Fighting the Flying Circus (The Great Commanders Series) [Hardcover]

Edward Rickenbacker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 371 pages
• Publisher: Collectors Reprints, Inc. (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565150058
• ISBN-13: 978-1565150058
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,022,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The classic account of WWI aerial combat, March 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Fighting the Flying Circus (The Great Commanders Series) (Hardcover)

Eddie Rickenbacker was, of course, the top-scoring American ace of the First World War, shooting down 26 enemy aircraft. This hard-to-find book is _the_ classic account of aerial combat in World War One. It fairly breathes the cocky, pugnacious spirit of the successful combat aviator, and is, in itself, a remarkable survival story.

Rickenbacker was a squadron leader of note as well as a formidable single-combat warrior, and his observations on command are applicable today. Like other great aviators who racked up impressive victories but survived, Rickenbacker was aggressive and confident but not rash. He took pains to plan his missions and to assure their success, attending to the smallest details himself (even to inspecting the individual rounds loaded for his SPAD's machine guns).

Rickenbacker is a skillful narrator, and his precise description of the lethal ballet of aerial combat is readable and comprehensible for the flyer and non-flyer alike. Rickenbacker had the reputation of being overbearing at times, but this is not communicated in his writing. Indeed, one of the most memorable passages in this book describes his repeated but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to bring down a particular German observation plane.

This is a wonderful book that deserves to be read. Any reader with an interest in flying, but especially combat flying, can do no better than to pick up this excellent work.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars loved it as a kid, even better as an adult, February 6, 2000

By 

reader from maryland (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fighting the Flying Circus (The Great Commanders Series) (Hardcover)

Rickenbacker's adventures, told in Rickenbacker's own words. This story is the definitive acount of WWI air combat. The only books that come close are by British pilot Arch Whitehouse, but those lack the descriptions and heart of Eddie Rickenbacker's "Fighting the Flying Circus". One can almost smell the dirt and grass from the runways and see the tracer fire from the machine guns. Throughout we see the character of a simple midwestern man who became the Ace of Aces in American flying history. The individual flying episodes are memorable such as the time he refused to let an (allied) French Nieuport get behind him after he became lost on patrol. He later found out that a German pilot in a captured Neiuport was slipping across the lines to wreck havoc on the Allies. Or the time an anti-aircraft shell lodged in his engine yet failed to detonate. The story is vivid and thrilling until the end, even though we all know the larger outcome.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rickenbacker Just Back from France!, September 1, 2011

By 

W. G. Todd (Secane, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fighting the Flying Circus (Kindle Edition)

I read this years ago while Rickenbacker still lived. This race car driver turned fighter pilot wrote this he was still a young man just back from the first air war in 1919. In reading it again as an adult I was surprised to find that he was quite honest and self efacing. When he made a mistake he was forthcoming about it. In many incidents contained in this book it is obvious that luck played an enormous part in survival of pilots in those days, as the training and equipment by today's standards was to put it bluntly, inadequate. I imagine that this book is still a good one for fighter jocks of today because there are still lessons here that apply to today's combat environment. It is always easier to learn from someone else's experiences than to repeat them yourself. If you want to learn what it was like to fight in the air in the First World War this is your book. It is on a par with James McCudden's book "Flying Fury," and that is high praise indeed.

Since reading this book I have read Rickenbacker's autobiography and was not nearly as impressed as I was with this book. By the 1960's Rickenbacker had mellowed and his words were carefully chosen and not nearly as spontaneous as in this book. Afer all, by then he had been a CEO of Eastern Airlines, and seemed more guarded about his reputation.

The Kindle price of this fine book works for me!