Since we’ve crept into military aviation, try Ernie Gann’s novel set in WW1. I forget its full title, but ‘Eagles’ is in there somewhere. Not nearly up to the standard of FITH, his all time classic, but not a bad read.
Len Deighton’s ‘Fighter’ – the REAL account of the Battle of Britain with all the ‘pip, pip, jolly good show’ propaganda removed, might come as a bit of a surprise to both Brit and German readers to see what a close run thing it was. In a nutshell, the Brits won only because they made an infinitesimally smaller number of major blunders than the Germans did.
By the same author, ‘Bomber’ is an exhaustive and incredibly well researched account from all perspectives, both British and German, of a fictitious bombing raid on a fictitious German city on a fictitious night, (I think) the 31st (sic) of June 1943. Well worth a read. (For you computer nuts out there, you may be interested to know that ‘Bomber’ was the first major novel to be written on a word processor.)
‘Bomber Command’ by Max Hastings was the first book I read on the bomber offensive that really brought it home to me how utterly suicidal it was to be posted to bombers – and the crews knew it and still went out. 10% casualties every night and 30 missions to complete a tour meant that statistically, you died three times before you completed a tour. Very few made it past 5 trips.
‘No Moon Tonight’ by Don Charlwood . Good read.
‘They Hosed Them Out’ –the story of a tail gunner’s war. VERY bitter and twisted, and written around 1950, is well worth finding. (I saw a copy for sale last year on bibliofind.com)
‘Thud Ridge’ by Jack Brougham. Required reading for anyone who doesn’t believe the politically-restricted bombing campaign into North Vietnam wasn’t a Grade ‘A ‘clusterf**k. Well worth adding to your aviation bookshelf. It’s worth buying just to read the story of the F105 that flamed out due to fuel starvation as it approached the tanker over Laos and did a successful dead stick approach to the drogue. Riveting stuff.