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The Air Ace was perhaps the most glamorous figures of the Second World War, often rising to the status of national hero, in a conflict where very few other individual servicemen had a change to gain fame in the same way.
Despite its relatively small size, this is an impressively wide-ranging book, covering 104 air aces, with examples from every major combatant and many minor ones. Jackson covers most of the well known highest scoring aces, but also provides some interesting biographies on less well known figures, such as the Finn Ilmari Juutilainen or Martin la Meslée, a French ace of the phoney war period. He also includes a number of pilots who were significant not for their own personal scores, but for the ideas they developed.
Jackson also includes a number of bomber pilots who I would not have expected to find in a book of this nature, most notably Leonard Cheshire and Guy Gibson of RAF Bomber Command.
As a result of this wide scope, Jackson's book gives a good idea of the variety of conditions encountered by the pilots of the Second World War, and the different types of men and women who rose to the challenge. This book would serve as excellent introduction for anyone interested in the Second World War in the air, but will also provide something of interest for the enthusiast.
Author: Robert Jackson
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 112
Publisher: Crowood
Year: 2003