Single-Seater Fighter
PIERRE CLOSTERMANN was a single-seater fighter pilot ; but the day of the single-seater fighter seems to be drawing to a close. The supremacy of the light, fast and handy aircraft armed at first with a carbine or light machine-gun and later equipped with a formid- able battery of 20 mm. cannon, has lasted for nearly forty years and may endure yet for a brief span. But already the indications are that the modern fighter is too fast, too unhandy and too compli- cated for one man to manage in such a way that he can hope to destroy his enemy. The tale of the combats between the U.S.A.F. " Sabres " and the Sino/Tartar " MIGS " is mainly one of indeci- sion; much pother and little destruction. The tendency of design —ever more complex and more mechanised—is to move towards the larger aircraft with a more numerous crew. Radar is partly the cause of this change, and partly it is due to the vastly increased speed of the modern fighter. I am reminded of our problems of air defence in 1934 when the increasing speed of the bomber made it necessary to obtain warning of its approach beyond the range of the human eye. So with the modern fighter. It is now necessar) that it should in all circumstances carry radar equipment, so as to get early warning—day and night—of the approach of the enemy. The pilot has his hands full flying his 15-ton "projectile," and he needs the help of a skilled radar assistant. So the fighter has become
a two-seater. Before long the exigencies of the air battle will demand the use of• guided missiles and the fighter crew may grow again to meet the needs of this new weapon.
And so Pierre Clostermann's book is the story of a past epoch in which individuals fought and died, lonely as the stars but for . • • the crackle and chatter of their earphones as their equally lonely comrades called for help or rallied each other in the icy expanse of the skies. A reconnaissance pilot has put it in rhyme:
" When you're seven miles up in the heavens
(That's a hell of a lonely spot) And it's fifty degrees below zero Which isn't exactly hot--
When you're frozen blue like your Spitfires...." you then lived or died as your fate might decide or your personal
skill and courage ordained. Clostermann was one of that chosen band of Frenchmen who, abandoning home, country and family, came to England to continue their war against Hitler. They were lonely before they flew their single-seaters—aliens in a cold damp country with customs most unlike their own, and suffering from the duress of a new form of war. The black-out must have been a soul-destroying thing to men accustomed to the sunshine and gaiety of a Latin country. I remember my friend Pigeaud, killed in North
4. Africa while leading his squadron against Rommel's fighters, once
• 1:saying to me: "You British are too serious—and your women—they are like your gardens—you may look but must nor touch! " So ; these young Frenchmen must have suffered during their days of • training in remote parts of Wales and Western England ! -1
Clostermann seems to have enjoyed his early days as a Spitfire !I pilot, and in the sweeps and escort duties in which he was employed achieved very considerable distinction. The return to France in
• . 1944 was, however, a deep disappointment. In Britain he had not been aware of the poison that was rotting the French people- .. Resistance against Vichy—Communism coming in on the band- wagon :when the Allies seemed likely to succeed. A short spell of Paris was enough for him and he was back in the R.A.F. This account of the fighting in the winter and spring of 1944-45 makes very grim reading, and should be studied most carefully by those • who seem to consider an aircraft as no more than a long-range gun.
• The quickest way to break the spirit of an air force is to misuse it. Of his many escapes from death Clostermann writes dramatic- - ally, with perhaps a touch of Latin exaggeration, but he certainly bore a charmed life, and he killed many Germans. A well-knit, well-written book that I found absorbingly
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