The most recommended WW2 aviation books

There are several fascinating memoirs by ATA pilots including those by Diana Barnato Walker and the fittingly named Nancy Bird, but I was lucky enough to know Mary Ellis so her words speak most directly to me. A life recounted in sensible tones, reading this book it is easy to imagine you are settled into an armchair across from Mary, while at the same time realising that she would be much more comfortable in the cockpit of a Spitfire. By the end of the war she had delivered 400 Spitfires and flown 72 different types of aircraft. ‘Who needs love’, Ellis wrote, ‘when there is the ultimate thrill of speed, the sky, and the orgasmic experience of piloting the best fighter aircraft in the world?’ Enough said.

When Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the Enola Gay’s crack navigator, decided to self-publish his memoirs, he was over 90. He told me he wanted it as a legacy to his family. Many of his friends, however, said he waited until everyone else was dead so he could have the last word! Knowing Dutch’s impish sense of humor, I suspect it was a little of both.

No matter. Sue Dietz has done a wonderful job of chronicling Van Kirk’s long and eventful life. Further, it allowed me a clearer window into the life of bombardier Tom Ferebee—Dutch’s lifelong best friend. Just as important, Sue was extremely generous in allowing me to liberally quote from her work; my book is the better for it. 

Geoffrey Wellum was the youngest pilot to fly in the Battle of Britain, getting his wings as a teenager. I love this book for its beautiful descriptions of flight training, the rigors of squadron life, and the odd way he feels after taking a life in combat–all while being so young he sleeps in his childhood bedroom when returning home on leave.

But I love this book most because Wellum kept these stories to himself for almost forty years, writing these memoirs and then publishing them only when he was in his old age.

This beautiful memory of life as a fighter pilot is Wellum’s one and only book and one of the great adventure books of all time. 

War is a fundamentally human enterprise. This vivid retelling of how pioneering figures like Haywood Hansell and Curtis LeMay struggled to make the best and most humane use of the powerful new military technology of high-altitude aerial bombardment is also a parable for our age. 

In the book, which began as a podcast and whose audiobook is especially engaging, Malcolm Gladwell explores themes still with us as we wrestle with how to ethically adopt AI-driven autonomous weapons and the uses to which they should be put.

This a rare autobiography about flying in RAF Bomber Command from the perspective of a navigator rather than a pilot.

Also unusual among books of this nature, the author flew in the Halifax rather than the Lancaster. The book opens as the author prepares to report for induction into the RAF and follows him through initial, advanced, and operational training, then into the war and the early post-war period as well.

Although written long after the events depicted, the author relied on his diaries, letters, and logbooks when putting it together, so it does not feel distant from events or didactic.

The author does not focus on the darkness but instead tells his story in an easy, anecdotal fashion. His voice and personality shine through, engaging you easily. 

This book is written about my uncle Bob Allen. He was a career RAF officer, not easy to know, quite distant and intimidating, and he had a secret.

This is a true story that lay deliberately hidden for fifty years until unearthed on his death by the author. I say deliberately because of the need – common-felt amongst survivors of war – to remain tight-lipped. Even when his hand-written memoirs were discovered, they had been written in the third person. But this is the story of an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary times. He joined the RAF aged nineteen, was flying a Hurricane in dogfights that year, saw action in West Africa, in Normandy at D-Day, was shot down, presumed killed and captured by the SS. Interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Stalag-Luft 3. In 1945, he suffered one of the infamous winter marches on which many POWs… show more.

As a bomber guy to the core, I approached this book with a silent groan—ugh, another Tom Cruise tale. Was I ever wrong! ‘Forty-Second Boyd’ (maximum time it took him to defeat all challengers) was not only a great fighter pilot, his combat tactic discoveries changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights today. Many consider him the father of the legendary F-15 and F-16 fighters.

Coram’s knowledge and writing style are superb. Boyd was a complicated man; absolutely brilliant with insight and slide rule, a poor father and worse husband—loud, abrasive, and profane. He rarely met a general he couldn’t offend. Despite these drawbacks, Coram skillfully shows how Boyd somehow overcame all professional obstacles, though in the end at great personal cost.

I originally read this book when it came out in 1990. It is about a group of young women in the Soviet Union who flew as combat pilots during World War II.

With U.S. women still prohibited from flying in combat in 1990, I was thrilled that women had already proven themselves in combat a half-century earlier. The “Night Witches” flew mostly at night, and their bombs relentlessly terrorized German ground forces invading the Russian homeland.

Many of the women were designated as aces for shooting down at least five enemy aircraft, and others were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Although the book has been criticized in recent years for not being entirely factual, it is still a great read about these courageous women.

In The Cloudbuster Nine, Anne Keene not only channels her father’s memories of his own dreams of baseball glory but also recounts the tale of a collection of fighter-pilot cadets—men like the legendary Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Johnny Swain—who, while preparing for flight training in the U.S. Navy’s V-5 pre-flight program during World War II. In doing so, she provides a fascinating overview (and reminder) of what World War II meant for many of America’s star athletes—and what those athletes meant for America’s war effort. 

This is the true story of a little-known operation late in WWII. In 1945, 3.4 million civilians in German-occupied Holland were starving, but the war still continued. Organized by the Allies, Operation Chowhound was to use bombers to drop food to help, but how were they to avoid being shot down by Nazi antiaircraft batteries? With the agreement of the German troops not to fire on them. Flying at treetop level, the American aircrews would have had no chance if their B-17s were hit. Yet, over Chowhound's eight days, 120,000 German troops never fired on the American bombers. Grateful Dutch civilians spelled out "Thanks Boys" in the tulip fields below.