I’ve read Wings on My Sleeve, First Light, The Right Stuff and Flight and Fly for Your Life. Can anyone recommend anything on a similar subject?
Chuck Yeager's autobiography is worth a read. A fine mix of fearlessness and technical know how.
Read that as well.
Moon Shot? The story of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions by Alan Shepard Deke Slayton.
I really enjoyed Robert Morgan's book:
War in a Stringbag by Charles Lamb
Sigh for a Merlin by Alex Henshaw
Sea Flight by Hugh Popham
Duel under the Stars by Wilhelm Johen
Stuka Pilot by Hans UlricRudel
Luftwaffe Test Pilot by Hans-Werner Lerche
the first two are excellent and readily available, the others may be harder.
more modern is Skunk Wks
This is whatlibraries are good for.
Start at one end of the shelf.
My recommendation would be rauld dahls - flying solo.
And while not a biography I am currently listening to bomber by Len Deighton so of the mater of fact descriptions of what hapoens during a bombing raid at night are quite chilling.
<i><b>The Right Stuff</b></i> is a 1979 book by Tom Wolfeabout the pilots engaged in U.S. postwar research with experimental rocket-powered, high-speed aircraft as well as documenting the stories of the first Project Mercuryastronauts selected for the NASA space program. <i>The Right Stuff</i> is based on extensive research by Wolfe, who interviewed test pilots, the astronauts and their wives, among others. The story contrasts the "Mercury Seven"<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference">[1]</sup> and their families with test pilots such as Chuck Yeager, who was considered by many contemporaries as the best of them all, but who was never selected as an astronaut.
I enjoyed it.
i know they are not about test pilots, but Vulcan 601 and Storm front, both by Rowland White are a good read.
Richard Townend's Biography of James "Ginger" Lacey is worth a read, one of the few fighter pilots that was on active duty from the first to last day of the war.
Pierre Clostermann's "The Big Show" is worth tracking down as well.
Edit, email your address to me (nickcummins7328ATgmail.com) and I'll pop my copy of The Kamikaze Hunters by Will Iredale in the post to you. It's well researched about an almost forgotten part of the war in the air in WW2
As you’ve read First Light, I’d recommend Brian Kincome’s book, A Willingness to Die
A work of very good and well researched fiction is Len Deighton’s book, Bomber.
It may be primarily about the space programme but Michael Collins' Carrying the Fire is a great book. Lots of test pilot stuff in there too.
Topical one - Spitfire Women?
Not a test pilot and not all flying but "The Lonely Sea and the Sky" by Francis Chichester is a good read about navigating with a map on your knee and a view over the side.
A work of very good and well researched fiction is Len Deighton’s book, Bomber.
Keep up.
The Silver Spitfire - Tom Neil, another who has recently died
Tally Ho - a Yankee in a Spitfire by Arthur Donahue which was written in real time, then the follow on Last Flight from Singapore
Following
Vulcan 607 is a great book - proper "Boys Own" type adventure but its all true. Not quite WW2 or test pilots, but what they did was near impossible and they pulled it off.
First Light is a great book - well worth a read.
again, not exactly test pilots but Riding Rockets, about the Space Shuttle pilots is a good read. Would happily post you my copy as a loan.
A Higher Call. Amazing story, really well told by Adam Makos.
Story of an American Bomber Pilot and a German fighter pilot and how their lives crossed.
Really cannot recommend it enough.
as sigh for a merlin have been mentioned, i just have to mention Flight of the Mew Gull for a brilliant story about flying in between the wars.
And a trip to Shuttleworth to see the Mew Gull fly.
'And they gave me a Seafire' and 'Achtung Swordfish' are both a good read, both might be hard to track down though, I bought the Seafire one at Fleet Air Arm museum and the Swordfish one I got from the pilot himself signed by him and also signed by the artist who did the painting on the cover.
The Roland Beaumont books are good, WW2 Hurricane pilot, went on to help develop the Typhoon and Tempest, the tested the Canberra, Lightning and TSR.2. Testing Years is the one I’ve got. You’re welcome to borrow it as I think you’re fairly close.
Thanks all.
Moonshot ordered!
as a lot of the second hand bookshops sell via amazon market place, finding old books is often much easier than you think.
ABEbooks is good. Moonshot just cost me £2.95 delivered.
Pierre Clostermann’s “The Big Show” is worth tracking down as well
It's very good, and the descriptions of post-DD day ops came as a bit of a surprise to me, who'd been led to believe the Luftwaffe was a mostly spent force by then.
I'd recommend Carrier Pilot by Norman Hanson, FAA and mainly in the Pacific. It seems to be mentioned rarely but I liked it a lot. From reading the book, it's difficult to decide who the Corsair was most lethal to, our pilots or the Japanese.
Riding rockets is a great read already mentioned!
Chuck Yeager’s autobiography is the only book I've ever read twice. An example of being born at perfectly the right time.
I'll plus two The Big Show. Alan Deere's Nine Lives is good too.
I'm currently re-reading The First and the Last which is Adolf Galland's ww2 memoire. Very interesting perspective.
I'd also recommend Most Secret War by RV Jones. It's his memoire of scientific intelligence through the war. Not strictly on your subject but has a lot of information around it that builds a bigger picture- things like the battle of the beams. Probably the most fascinating ww2 book I've read.
A couple of other I remember being interesting because they were areas less well trodden are One Man's Window which is about the defence of Malta and The Unseen Eye for photo reconnaissance.
Tumult in the Clouds by James A Goodson, a high scoring American fighter ace - this book is both a compelling read and funny, especially the bits about Kidd Hofer, who had a book about his exploits entitled "Kidd Hofer, the last Screwball Aces".
and Bloody Shambles, Vol. 2: From the Defence of Sumatra to the fall of Burma.
I found First Light to be a pretty terrible read tbh.
Empire of the clouds is good
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-Ruled/dp/0571247954
Read this...
Friend of mine (no longer with us 🙁 )
WW2 Spit/Huricane pilot in Burma.
Hi on-line memoir.
Again not test piloty stuff as such but 'Rocket Boys' by Homer H Hickam was unputdownable for me.
All about a bunch of kids who played around with home made rockets & went on to work with NASA etc.
I found the later Beaumont test pilot account Flying to the Limit a bit dull but the earlier biography of him Against the Sun, by Edward Lanchberry is good.
Test Pilot, by Neville Duke is good (first British pilot to break speed of sound). Also his The War Diaries of Neville Duke is excellent. A staggering amount of alcohol appears to have been consumed in the course of becoming one of the highest scoring British fighter pilots.
On a space theme I thought "Into the Black" was brilliant, thought I had an understanding of the space race but this opened my eyes! Also off topic but "ChickenHawk" is brilliant too!
'Carrier Pilot' and 'So they gave me a Seafire' if you fancy some WW2 carrier aviation from the British perspective, both easy to read and you almost read them in your head in a 1940 pilot type voice.
Also 'Enemy Coast Ahead', written by Guy Gibson of Dambusters fame and from this book, a guy that liked a pint.
You might like to try "Bomb Doors Open" by Flt Lt Ken Trent DFC published by Seeker Publising in Jersey. It's a very personal account of his life through the RAF over the latter part of WW2 - not the best written but it is a warts and all account of the process of being recruited, trained and flying 40+ ops in Lancasters. (I'll disclose a personal interest, Ken was my Father in Law (I divorced his daughter and he died earlier this year at 95) and I've heard a lot of the tales in the book several times, usually aided by several large G&T's! - However, there are some stories that he never told....)
Just buy something off Amazon and they'll send you recommendations about what other people have bought, so you'll end up with a bunch of power tools, some baby clothes, and BBQ sauce.
More seriously, see if you can get a copy of Red Ball in the Sky by Charles Blair.
Not WW2 but “Sled Driver” by Brian Shul (IIRC) is available online and is rather good. About the SR-71 Blackbird.
Rather harder to find in print!
First Light by Geoffrey Wellum who died only recently. Fantastic book about flying Spitfires, really excellent and gripping.
Not WW2 but “Sled Driver” by Brian Shul (IIRC) is available online and is rather good. About the SR-71 Blackbird.
Rather harder to find in print!
This ^^^^ - its a great read, some of the stuff still sounds crazy like the plane breaking up on you as you're doing a hard turn at Mach 2+
Not WW2 but “Sled Driver” by Brian Shul (IIRC) is available online and is rather good. About the SR-71 Blackbird.
Rather harder to find in print!
This ^^^^ – its a great read, some of the stuff still sounds crazy like the plane breaking up on you as you’re doing a hard turn at Mach 2+
Here's a link to a pdf of Sled Driver: Clicky
(Originally shared by someone else on here. Cracking read.)
Oh, and another +1 for The Big Show and Into the Black.
If we are going out of the requested period:
Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis.
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">The author evocatively sets his love of the skies and flying against his bitter experience of the horrors of war, as we follow his progress from France and the battlefields of the Somme, to his pioneering defence of London against deadly night time raids.</span>
As a kid I read a lot of these books and the following stand out:
Bring Back My Stringbag by John Godley Kilbracken
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bring-Back-Stringbag-Godley-Kilbracken/dp/0850524954
Lancaster Target and the follow-up, Mosquito Pilot by Jack Currie.
Also:
44 posts and NO ONE has mentioned Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown?...... What the hell is going on?..... The guy was legend.
Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown wrote the first book listed by the OP!
How about form the perspective of the other side?
Hans Ulrich Rudel who flew 2500 combat missions
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stuka-Pilot-Hans-Ulrich-Rudel/dp/1908476877
Or Erich Hartmann the highest scoring ace ever with 352 kills
SERIOUSLY!!!!! No one? Not a single person heard of Winkle Brown?
I'll get my coat.
SERIOUSLY!!!!! No one? Not a single person heard of Winkle Brown?
I’ll get my coat.
I would - you've clearly not read the op or the title of the Sainted Eric's autobiog
Another vote for First Light by Geoffrey Wellum, a cracking read that I couldn't put down last week. His recent passing made me pick it up.
On a more helpful note
War in a Stringbag - Charles Lamb
Couple more for WWI, they were effectively test pilots.
Winged Victory - VM Yeates fiction but based on his experiences
Flying Fury - James McCudden
Not directly about test pilots, but connected with the SR-71 Blackbird ‘Skunk Works’ is an excellent read, covers the secret work carried out by Lockheed from the end of the war onwards.
"Going Solo" by Roald Dahl.
Starts with him traveling to Africa in 1938 to work for Shell, joining the RAF in 1939 and learning to fly Tiger Moths in Kenya, then Gloucester Gladiators before moving onto, well, actually being thrown pretty much into the deep end, flying Hurricanes in combat in Greece...
Some good shouts but Chickenhawk deserves another one - some of the descriptions of helicopter extractions of GIs under heavy fire in Vietnam are spine tingling
I can recommend Enemy Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson, the Dambusters Squadron Leader. I think he was ordered to write it as a means for him to have a break from active service.
I've read quite a few of those already recommended and just can't over how young they all are.
Mentioned above but another fan of Vulcan 607 here - an amazing tale
Chickenhawk +1
I flew for the Fuhrer by Heinz Knocke - a Luftwaffe pilot that flew against American heavies in defense of the Reich - interesting read something from the other side.
+1 War in a Stringbag and The Big Show
I flew for the Fuhrer
Ah yes, that's on the book shelf too- can't remember what I thought if it, it's been years
Another for Riding Rockets - moving to the point of actual tears in his description of the death of the Challenger astronauts and how, despite fully knowing that the shuttle could kill him, the author simply couldn't turn down a flight in it, and went on to fly 4 times, and each time, his description of trying to hide his fear during the (long) count down sequence is gripping.
A quick look on my kindle also shows:
A Bucket of sunshine by Mike Brooke, of his time flying nuclear armed canberra's during the 1960's
19 minutes to live by Lew jennings - appache gunship pilot in Vietnam
Black Cat 21 by Bob Ford - Huey helicopter gunship pilot in vietnam
F-4 Phantom by Robert Priest - an absolute aviation classic, beautifully written on flying the interceptor during the cold war
Donald Auten’s Roger Ball! Is a good one about US Naval aviation, the service introduction of The F-14, and the development of Top Gun.
And +1 for Robert Prest’s F-4 a Phantom Pilot
If you're interested in F4s then I recommend One Day in a Long War by Jeffrey Ethel and Alfred Price - product of a lot of research into the first day of Operation Linebacker that took place on 10th May 1972 and includes great first person accounts including a number who were products of the Top Gun training programme (program).
And, for another view from the other side in WW2, Spitfire on My Tail by Ulrich Steinhilper gives great account of 109 combat in the Battle of Britain, including a damning professional opinion of Galland with whom he served in 1940. Quite a lot of it is about his experience as PoW though in Canada.
And surprised no one has mentioned Fighter Pilot by Paul Richey unless I missed it. Written while he was recovering from a 20mm cannon shell in the neck in 1941 it's pretty much the definitive fighter pilot account written during the war.
Couple of obscure ones-
Pierre Clostermann- Flames in the Sky
Ira Jones- Tiger Squadron
Oh, and Cecil Rwnsley and Robert Wright- Night Fighter
The man in the hot seat - Doddy Haye. Its years since I read it but I remember enjoying it - its the biography of the test pilot for ejector seats
I'm going to have to "-1" Vulcan 607, while the story itself is quite entertaining, the writing is far too breathless and Boy's Own.
I don't think it's been mentioned, but I enjoyed Starman, the biography of Yuri Gagarin. Obviously not planes exactly but close enough 🙂
