[Lucien]

Pierre Leyvastre who passed away a few years ago was, to my point of view, the most serious and most knowledgeable French air historian. A very discret, almost shy person, he knew pretty well what he was writing about. And even 30 or 40 years later his works is, as you put it, still relevant. A former figther pilot himself of which flying career was marred, then stoped by health problems, he spent a lifetime researching AA records.
Few people know it, but Pierre Leyvastre was the author of the French parts of the William Green/Macdonald magnificent serie "War planes of the second world war" published in the late sixties...