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A POORLY WRITTEN - THOUGH WELL RESEARCHED - SCHOLARLY BOOK
This book is the first in a projected 2-volume series about Luftwaffe pilots during World War II as told both by surviving veteran pilots themselves, many of whom Christer Bergström had befriended through the years through his work as a researcher/aviation historian -- and from accounts left from a number of Luftwaffe pilots (e.g. the ace Hans Philipp, who was credited with 206 victories) who were either killed during the war or died later before Bergström could interview them.
"Luftwaffe Pilots in World War II: The Veterans' Stories (Volume 1)" contains a lot of worthwhile, insightful, and revelatory information about the Luftwaffe fighter arm and some of its most distinguished pilots that had, hitherto, been little known or largely unknown. (For example, the case of captured Luftwaffe pilots who defected to the Soviet side.) There are also several photographs not to be found in other books on this subject. That is what makes this book a valuable resource, especially now that there are few veterans left to tell the stories first-hand.
But I must hasten to add that what detracts from the quality of this book is how poorly written it is in several instances. I don't know if this volume was translated from Swedish. If that is the case, the book was very poorly translated into English. I could bear with a handful of poorly written passages in English. But to have to deal with glaring grammatical errors across the chapters, along with sentence fragments and crudely constructed sentences --- that was too much. For that reason, I am giving "Luftwaffe Pilots of World War II: The Veterans' Stories (Volume 1), THREE (instead of 5) STARS.