Customer Reviews

Ace of the Iron Cross

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Udet wrote his account with a straightforward yet highly descriptive style. Don't expect any dry verse or dull monotone. He captured all the emotions and thoughts that he must have experienced in a way that some novelist would be hard pressed to mimmick. It is interesting to read of his many achievement in war (second highest scoring German Ace) and then to read of his near failures after the war. In short, this book gives the story of a remarkable life that reads in such a way that it is truely hard to put down. You owe it to yourself to search for this book. Hopefully you will love it as much as I have.

I bought this book from Amazon by Out-of-print order. Because I'm personally interested in the life of the great WWI German Ace Ernst Udet, this book is undoubtedly one of my source of study. This book is easy to read. I can scan through the life of Ernst during WWI and before WWII by his first-person writing. I recommend to read this book if you want to know more about Ernst Udet.

I found this boook while trying to find information on the Red Baron (von Richthofen). I already knew of Udet and somewhat admired his style of fighting but never really knew much of him from a historical and personal perspective. This book was very easy to read and became addicive in finding out what twists and turns Udet went through throughout his exciting life. If you can get this I recommend getting it.

I read this book at a time when I was reading everything I could get on WWI flight. Every memoir I've managed to read (minus Rene Fonck, who was either ghostwritten or a jerk)is written in such a personal way that you can forget which side the author was fighting on. This war in the air was the last gentleman's war, where your opponent was not a faceless evil but another man serving his country just as the author was serving his own. For a while, this was recognized and the courtesy extended even while you were trying to kill each other is very apparent in Udet's book.
Tracing his early training up through his after-war career as a pilot just trying to make ends meet and still outflying nearly everyone in the world, the book is written in a very accessible, personal and sometimes wonderfully poetic prose. The guy should have been a poet, not a warrior. He's painfully honest about his mistakes and some fairly dramatic errors, his fears, his doubts. He tells about his triumphs with no overt pride and his fascination and love of flying permeates everything; the overwhelming feeling you get out of this is that Udet was an amazingly talented pilot and also a sort of messed up but very likeable guy. From other accounts I've read, this is true. For Richthofen fanatics, there are brief mentions of the few times Udet interacted with the famed Ace personally and you can tell Udet held him in awe. A very personal, very honest and enjoyable memoir of the early days of flying from the view of one of history's finest pilots.

This book is the best autobiography I've ever read