Why am I passionate about this?
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.
Tom's book list on air war stories that put you in the cockpit
Why did Tom love this book?
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.
3 authors picked Piece of Cake as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
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…