The Big Show: The Classic Account of WWII Aerial Combat

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THE BIG SHOW is as close as you ll ever get to fighting for your life from the cockpit of a Spitfire or Typhoon Perhaps the most viscerally exciting book ever written by a fighter pilot Rowland White Pierre Clostermann DFC was one of the oustanding Allied aces of the Second World War A Frenchman who flew with the RAF, he survived over 420 operational sorties, shooting down scores of enemy aircraft while friends and comrades lost their lives in the deadly skies above Europe. THE BIG SHOW, his extraordinary account of the war, has been described as the greatest pilot s memoir of WWII. A truly remarkable book the most gripping descriptions of aerial combat I have ever read New York Times A thrilling read ranks among the finest accounts of war Guardian A magnificent story Daily Telegraph A classic gripping, ripping, full of action Economist Vividly captures the spirit of air combat The Times The relentlessness of the flying is extraordinary and the casual loss of life chilling It really is one of the very best war memoirs ever written exhilarating, exciting, deeply moving and a book that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been turned James Holland Best Read The Big Show: The Classic Account of WWII Aerial Combat [ author ] Pierre Clostermann [ Kindle ePUB or eBook ] – kino-fada.fr Like most boys my age growing up in the 1970s, I was fascinated by both aeroplanes and war, and thus spent many not so profitable hours building and painting Airfix kits, one of which depicted a Hawker Tempest This particular kit had decals depicting Le Grand Charles , the personal plane of Pierre Clostermann My father, when he saw the completed kit, ...Pierre Clostermann s story of flying over 300 combat missions while serving as a Free French Sergeant Pilot with the RAF The episode when Clostermann helped remove a fellow pilot from the cockpit of a Hawker Tempest fighter that had crashed and cartwheeled in a flaming wreck while attempting a wheels up belly landing, and then holding what was left of his burned mangled friend as he died in his arms was gut wrenching And then the next day Clostermann himself, bravely risked a Pierre Clostermann s story of flying over 300 combat missions while serving as a Free French Sergeant Pilot with the RAF The episode when Clostermann helped remove a fellow pilot from the cockpit of a Hawker Tempest fighter that had crashed and cartwheeled in a flaming wreck while attempting a wheels up belly landing, and then holding what was left of his burned mangled friend as he died in his arms was gut wrenching And then the next day Clostermann himself, bravely risked a belly landing of his own to preserve another of the squadron s precious Tempests to fly and fight another day.The single most moving page of personal history war memoirs that I ve ever read is the final page of Clostermann s book, where, after participating in the final, massive fly over of London to c...Here is a combat memoir that rings with the thrills and perils of grappling in the central blue , to quote Tennyson Clostermann, a Frenchman of Brazilian birth, made his way to Britain where he joined the Royal Air Force RAF He was trained as a fighter pilot and assigned to one of the Free French fighter squadrons, flying Spitfires in combat By war s end, Clostermann wa...One of the best of the accounts I ve read of WW2 in the air written by a pilot This ranks alongside Wellum s First Light in my opinion.Don t be put off by the fact that the writer is French or that his story begins well after the Battle of Britain.Possibly the best book I ve read about the air war in WW2, up there with the best like First LightI thought I knew about the events of WWII And indeed I do, at least as far as the broad sweep is concerned, and the details of the Battle of Britain and the bombing campaign But, reading this, I realised that I had assumed that after D Day, the life of a fighter pilot on the front line was pretty relaxed How wrong can you be.Clostermann survived, somehow, over 400 sorties, most of them after this date He spent much of his time attacking German fig...Clostermann s account of a suicidal mission his squadron of Tempests was sent on in the closing months of the war in Europe exceeds the speeder attack on the snow walkers in the beginning of Empire Strikes Back in terms of sheer visual awesomeness His squadron bursts from dense cloud cover to find itself over an airfield packed with German transports including Arado 232s about to carry personnel to Norway to escape the Allied advance, seaplanes trying to take off, and tons of 20mm and 37mm Clostermann s account of a suicidal mission his squadron of Tempests was sent o...Exciting, amusing and terrifying by turns This is a great personal memoir Written at the time, he makes a number of mistakes due to censorship denying him the knowledge of what was really going on, but this makes it all theinteresting The most interesting bit is towards the end when he goes back to France and is effectively cold shouldered He was an embarrassment While he had been risking his life and seeing his friends killed, they had been sitting on their backsides knuckling under Exciting, amusing and terrifying by turns This is a great personal memoir Written at the time, he makes a number of mistakes due to censorship denying him the knowledge of what was really going on, but this makes it all theinteresting The most interesting bit is towards the end when he goes back to France a...Great memoirs of one of handful Frenchmen who did not give upBravery, dedication, deep friendship, horror, wasted lives, incompetent leadership, a necessary war, a world that soon forgot.A book that should be read by all as a reminder that leaders, dictators, politicians, are the most evil, sending the young to their unnecessary deaths casually to solve problems they have created Rally around the flags boys, I need to win an election God bless us all The long, the short and the tall Charge the blockhouse Into the cannons rode the 500 My election is Bravery, dedication, deep friendship, horror, wasted lives, incompetent leadership, a necessary war, a world that soon forgot.A book that should be read by all as a reminder that leaders, dictators, politicians, are the most evil, sending the young to their unnecessary deaths casually to solve problems they have created Rally around the flags boys, I need to win an election God bless us all The long, the short and the tall Charge the blockhouse Into the ca...

The Big Show: The Classic Account of WWII Aerial Combat
  • 15 September 2018
  • Kindle Edition
  • 258 pages
  • Pierre Clostermann
  • The Big Show: The Classic Account of WWII Aerial Combat