"The Last Tallyho" by Richard Newhafer

[NVSMITH]

-This paperback cost me 50¢; it may have been overpriced. There is very little information available on the author besides the fact that he was a naval fighter pilot in the South Pacific during WW2 and he had additional Navy time during and after Korea. I spent my time in the Army so cannot speak authoritatively about the interpersonal and command relationships he describes but they don't sound right. I also can't comment on the flying and deeds of derring do, but, again, they don't ring true. His imaginative history of South Pacific campaigns is just that: imaginative.
-If someone with a US Navy aviation background will contact me I'll send you the book to get some QUALIFIED comments.

 

[P-39 Expert]

I have read it. Long long time ago.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I read that book as a teenager in the 1960s, along with Martin Caidin, Sakai Saburo, Adolph Galland, Hans Rudel, Walter Lord, and just about every WWII book I could get my hands on. I think I still have it floating around somewhere.
Looking back on it, I think it to some extent represents the tenor of the times. Compare it to "Flight of the Intruder", and you see the "greatest generation" combat experience sanitized for an innocent audience vs the "me generation" warts-and-all depiction of the terrors and stresses of naval air combat. My high school English teacher would have said: "romanticism vs realism".
As for technical accuracy, there's a huge gulf between the Hellcats of Newhafer, and the Phantoms of my time, and I never went to sea or saw combat, so I'm a poor judge. I do think some of Newhafer's descriptions of technical matters are a bit simplified and his depiction of the Japanese ace was a bit stereotypical, but this was his first book, after all.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[MIflyer]

Another novel by him is "No More Bugles in the Sky" a kind of alternate history version of the Vietnam War, before it happened. It may set a literary record for the use of profanity.