Don't know about a recommendation as such; but, has been affording some interest to me. Book by Pierre Clostermann (1921 -- 2006): seemingly a most admirable guy -- French citizen, got to Britain in World War II and served as an airman (pilot) on the Allied side; was subsequently an engineer, member of the French Parliament, and occasional author. This book by him,
The Big Show -- published 1951, his reminiscences of his WWII service with the RAF. One salutes the heroism of anyone "in that line of business" in that war (plus, this chap IMO "fighting for the right") : the book imparts the expected mixture of fear, exhilaration, and the ever-present awareness that he and his comrades were more likely to die in the course of what they were doing, than not. I encountered in it, a great deal of at-the-time "aircraft-and-flying technical stuff" -- for me, a very non-technical type, skipping-over-fodder -- nonetheless overall, an interesting and moving work.
Going on to tongue-in-cheek railway enthusiast's perversity and wrong priorities
-- some distressing aspects of this gentleman's book: recounting doings shortly before D-Day; he tells of air operations aimed at as far as possible, disabling enemy counter-attacks to the landings -- "a general offensive was laid on against railway locomotives in the whole of northern France and Belgium... in the 'Nord' French railway system alone, 67 locomotives were destroyed and 91 seriously damaged". With one's head, one sees "regrettable necessity"; with one's gut, one tends to feel, "oh, dear...". Author goes on to tell of how from 19/5 to 1/6/1944, there were 3,400 fighter sorties against locomotives in France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany: 257 were destroyed and 183 seriously damaged" -- which he goes on to refer to as "these unimpressive results". The vandal is dissatisfied with this level of carnage, and wishes for more to have been wrought
? Reading of these things; and thinking of the film
The Train, and the railway-afflicting havoc therein: one is not surprised at the statistic that as at the WWII liberation of more or less all of France, only one in ten of SNCF's locomotive fleet was still in operational condition -- or at the extreme need for lots of 141Rs to be supplied from North America ASAP.
Toward the end of the book, there is a short chapter titled
Train Busting: it's early 1945, author is stationed in the south Netherlands and flying missions into Germany. Tells of himself and several accompanying aircraft, shooting-up a -- seemingly random -- German train. Locomotive wrecked; a certain amount of pity implied, for the attempting-to-escape loco crew and passengers. One of the accompanying planes is "downed" by anti-aircraft fire. Author casually mentions, "On the way home we attacked three more trains" -- doesn't go into, with how much success. My feelings here -- Germany was the enemy, and the Germans were anyhow spookily accomplished at making good, damage sustained: all the same, one suspects that duties such as this, would be hated by a pilot who also happened to be a railway enthusiast.
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