FIGHTER PILOT

This is a tribute, and perhaps an epitaph, to the age of chivalric combat in the sky since the future presages the replacement of the fighter pilot with missiles and rockets. It is a strapping collection which records, in their own words, the skirmishes and sorties of combat airmen on solo missions and squadron formations as in some fifty years they distinguished themselves in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II on all fronts, Korea, and the Arab-Israeli war. There are letters, diaries and various reports- not only personal but on technological advances in guns and planes; there are pilots of every nationality from the volunteers in the Lafayette Escadrille to the RFC and the RCAF, to German, Japanese, Russian heroes; among the great names, Rickenbacker commemorates another flyer's sacrificial feat, while Richtofen celebrates his 33rd aeroplane- and Chennault, Pappy Boyington, Lindbergh and the Soviet ace Grachev need no introduction. Some 60 excerpts, longer and shorter, provide a proud record of men who fought a lonely war in smoke-streaked skies and it should appeal to that audience of admiring men and boys. Roger.