I found it in a second hand bookshop in Norfolk, but you could try
www.alibris.com. The guy in the Aviation Bookshop on Holloway Road in London says that he sees copies very, very occasionally.
I agree with your comments on the general superiority (in literary terms) of the civvie memoirs to the military ones. Perhaps that is because many of the civvie authors were writers first and pilots second (not always: contrast Lindbergh's stuff with that written by his wife: he could fly but not write, she could do both).
Another factor may be that many of the well known military pilot memoirs were written so close to the events they describe that it was difficult for the authors to say how they had really felt. Cultural and educational stiff-upper-lip factors also contributed to a degree of woodenness in description, especially in the WW1 memoirs (some of which I suspect were ghost written anyway). These factors also seem to have contributed to the stilted nature of some of the inter-war civvie "adventure" books such as "20,000 Miles in a Flying Boat", and the pilots' accounts of the Houston Mount Everest flights.
I would class as exceptions to this Cecil Lewis' "Sagitarrius Rising" for WW1, and, Pierre Clostermann's "Le Grand Cirque", for WW2. Hillary's "Last Enemy" appears to be a work of self conscious literary faction: a good book, but not necessarily an accurate one.
Did you see the interesting essay on pilot memoirs in the excellent collection "The Burning Blue" which came out last year for the BoB anniversary?
PS Tiger-Moth: if you are reading this, I've checked again and Cecil Lewis was not the same guy as Cecil Day Lewis. Whether they were related I do not know.
[ 15 July 2001: Message edited by: FNG ]