the creation of an entirely new dimension of warfare and, in many aspects, leaped off the earth like gods while the Tommies, poilus and doughboys battled in the trenches and mud below. But these warriors were doing so in the most harrowing conditions, in flimsy wood and canvas biplanes, risking hypoxia and hypothermia, anti-aircraft fire, and deadly dogfights, and, on the Allies’ side, being shot down without parachutes. Little wonder that fighter pilots lived on average for less than three weeks at the front. Cecil Lewis describes the exultation and the brutality of this war in sharply etched, often lyrical prose. The extraordinary thing is how he loved the air war: “To be alone, to have your life in your own hands, to use your own skill, single-handed, against the enemy. It was like the lists of…
'This is a book everyone should read. It is the autobiography of an ace, and no common ace either. The boy had all the noble tastes and qualities, love of beauty, soaring imagination, a brilliant endowment of good looks ...this prince of pilots ...had a charmed life in every sense of the word' - George Bernard ShawSent to France with the Royal Flying Corps at just seventeen, and later a member of the famous 56 Squadron, Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a…
My passion for flying old aeroplanes led me to the pilots who flew them in history, and my particular fascination is with the interwar period and the ‘Golden Age of Aviation’, which saw the establishment of the early commercial air routes and the historic solo flights by pilots flying basic machines and pushing themselves and their aircraft to the very limits of endurance to prove that it could be done. I was absolutely mesmerised by the stories of their bravery and obsession. My recommended books all share the theme of pioneering aviation as this has been a consuming interest for much of my adult life, both in and out of the cockpit.
I loved reading about these very early pioneers who today are largely forgotten or never known, notably Frank McLean, who met the Wright brothers, and went on to cut an irresistibly romantic, dare-devil figure.
He became an overnight celebrity when he flew a flimsy seaplane between the towers of Tower Bridge in London in 1912. After the First World War, he was one of the first pilots flying to Africa and down the Nile in what would become one of the early air routes for Imperial Airways in the 1930s.
Also, Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame, who was tragically killed in a freak incident at the Bournemouth air display in 1910, the first Brit to be killed in a flying accident.
I’m a historian and professor in Louisiana, in the southern United States. When I was an undergraduate in college (many years ago!), I embraced the opportunity to study diverse subjects, ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. I became fascinated by medicine and health and their relationship to history, society, and international relations–and have remained fascinated ever since. These interests led me to study humanitarianism and its place in 20th-century US foreign relations and international history. Over the years, I have researched and written two books and more than 20 articles on these subjects, and I love sharing this history with readers and students alike.
More than a century has passed since the First World War, but this book shows us that its humanitarian legacies are well worth remembering.
I appreciate this book for many reasons, but most of all, for the truly global perspective its authors take. They make it clear that the Great War was truly a world war. More than this, it should be remembered as a global humanitarian crisis. The authors examine many diverse efforts to assist both soldiers and civilians while also considering the messy politics involved in these relief efforts.
I find this book valuable for revealing the complex relationships between aid workers and relief recipients, a dynamic as central today as it was 100 years ago.
This book provides fresh perspectives on a key period in the history of humanitarianism. Drawing on economic, cultural, social and diplomatic perspectives, it explores the scale and meaning of humanitarianism in the era of the Great War. Foregrounding the local and global dimensions of the humanitarian responses, it interrogates the entanglement of humanitarian and political interests and uncovers the motivations and agency of aid donors, relief workers and recipients. The chapters probe the limits of humanitarian engagement in a period of unprecedented violence and suffering and evaluate its long-term impact on humanitarian action.
