The Pilots

Rating:
Summary: Memoir as novel? That's what the book jacket said...
Review: From the book jacket, I know that James Spencer is a writer and has been for a long, long time. I also know that for a brief period in his life he was a B-24 pilot in the southwest Pacific during World War Two. By his own admission he flew 44 missions, some of them very long range, over trackless ocean that would have provided little if any chance for rescue had he and his crew gone down. Such combat flying is unarguably valorous, particularly in retrospect, but at the time was just the flyers' "job." I know a naval aviator who flew similar solo strikes in a PB4Y-1 (the Navy version of the B-24)during the same time period of 1943 and '44 and am familiar with what such missions entailed.

That said, this book falls short in a number of areas, beginning with the opening section about the protagonists' early years, which is full of both unbelievable incidents and characters. From there it goes from combat flying in both bombers and fighters, life at the bases, R&R in Australia and various other ruminations about "what it all means." Combat flying memoirs are beginning to appear again after a long dry spell as veterans want to commit their experiences to print while they still can. Some are good but those tend to be the non-fiction ones. This book is called a "memoir as a novel," which I assume means that there is at least some basis of actual related experience in a fictional context. In this case, I suppose the experience is that of serving in the 13th Air Force in the Pacific and then projecting a young aviator's now mature viewpoints into a few fictional characters? Hey, I'm reaching here, but the author admits that he thinks he should have been a fighter pilot, fantasized about P-38's and one of the characters in this book is a fighter pilot. Of course, there's bomber flying too by another character. So is this Walter Mitty stuff or real stuff that happened to others but not to the author? So this is a novel. It's really not a memoir at all any more than James Jones' FROM HERE TO ETERNITY was a memoir of his life in the pre-war Army at Schofield Barracks.

The truth is less elegant than the alleged new art form. This is a novel and not a very good one. A truly good memoir of South Pacific combat flying is Edwards Park's NANETTE. A truly good novel of South Pacific combat flying is Gordon Forbes' GOODBYE TO SOME. Both of these books, written by men who did the deeds, are well worth the time it might take to find them.

With full appreciation for Mr. Spencer's wartime service and his demonstrated writing skills, presumably non-fiction, evidenced by his having been published for years, I feel that this particular effort was substandard for war fiction... or memoir.

And a minor note to the publisher: the book jacket shows P-51's. While P-51's are mentioned in the author's foreward, the US aircraft in the book are B-24's and P-38's. Pictures exist for both these aircraft -- even shots of them in the Pacific theater, even shots of them together -- so look around if this book goes to paperback.

Rating:
Summary: Missed Opportunity
Review: I also salute the author's contribution in WWII. However, "The Pilots" is just too disjointed and -- quite frankly -- predictable to recommend. Apparently much of the book was written as short stories, which is fine. But there should have been some effort to edit these into a seamless whole, rather than just slap them together between covers. As a result, we often hear the same bits of information over and over. Trust me, Mr. Spencer, by page 228 we KNOW that "Blake Hurlingame was Steve's boyhood friend who now flies B-24s!" And too many of the incidents were telegraphed far in advance. When Addie finds the .45 automatic in her nightstand drawer, we KNOW she's going to need it in just a few pages! On the plus side, some of the flying sequences were quite enjoyable. There just weren't enough of them. It seems to me that if you're writing a novel about combat flying in WWII, you pretty much know who your audience will be. And it's not women. Therefore, I would suggest cutting down on the "romance" and jacking up the action. Just one guy's opinion. Still, it's a quick, painless read and flying novels are hard to find.
(By the way, one positive: The new trade paperback edition has the appropriate P-38 on the cover.)

Rating:
Summary: Amateurish collection of stories that dont fit together well
Review: I thought I would enjoy "The Pilots" because I am a fighter pilot myself (albeit of the modern era) and I enjoy first-hand accounts of WWII. The glowing accolades on the back cover from some aviation/military authors seemed to indicate a good read. I was rather disappointed. Although I read the whole thing, and it was mildly entertaining, it was far from what I expected. It was a very amateurish piece of work. The author himself tells us in the forward that he wrote down these "stories" to record the world of WWII pilots, their experiences and feelings, for his own sons. He then collected the stories into a book.

It could have been much better if he had put a little more effort into consolidating the stories, but he didn't even bother to clean up the individual stories and mesh them neatly together - sometimes they left you hanging and sometimes they seemed to go nowhere. Some were obviously left out entirely. And he bounces back and forth between a B-24 pilot (which he portrays OK since he was one) and a P-38 fighter pilot (which is most of the amateurish stuff) that he tries (unsuccessfully) to tie together at the beginning with a too-long account of their childhood as neighbors. And probably because the author later became a Psychotherapist (as reported in the "about the author" on the cover flap) the whole book is laced with a lot of people with childhood issues, who "need to talk to someone". Reading this you would think that half the pilots (and flight docs) in the Pacific theater were loony. And the author seems to have the characters, rather than dwelling on bonds of friendship and camaraderie, mostly be antagonistic towards each other.

The author's credibility dropped even more when he mentioned that WWI fighter pilots didn't fly with parachutes because they hadn't been invented yet (which is blatantly false). A last minor, irritating point is that the cover of the hardback that I read shows a P-51 which never (to my knowledge) served in the Pacific theater (where the book is based) and which, more to the point, is never a part of the stories.
Overall, if you've got nothing to do for a weekend, and the book is sitting there on the table, you might want to read it. But I wouldn't buy it.